AMD Radeon(TM) Pro SSG Set to Transform Workstation PC Architecture, and to Shatter Real-Time Visual Computing Barriers

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Increasing Speed of Modern Workflows by an Order of Magnitude, Disruptive Technology Accelerates the Art of the Impossible With Potential for Terabytes of Memory

ANAHEIM, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 07/25/16 -- SIGGRAPH -- AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) today announced it is developing a new Radeon™ Pro solution for large dataset applications, which will be available initially as a developer kit. Starting at a full terabyte of Radeon™ Solid State Graphics (SSG), this innovative Radeon Pro technology will provide more than an order of magnitude greater memory capacity compared to existing GPU memory implementations, enabling vastly higher performance. The new solution is ideal for the next wave of demanding use-case scenarios including real-time post-production of 8K video, high-resolution rendering, VR content creation, oil and gas exploration, computational engineering, medical imaging and life sciences.

During the world's first demonstration of a Radeon Pro SSG solution, 8K raw video timeline scrubbing was accelerated from 17 frames per second to a stunning 90+ frames per second. As content creators rapidly adopt 8K resolution to future-proof their content, a 5X performance boost will improve quality of life, productivity and efficiency in the editing process.

State of the art content creation, scientific and engineering visualization applications require the processing of big datasets, far larger than can be contained within the capacities of existing GPU memory. Current limitations require slices of data to be processed individually and later merged by software, and often incur significant latency for fetching additional data from system memory. These big data problems discourage developers in these domains from leveraging the advantages of the GPU. Radeon Pro SSG memory addresses the big data problem for GPUs, paving the way for improved performance and dramatically increased user productivity.

"One of the most challenging constraints faced by GPU computing applications is the inability to access terabytes of data," said Raja Koduri, senior vice president and chief architect, Radeon Technologies Group, AMD. "Radeon Pro SSG is poised to not only speed-up processing for many applications with very large datasets, but also to enable new application experiences by utilizing data persistence of non-volatile memory. This will be a disruptive advancement for many graphics and compute applications."

"AMD has a long history of memory technology innovations, and Radeon Pro SSG is the latest example," said Patrick Moorhead, Founder and Principal Analyst, Moor Insights & Strategy. "Larger local memory on the graphics card can speed-up processing for many applications with very large datasets, and should also allow for results with finer granularity and resolution. This will be a notable advancement for many graphics and compute applications."

Memory architecture
When needed information is not available in GPU memory, typical memory architecture requires the GPU to send a request to the CPU. The CPU then retrieves the needed content from CPU memory, or if not there then from a hard drive. This entails considerable overhead that limits GPU performance. With this new GPU technology, a one terabyte extended frame buffer is dedicated to support the GPU. This enables much larger datasets to be loaded locally, connected over a dedicated PCIe® bus. When the GPU requests content, it looks first in the local frame buffer and only needs to involve the CPU if the data is not already in the extended frame buffer.

Availability
Applications for developer kits are now being accepted. These are available for $9,999. Full availability is planned for 2017. For more information and an application for a developer kit, refer to the Radeon website.

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About AMD
For more than 45 years AMD has driven innovation in high-performance computing, graphics and visualization technologies -- the building blocks for gaming, immersive platforms, and the datacenter. Hundreds of millions of consumers, leading Fortune 500 businesses and cutting-edge scientific research facilities around the world rely on AMD technology daily to improve how they live, work and play. AMD employees around the world are focused on building great products that push the boundaries of what is possible. For more information about how AMD is enabling today and inspiring tomorrow, visit the AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) website, blog, and Facebook and Twitter pages.

AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, Radeon and combinations thereof are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices Inc. PCIe is a registered trademark of PCI-SIG Corporation. Other names are for informational purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Source: Advanced Micro Devices

Released July 25, 2016