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Nvidia is poised to roll out an advanced graphics processor unit that aims to usher in a new era of 3-D gaming. Called the GF100, the new graphics chip is expected to deliver the horsepower for running games across three panels featuring high-definition resolutions of up to 1920×1080 pixels — an immersive gaming environment that the company has dubbed “3D Vision Surround.”<\/p>\n
\nEarlier this month at the Consumer Electronics Show, Nvidia demonstrated its technology on desktop PCs equipped with LCD panels from Acer, Alienware and others. Though the GF100 only supports two displays per chip, Nvidia expects to implement 3D Vision Surround through the company’s Nvidia SLI platform, which intelligently scales graphics performance by combining multiple graphics chips on an SLI-certified motherboard. <\/p>\n
\n“This is because to drive the three 3-D displays, we effectively have to draw upward of 250 million pixels — or six times the norm,” said Nvidia spokesperson Bryan Del Rizzo.<\/p>\n
Moving Beyond Pixel Acceleration<\/p>\n
\nIntegrating three billion transistors, the GF100 will be the first Nvidia GPU based on Fermi — a third-generation architecture featuring streaming multiprocessor technology. Among other things, Fermi offers support for up to 512 processor cores based on Nvidia’s CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture) platform, which enables software programmers to code sophisticated algorithms with the standard C programming language and simplified extensions. <\/p>\n
\nAccording to Nvidia, graphics chips are no longer only about the fast rendering of triangles and pixels. Though programmable shading techniques have allowed PC games to mimic film in per-pixel effects, the company noted that geometric realism has lagged behind — with the most advanced PC games today using one million to two million polygons per frame. By contrast, a typical frame in a computer-generated film uses hundreds of millions of polygons, Nvidia said. <\/p>\n
\n“This disparity can be partly traced to hardware,” wrote… <\/p>\n
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