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Issue #598 : : March 31, 2009 |
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In this issue: Be Faster: nVidia Intros All-CUDA Quadro Graphics - Quadro |
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The Bentley Systems' mission statement is written with green ink: "Provide solutions to design - build - operate the world's infrastructure with the goal of sustaining society, environment, and profession." While Bentley is concerned with infrastructure, the general media, however, places its emphasis on the awfulness of the automobile. Yet it is buildings that consume the largest share of energy. Both Bentley Systems and one of its significant competitors have cottoned on to the statistic that buildings use 39% of the energy in the USA. Reducing the energy used by buildings reduces the energy the United States needs to import from hostile but oil-rich countries, goes the thinking. And so companies like Bentley Systems have acquired software that they can sell to designers to cut future energy costs in new and renovated buildings. In the United States, the National Institute of Building Sciences has proposed the High Performance Building -- a building of many dimensions such as aesthesics, security, and accessibility. In a recent conference call with the CAD media, Bentley Systems naturally concentrated on the sustainability dimension of the NIBS' HPB. Sustainability consists of the following aspects:
Apparently Britain has the most stringent standards for building energy use, to the point that when you move into a residence, the former occupant has to give you an energy certificate. So it seems natural that that's where energy analysis software is being developed. Bentley's vp of building performance group Noah Eckhouse told us that Bentley bought some of that software, and now has adapted it for the US and Canada. Bentley’s Energy Performance Series does building energy design, analysis, and simulation, and includes the following pieces of software: 1. Bentley Tas Simulator V8i performs fast evaluation of multiple options and concepts of large buildings. 2. Hevacomp Simulator V8i ensures compliance with regulatory requirements and industry best practices. 3. Hevacomp Mechanical Designer V8i performs load and energy calculations, and lays out equipment, ducts, and pipes. Be Faster: nVidia Intros All-CUDA Quadro Graphics As part of my report on SolidWorks World, I had included a chart of graphics board brandnames from nVidia:
nVida invited CAD journalists to learn about its new FX x800 line of six Quadro graphics boards. nVidia marketing named the online event "The Power of 10 Launch," referring to the ten years the company has been in existence. During the decade, they have boasted a number of firsts, including these:
The company was pretty pleased to show off a graph with their sales of professional graphics boards swamping that of an unnamed competitor -- ATi. I asked about Matrox, and was told they are mainly into financial graphics.
Quadro The point to the Webcast was to describe nVidia's newest line of Quadro graphics boards, which boast dual-PCI Express graphics, support for multiple operating systems (at the same time), multi-threaded drivers, and the ability to handle up 144GB RAM -- "support for massive GPU memory footprint" indeed. The new boards range in price from a dollar under $100 to an astounding $3,300. Don't worry: there will be no peer (or other) pressure on you to buy the $3.3K board, because its 240 parallel CUDA cores are meant for 4D seismic and medical imaging. By "4D," nVidia means 3D graphics + time: graphics boards that show, say, the development of a tumor. Instead, we CAD users will be marketed with boards that range from $99 to $899: Quadro FX 380 ($99) for "volume" CAD -- 50% faster than its predecessor.
All of the new models in this line of Quadro graphics boards contain the CUDA ISA, even the cheapest FX380 with its 16 CUDA processors.
About CUDA CUDA [compute unified device architecture] is the programming interface that runs software on the graphics board. nVidia sees this as a good thing, because their GPUs are so much faster than Intel's CPUs. A chart showed Intel's i7 965 CPU maxing out at 104GFLOPS (giga floating point operations per second), with the nVidia FX3800 archiving 933GFLOPS -- about 9x faster. nVidia says developers are seeing an 18x-150x speed up in graphics display using CUDA. You can program for CUDA using these programming languages:
The drawback to CUDA: the software running on it has to do parallel processing. nVidia claims that 25,000 developers are busy porting code from Intel CPUs to CUDA GPUs. However, for the most part they are specialized medical and imaging programs. Still, nVidia is handing out cash -- $500 thousand to $5 million -- to help develop software to exploit their GPU through their new GPU Ventures Program < http://www.nvidia.com/object/gpu_ventures_program.html >.
What's In It for CAD Users? Other than buying an FX 380 or 580 for their somewhat faster speeds, I wonder how else do CAD users benefit from CUDA-ization. It's hard to say. nVidia described five advanced graphics technologies that CAD users could benefit from: 1. NVSCALE allows apps to work across multiple GPUs (available spring 09). 2. NVIRT performs realtime raytracing with specular reflections, like metal and glass (fall 09). This is a result of nVidia's purchase of mental ray a year ago; AutoCAD uses mental ray for its rendering. 3. 3D Vision Pro provides a professional version of 3D glasses: wireless active shutter 3D glasses that include a compass, accelerometer, and API. The IR [infra red] transmitter lets several people view the same 3D drawing at the same time (second half 09). 4. SDI Input Card reads video from multiple digital cameras, and then stores the video on the GPU. Useful for comparing inspections of products (summer 09). 5. Multi-OS allows graphics from more than one operating system to be virtualized and accelerated on GPUs. Until now, you needed either two GPUs or one GPU that accelerated only one OS (available now). The practical effect is that one computer can run Windows and Mac and/or Linux-based CAD with the graphics board doing the hard work of handling rendering, etc. for all of them.
When I asked which CAD vendors were implementing them ("No need to name names," I added), the response was vague. There is apparently some initial interest from CAD vendors.
Paraphrased Q&A Q: Your comparison chart showed "Competitor" as singular. Do you have just one competitor? A: Yes, ATI seen as the only competitor in the workstation market.
Q: What about Matrox? A: They no longer are; they specialize in multi-displays for financial companies.
Q: What is DisplayPort? A: DisplayPort is the new interface port, which Apple and PC vendors are starting to implement. It allows 30-bit color.
Q: Why are your GPUs so much faster than CPUs? A: GPUs are faster because they use a parallel architecture; CPU is serial.
Q: This isn't the best time to introduce cutting edge cool stuff? A: This lets customers become more productive (less time to design), which provides costs savings.
Q: Even the cheapest $99 board has CUDA in it? A: Yes. There is a perception that Quadra is really expensive; this is not the case.
Q: Is CAD taking advantage of CUDA? A: CAD is not being ported to CUDA right now; science and education currently primarily doing it. Ray tracing within the CAD app could take advantage of Cuda.
Cyon Research is looking for people to fill out a follow-up survey to its $1,995 report that came out in January. Take part, give your email address, and you'll receive both reports at no charge. Cyon Research Survey of Users of Software Tools for Design and Engineering. www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=jY5Q6xIZFuoGU5Guvpa7yQ_3d_3d
IMSI/design updates TurboCAD v16 with these features:
Upgrades are $699. www.turbocad.com - - - Sivan Design releases CivilCAD 2008 v2 with better earthworks calculations multiple types of pipelines. Trial version from www.sivandesign.com/downloads power2's modeling language works with SolidWorks to define solutions graphically through knowledge diagrams. www.power2pro.com Actify updates its importers to handle SolidWorks, Catia V5, 2D PDF. www.actify.com Geometric Technologies is launching CAMWorks 2009 solid-based CNC programming software. www.camworks.com - - - These were some of the news items that were posted during the last week at the WorldCAD Access blog < worldcadaccess.typepad.com >:
Hardware News HP is offering 0% leasing: 12 month to ownership, and 36-month. But only until 30 April. www.hp.com/canada/portal/smb/dm/hpfs_0_per_financing Seminars & Conferences First ODA World Conference by The Open Design Alliance is Apr 27–29 in Leiden, The Netherlands. www.opendesign.com/conference (I'll be at this conference.) Full agenda now posted. GeoTec Event09 is in Vancouver, Jun 1. www.geoplace.com/geotec Sixth International Conference on Remote Engineering and Virtual Instrumentation is Jun 22-25 in Bridgeport CT USA. www.rev2009bridgeport.org COMSOL Conference 2009 Boston is Oct 8-10 in my favorite American city, Boston. www.comsol.com/conference2009/usa/
WorthWhile Web http://pandalabs.pandasecurity.com/archive/Don_1920_t-get-taken-in-by-the-Conficker-panic.aspx http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/03/27/national-post-editorial-board-spend-earth-hour-contemplating-the-glories-of-abundant-power.aspx http://www.pandasecurity.com/activescan/index/
Letters to the Editor Re: 30 Days "Your take on 30 days vs. 40 hours is apt. Note that Office (since Office 2003 as I recall, perhaps earlier) had 'reduced functionality mode' (RFM, which is a funny pun I suppose) before activation. "There is also a student version (I got this on my new pc) which allows I think 20 launches in full-mode, after which it devolves into reduced-functionality mode. In RFM, I think printing is supported, but not editing or saving. "I definitely agree that the 30-day model is weak, and that 40 hours would be superior. Since most apps don't have a way of measuring usage time, 30 launches would still be better than 30 days, and is more do-able than 30 hours."
Re: Build Your Own CAD System "We fly a bit under the radar, it seems, But Visual CADD is definitely not gone. We are just getting into beta testing for version 6 and will release it later this year. "We have supported a robust Application Programming Interface for Visual CADD all along and it has been updated to work with the latest v5 release. "Companies can license the engine from us to develop their own CAD application, but at a fraction of the cost you mention. There are third-party commercial add-ons available, that were built on our API and run in the Visual CADD interface. "In the new version 6, we introduce macros based on the API using automation, which will allow users to write powerful routines and tools to customize Visual CADD beyond the current scripting language."
"*sigh* ComputerVision CADDS 4X was the first CAD system I ever used. Visual CADD was the first PC CAD system I used which had a "Windows" GUI (along with Drafix CAD, and Generic CAD). "One thing I always look back on fondly about CADDS 4X was the consistent noun+verb+modifier syntax structure. If I didn't know what command did what, I could guess it 9 times out of 10 -- and it had hundreds of commands. Ok, I'll stop listening to my 90s music now."
Re: Airbus A380 "Maybe it's just history repeating. Wasn't the 747 designed in the booming 60s and launched in the fuel crisis 70s, flying half-full as people questioned its size? "Seems odd they are pulling A380s from New York but still using them for the Aussie, New Zealand runs!" The editor replies: "The day before an airline announced ending 380 service to NY, they announced new service to Toronto, and then maybe Calgary and Vancouver (nearest to me)."
Re: Precognition of Project Costs with D:Profiler "Nice job on the D:Profiler piece. When writing about technology, it’s always a challenge to write in a clear, simple, and accessible way without dumbing down the content, and you totally nailed it. I would have been proud to have written this piece."
Notable Quotable "You can still blow-dry your hair, charge your cellphone, check your email, make toast, and heat your home to 25C [77F] -- just as long as your lights are switched off between 8:30 and 9:30 p.m."
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