First Look at NVIDIA’s New Supercomputing Workstations

At SOLIDWORKSWorld 2017 earlier this week, NVIDIA revealed for the first time its newest line of Quadro products based on its Pascal architecture—GP100, P4000, P2000, P1000, P600 and P400. The new graphics processing units (GPUs) are designed to alter engineering workflows and transform normal workstations into high-end virtual reality (VR) compatible devices.

The power of these new GPUs was shown during floor demos at SOLIDWORKSWorld 2017. The Quadro P4000 card was used to power a VR demonstration setup and to display a CAD model of a car consisting of 30 million polygons. This intensive model was easily navigated and moved in the VR setup, and did not create any noticeable lag or slowing of frame rates. The P4000 is bringing VR to midrange workstations and has the power to create detailed, lifelike, immersive environments.

The new Quadro GP100 combines double precision performance with 16GB of high-bandwidth memory so that users can conduct simulations during the design process and gather realistic multiphysics simulations faster than ever before. A live demonstration showed the ability of the workstation powered by the GP100 to easily run a simulation in the background while still allowing the workstation and user to perform other necessary operations such as continuing to work on CAD models and make material changes. The GP100 is also VR ready.

NVIDIA is also working to improve functionality for mobile users who do not want to be tied to their desktop workstations but still want the ability to quickly create photorealistic images. Director of Marketing Professional Visualization at NVIDIA, Brian Piccione, demonstrated the capability of the Quadro P5000 and NVIDIA Iray, which were paired together to run SOLIDWORKS Visualize to create photorealistic images of a car model in an imported environment. The resulting images were rendered exceptionally fast for a mobile workstation. Material properties such as reflectivity and transparency were easily changed and then quickly rendered on this mobile workstation, quickly creating high-end images.