Taking A Closer Look at NVIDIA's Iray VCA

At the recent GPU Technology Conference, NVIDIA gave the world a look at what its Iray Visual Computing Appliance (VCA), the world's first scalable GPU rendering appliance, could do.

With the Iray VCA, NVIDIA are challenging designers to completely do away with the physical prototype. NVIDIA believe that by delivering computer generated 3D models with such high fidelity and ultra-fine detail that they allow designers to interact with their designs as if they already existed, physical prototypes will no longer be a necessary part of the design process.

There is no doubt that building a physical prototype is an expensive and time consuming process, especially when dealing with large or complicated objects. The impact of discovering a fundamental design flaw that has a knock-on effect for other design decisions can be huge. By being able to make faster, more confident design decisions without interrupting the design process, the finished product will ultimately be of better quality and go to market more quickly.

The NVIDIA Iray VCA packs 8 top-end NVIDIA GPU's, with a total of 96 GBs of GPU memory and 23,040 CUDA Cores, delivering immense rendering performance. Multiple Iray VCAs can be built up over time, delivering render clusters capable of processing photo-realistic computer generated images.

Watch the GTC keynote in which the NVIDIA Iray VCA was introduced. Can you tell the difference between the real photograph and the photo-realistic computer generated image..?

Find out more about the NVIDIA Iray VCA here, and keep your eyes peeled for more news from Boston about when you'll be able to get your hands on this exciting technology!