AMD's supercomputer for delivering multimedia content to digital gadgets

AMD has unveiled a new supercomputer called "AMD Fusion Render Cloud".
This supercomputer system is being designed to enable content providers to deliver video games, PC applications and other graphic-rich applications through the Internet "cloud" to virtually any type of mobile device with a web browser. The AMD Fusion Render Cloud will transform movie and gaming experiences through server-side rendering - which stores visually rich content in a compute cloud, compresses it, and streams it in real-time over a wireless or broadband connection to a variety of devices such as smart phones, set-top boxes and ultra-thin notebooks. By delivering remotely rendered content to devices that are unable to store and process HD content due to such constraints as device size, battery capacity, and processing power, HD cloud computing represents the capability to bring HD entertainment to mobile users virtually anywhere.

Dirk Meyer, CEO of AMD said, "Today, AMD is pleased to announce a new kind of supercomputer unlike any other ever built. It is being designed to break the one petaFLOPS barrier, and to process a million compute threads across more than 1,000 graphics processors. We anticipate it to be the fastest graphics supercomputer ever. And it will be powered by OTOY's software for a singular purpose: to make HD cloud computing a reality. We plan to have this system ready by the second half of 2009."

"Hosted on AMD's powerful new AMD Fusion Render platform, OTOY's revolutionary software has given birth to the world's first practical, scalable graphics supercomputer capable of true server-side HD cloud rendering. The AMD Fusion Render Cloud will allow directors like Robert Rodriguez of Troublemaker Studios to break through existing CPU-only and graphics processor-only render bottlenecks which have imposed limitations on the creation of true eye-definition assets," said Charlie Boswell, Director of Digital Media and Entertainment, AMD.

"Imagine watching a movie half-way through on your cell phone while on the bus ride home, then, upon entering your home or apartment, switch over to your HD TV and continue watching the same movie from exactly where you left off, seamlessly, and at full screen resolution," continued Boswell. "Imagine playing the most visually intensive first person shooter game at the highest image quality settings on your cell phone without ever having to download and install the software, or use up valuable storage space or battery life with compute-intensive tasks. Those are just some of the experiences that AMD and OTOY plan to make possible with HD cloud computing of visually rich entertainment content."

"By fusing industry-leading CPU technology with computationally dense, massively parallel graphics processors, the AMD Fusion Render Cloud can rival the world's most powerful industrial computing devices, but require just a fraction of the floor space, power envelope and cost associated with many of today's leading supercomputers," said Jules Urbach, Chief Executive Officer, OTOY. "Combined with the power of OTOY's revolutionary and flexible software platform, the AMD Fusion Render Cloud can transform the entertainment industry and remove the technical barriers between consumers and first-rate content experiences."

The AMD Fusion Render Cloud will be powered by AMD-optimized hardware including the AMD Phenom II processors, AMD 790 chipsets and ATI Radeon HD 4870 graphics processors, for unprecedented compute density and power efficiency. The AMD Fusion Render Cloud is an excellent example of AMD's Fusion strategy, combining its partners' dreams with AMD innovation, to bring powerful technologies to mainstream markets through the combined power of graphics processors and CPUs in a single platform.

AMD plans to provide the hardware and engineering resources for the AMD Fusion Render Cloud, with OTOY providing technical software development and a middleware layer.