AMD GPUs, CPUs and Software Accelerate Performance for Many Applications & Industries

We recently interviewed Glen Matthews, Head of Product Management from AMD at SIGGRAPH 2019 conference in Los Angeles, CA. Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is a semiconductor company that develops computer processors and related technologies. AMD's main products include microprocessors, motherboard chipsets, embedded processors and graphics processors for servers, workstations, personal computers and embedded system applications. AMD is the second-largest supplier and only significant rival to Intel in the market for x86-based microprocessors. Since acquiring ATI in 2006, AMD and its competitor Nvidia have maintained a competitive duopoly in the discrete graphics processing unit (GPU) market.

Sanjay Gangal: Can you tell us about AMD’s recent major announcement?

Glen Matthews: We're introducing Radeon ProRender’s updated full-spectrum rendering that allows you to go from rasterization to a complete fully ray traced rendering. The way it works, essentially, is as you go from just rasterized to a hybrid image which allows you to turn on some levels of ray tracing. Depending on how much visibility you want, we have improved lighting, and improved reflections that occur on water or glass. Our AI-based solutions allow you to de-noise your view, so it can erase the noise up to 18 times faster than previously to what the final render looks like, or an approximation of what that final render will look like.

SG: What are some of the applications for this type of rendering?

GM: That's actually a huge question because what we're trying to do with Radeon ProRender is democratize rendering. Today, if you look at companies, there's often the expert who sits somewhere in the company and does nothing but rendering. With our solution, what we're trying to do is provide everybody in a company access and the ability to do rendering. The way to do that is to drive that into as many applications as possible. Today we are integrated in the Maxon Cinema 4D product. At this year’s SIGGRAPH we're showing our integration with SolidWorks Visualize. We are also in InstaLOD's Studio XL and ACCA's Edificius solution for BIM. As you can see, there's a host of use cases that go from product design, CAD, and into AEC solutions.

SG: Essentially, anybody who is doing a CAD design where they also render, whether it’s for mechanical design, architecture, graphic arts and movie makers can use your solutions, correct?

GM: Yes, absolutely. We also develop plug-ins as well, that you can download from our website for free. For PTC Creo, As an example, you could download a plug-in for PTC’s Creo for mechanical design or 3ds Max if you're in the AEC space. Those are available to our users today. The other thing is that we're working with application developers to get it into more diverse applications as well, and that's easy to do. You can download our SDK and you can get started right away. You just have a little click-through and then you come back to us when you're ready to go into production. We already have a great footprint in AEC, CAD design, and product development.

SG: How does it play with the PCIE Gen 4?

GM: From a ProRender standpoint, no major changes, but it allows you to move data faster so anything from a large file where you have to move memory, then it would definitely help you. For maximizing performance, if you're using an AMD CPU and AMD GPU together with AMD CPU's support for PCIE Gen 4, you're going to have a great experience!

SG: Can you talk about Radeon ReLive for VR?

GM: Radeon ReLive is kind of a play on words. It's a video capturing solution that allows you to record what's happening on your screen. It's actually really useful for professionals because it allows you to do several potential things. For example, if you have a problem that you want to collaborate with a colleague on, you could record it and send it to that colleague. You can also stream it, if you want to. You could also can get some help and say, “Hey, I'm having a problem right here. Can you help me with this design?” And vice versa. You can use it to record anything on-screen. As another example, you could create a manual or instruction for a product that you've designed to record how it works. Imagine that you've designed a product and you want to explain how to change a filter on it, or change or replace a component. Radeon ReLive is very well suited for doing this.

In addition, if you have a problem, you can debug it using Radeo ReLive, as well. The other great part about it is if you want to share something with a customer, then you can record it and then share it with them.

SG: Are the capabilities you’ve described so far possible with the software alone, or is they being made possible because of the GPU, the special GPUs and the software?

GM: The combination of the two, hardware and software comprise the product. Depending on which AMD GPU that you have, Radeon or Radeon Pro, certain functionalities and levels of performance are available. If you're looking at a CAD application, for example, there's a host of performance tuning that we do in that application to make it run faster. Taken together, it is ultimately how the end result gets to the customer.

SG: Typically, for movies or even for architecture, people used to do overnight renderings and come back next morning to look at the results. How much faster does this make it?

GM: For ProRender, something that we're showing at SIGGRAPH is a customer that is demonstrating cloud-based blockchain solutions, that allow you to break everything, including transactions up across a host of CPUs. You can send an RPR file, which is a ProRender file, to this farm, and then you can get back a solution in approximately five minutes. This is something that would take 30 hours if you weren't using our solution. That's on the GPU side. On the CPU side, with AMD introducing lots of cores with Threadripper and other solutions, you're also able to do more rendering. We're seeing interest from parties on both sides in terms of CPU and GPU for that.

SG: Are you talking about a sort of rough and quick render, or is it for real, something you can use for production?

GM: What I just described was for production, but from a quick render, you would use our AI de-noising solution for users who want a little more detail. For example, the way rendering works is almost like how light meets your eye. Each pixel on the screen, what we do is we look at where it's been and then that's what determines the color of that pixel and then the full screen gives you your final image. If you want to approximate that, you can, instead of doing thousands and thousands of iterations, you can just do, say 100. We can apply an AI algorithm to that based on models we've done in the past and then make a very good approximation of what that image will look like. That speeds it up for when you're doing development, so as you're thinking about what you're trying to do, instead of waiting four minutes to see what that render's going to look like, you can have something in a split second to get you that idea.

SG: What is the best way for people to find out more about AMD and your products?

GM: Come to AMD.com and check out the many areas that describe our solutions. If you're looking for hardware, you can go to RadeonPro.com. From a software standpoint, we have what's called our Enterprise driver and Radeon Pro Software, and you can get more information on ProRender there. Finally, for developers, you can go to out developer page to get more information, as well.

Category: Interview

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