AMD FirePro W9100 gets more RAM
AMD takes another step in professional segment, by announcing more powerful FirePro W9100 with 32GB RAM. FirePro W9100 32GB arrives just two weeks after FirePro S9300 X2, the dual-Fiji professional graphics card that (unfortunately) is only available with 8GB memory.
Since NVIDIA recently announced it’s Quadro M6000 with 24GB memory, AMD lost the lead in professional workstation market as former W9100 model had only 16GB. Today however, things change in AMD favor as 32GB model currently has no competition when it comes to such a large frame buffer in workstation graphics.
While AMD already had Hawaii-based FirePro Server graphics with 32GB memory, the FirePro Workstation series were only available with 16GB. However we shouldn’t really compare pure computing-oriented GPUs like FirePro Server and NVIDIA Tesla to FirePro Workstation and Quadro series, since those cards serve different purpose.
Either way this news comes as a surprise. While Hawaii silicon may not be included in Radeon 400 series, it apparently still does the job in professional market, so AMD is still planning make more Hawaii chips.
| High-end Professional market (April 2016) | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AMD FirePro W9100 | AMD FirePro S9170 | NVIDIA Tesla P100 | NVIDIA Quadro M6000 | |||
| GPU | 28nm Hawaii | 28nm Hawaii | 16nm FF GP100 | 28nm GM200 | ||
| Stream Processors | 2816 | 2816 | 3584 | 3072 | ||
| Boost Clock | 930 MHz | 930 MHz | 1480 MHz | 1114 MHz | ||
| Memory Size | 32GB or 16GB | 32GB | 16GB | 24GB or 12GB | ||
| Memory Type | GDDR5 | GDDR5 | HBM2 | GDDR5 | ||
| Memory Bus Width | 512-bit | 512-bit | 4096-bit | 384-bit | ||
| FP32 | 5.2 TFLOPs | 5.2 TFLOPs | 10.6 TFLOPs | 6.1 TFLOPs | ||
| FP64 | 2.6 TFLOPs | 2.6 TFLOPs | 5.3 TFLOPs | 0.2 TFLOPs | ||
| TDP | 275W | 275W | 300W | 250W | ||
PRESS RELEASE
AMD Announces World’s First Professional Workstation Graphics Card With Industry-Leading 32GB Memory
New Creative Tools for VR Showcased With Hardware and Software Partners at 2016 NAB Show
LAS VEGAS, NE — 04/14/16 — At the 2016 National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Show, AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) announced the new AMD FirePro W9100 32GB — the world’s first workstation graphics card with industry leading 32GB memory support for large asset workflows with creative applications1 planned for availability in Q2 2016. AMD also introduced the AMD FireRender plug-in for Autodesk® 3ds Max®, which enables VR storytellers to bring ideas to life through enhanced 4K workflows, photorealistic rendering functionality, and powerful creation support.
“The imagination of the creator is limitless so much so that the professional creator consumes all available resources to produce new and never before seen designs and experiences. Some professional creative workflows demand very high bandwidth memory subsystems while others demand high memory size. AMD pioneered the era of High Bandwidth and Ultra Efficient Memory through the introduction of HBM technology in 2015 and will bring it to content creators with the introduction of Radeon™ Pro Duo graphics. With the new AMD FirePro W9100 32GB, AMD is unleashing the world’s largest memory size professional workstation graphics card,” said Raja Koduri, senior vice-president and chief architect, Radeon Technologies Group (RTG), AMD. “Along with exceptional hardware, AMD is also delivering software tools to leverage our high bandwidth and large memory GPU configurations effectively.”
At the 2016 NAB Show StudioXperience’s AMD FirePro™ GPU Zone (booth SL2425), attendees can experience powerful technologies showcased in industry-leading creation applications demonstrating how to efficiently balance content creation workloads with outstanding visual quality, application responsiveness and compute performance. The exhibit showcases solutions from Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, Avid, Blackmagic Design, Dell, HP and Rhino offering attendees a range of hands-on workflow experiences powered by AMD FirePro professional graphics, including:
- An AMD product showcase demonstrating support for a VR production workflow featuring the new AMD FirePro W9100 32GB graphics card for speed and ultra-high-definition visual performance, and the Radeon™ Pro Duo graphics card — which forms the world’s most powerful platform for virtual reality (VR)2 when combined with the AMD LiquidVR™ SDK, capable of both creation and consumption of VR content. The AMD FirePro W9100 32GB graphics card is also designed for Computer-Aided Engineering (Siemens NX Nastran, SIMULIA Abaqus) and Visualization tools (AutoDesk VRED 2016).
- An Autodesk demonstration featuring the AMD FireRender plug-in designed for Autodesk® 3ds Max® 2016 powered by an HP workstation with dual AMD FirePro™ W9100 professional graphics.
- An AMD FirePro graphics demonstration offering increased color accuracy and support for display resolutions up to 4k, as well as GPU-acceleration to empower content creation with the Adobe video tools, including Adobe® Premiere® Pro CC and Adobe After Effects® CC.
- A free interactive photorealistic ray trace renderer for the forthcoming Rhino version 6 that works inside the Rhino viewport for physically correct material with rendering technology based on the OpenCL™-accelerated AMD FireRender plug-in.
The AMD professional graphics cards are on display with hardware and software leaders at the 2016 NAB Show at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada at booths SL2425 and SL10227 and during ShowStoppers at NAB 2016.
