Iray Nitro: see Iray+ running on 260 Nvidia GPUs
Lightworks has posted a demo video from Siggraph 2013 showing Iray+ running on a bank of 260 Nvidia GPUs.
Announced in the run-up to the show, Iray+ is a bespoke rendering solution that builds on iray, and is intended to help Lightworks customers integrate Nvidia’s GPU-based renderer into their own software: mainly CAD tools.
For the purposes of this story, however, we’re treating it as being “roughly what iray itself would look like if running on the same hardware”.
Two GPUs good, 260 GPUs better
The video shows Iray+ running on two of Nvidia’s new top-of-the-range Quadro K6000 cards, then on what is described as “Nvidia Iray Nitro”.
We have to confess that we haven’t heard of Nitro, and Nvidia’s own website doesn’t provide any more information, but it’s described in the blurb on YouTube as consisting of a bank of 260 GPUs.
The results are good with the K6000s – but really good with Nitro, with almost no visible noise as the user navigates around the scene: the image resolves instantaneously.
How surprising it is that a GPU-based renderer runs faster when provided with more GPUs is a moot point, but it does hint at the kind of performance we can expect from cloud-based GPU pipelines in future.
And if nothing else, the demo proves one thing: renderer developers really do love putting cars on HDR backplates.