You know all about the never-ending duel Intel
AMD fights a similar battle against graphics specialist NVIDIA
In that space, AMD's ATI unit just released a matched pair of supercomputers-on-a-card that aim straight at the heart of Hollywood. The ATI FirePro V8750 GPU comes with a hefty $1,800 price tag -- but also with a staggering 800 processing units, or "shaders" in the lingo. The FirePro can feed its display output through the new S400 Synchronization Module to ensure broadcast-quality video signals under any kind of processing duress.
Because GPU chips are more specialized than a plain old CPU, they are capable of staggering feats of high-performance computing under the right circumstances. A single workstation with four of these cards rivals the finest big-iron servers you'll find at IBM
NVIDIA has long been the top dog in this lucrative market, thanks to its top-notch Quadro processors. Today's new releases look like an entirely new direction in AMD's graphics strategy, asking NVIDIA to dance or die. Sure, you could buy workstations from Dell
And if today's action wasn't hot enough for you, keep an eye out for Intel's Larrabee GPU chips next year. Intel hasn't been a force in high-performance graphics hardware since the early 1990s, but that should change with Larrabee. DreamWorks Animation
Your move, NVIDIA. Can you match either one of your new and upcoming ultra-exclusive rivals?
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