DN Staff

November 18, 2010

2 Min Read
NVIDIA Brings Quadro GPU to Mac Platform

Hoton the heels of Autodesk's release of AutoCAD for the Mac, NVIDIA announced newversions of its Quadro professional graphics solutions for the Apple platform,bringing a new level of computational and visualization capabilities to Mac Prousers running the Mac OS X Snow Leopard operating system.

TheNVIDIA Quadro 4000 graphics processing unit (GPU), bolstered by the NVIDIA Fermiarchitecture,will accelerate workflows and the performance of a range of professional andengineering applications by tapping into the parallel processing capabilitiesdelivered by Fermi and CUDA, NVIDIA's programming environment, according to NVIDIAofficials. As a result, professional video applications along with technicalcomputing language tools such as MATLAB from The MathWorks can benefit fromfeatures such as fast double precision, which are unique to the Quadro 4000 GPUfor Mac.

"The visualization features in the Quadro 4000, coupled with GPU-acceleratedcomputation for algorithm development and deployment with MATLAB and ParallelComputing Toolbox, are a powerful combination of capabilities for the Macplatform," noted Silvina Grad-Freilich, manager of parallel-computingmarketing, at MathWorks, in a prepared release.

The high-end NVIDIA Quadro 4000 GPU for Mac, with 256 NVIDIA CUDA processingcores and 2GB of fast GDDR5 memory, will deliver sophisticated graphicsperformance across a broad range of design, animation and video applications. Inaddition, with new NVIDIA Scalable Geometry Enginetechnology, the Quadro 4000 for Mac can process up to `890 million trianglesper second', enabling professionals to design, iterate and deliver higherquality results in less time, NVIDIA officials claim.

The Quadro 4000 GPU for Mac provides additional display flexibility through aDisplayPort and a DVI-I (Dual Link) connector built into its bracket, alongwith a 3-D stereo bracket for optimal stereo connection to the system. ADisplayPort to mini-DisplayPort cable is also included to enablemini-DisplayPort only Apple displays. Additionally, users can enable up to fourhigh resolution displays from a single Mac Pro using dual NVIDIA Quadro 4000for Mac boards.

TheQuadro 4000 GPU for Mac, priced at $1,199, is available this month atApple.com, select Apple resellers and system integrators and from authorizeddistribution partners.



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