LONDON - MAY 21st, 2003 - NVIDIA Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA), the worldwide
leader in visual processing solutions, today introduced the NVIDIA Quadro(r)
FX 500 graphics processing solution, based on the recently announced,
award-winning NVIDIA Quadro FX series of workstation graphics solutions.
The NVIDIA Quadro FX 500, available immediately, is armed with a high-end
architecture featuring the industry's only true 128-bit floating-point frame
buffer, industry-leading 12 bits of sub-pixel precision, parallelised vertex
engines, the industry's first on-chip vertex cache and up to eight fully
programmable pixel pipelines, allowing developers to simulate a virtually
unlimited range of real-world properties like metal or skin and to modify
them on the fly.
"With this new product, NVIDIA has made high-quality graphics affordable and
readily available to a broad audience of professional users," said Kara
Yokley, manager, IDC workstation research. "The NVIDIA Quadro FX 500, with
its real-time rendering and productivity enhancing capabilities, will help
the company grow its workstation business by tapping into new target
segments within the computer-aided design and digital content creation
markets."
NVIDIA Quadro FX 500's programmability is exposed through Cg, a C-like
high-level programming language developed by NVIDIA. Using Cg, major
independent computer-aided design and digital content creation software
application vendors - including Alias|Wavefront, Digital Immersion,
Discreet, Softimage and SolidWorks - have incorporated into their
applications the hardware rendering capabilities found in NVIDIA Quadro FX
500.
"The programmability of the NVIDIA Quadro FX 500 allows Discreet to offer
our customers production rendering as an integral part of real-time content
creation," said Chris Ford, product line manager at Discreet. "Users can
apply sophisticated virtual materials or shaders like metals, rubber, or
skin to their 3D models and render them in real time as they are designing."
NVIDIA Quadro FX products use the NVIDIA(r) Unified Driver Architecture
(UDA), a set of backward-and-forward, top-to-bottom compatible graphics
drivers that optimise application performance, stability and reliability.
All NVIDIA Quadro FX products feature the NVIDIA(r) nView(tm) multi-display
technology and OpenGL(r) quad-buffered stereo capability, extending the
productivity available to users.
"With the introduction of NVIDIA Quadro FX 500, we're able to offer our
customers a fully scalable range of workstation graphics solutions," said
Jeff Brown, director of workstation product management at NVIDIA. "Each of
these configurations, like all NVIDIA products, offers our customers the
broadest application certification program in the industry."
The NVIDIA Quadro FX 500 is now in volume production. Original equipment
manufacturers as well as PNY - NVIDIA's exclusive U.S. and European NVIDIA
Quadro FX distributor - system integrators and value-added resellers
worldwide will begin selling the solution this week. For more information on
NVIDIA Quadro FX products and to find out where you can purchase them,
please visit the NVIDIA Web site at www.nvidia.co.uk.
About NVIDIA
NVIDIA Corporation is a market leader in visual computing technology
dedicated to creating products that enhance the interactive experience on
consumer and professional computing platforms. Its graphics and
communications processors have broad market reach and are incorporated into
a wide variety of computing platforms, including consumer digital-media PCs,
enterprise PCs, professional workstations, digital content creation systems,
notebook PCs, military navigation systems and video games consoles. NVIDIA
is headquartered in Santa Clara, California and employs more than 1,400
people worldwide. For more information, visit the Company's Web site at
www.nvidia.co.uk.
Source: E-Mail
