Nvidia launches Quadro RTX, the first GPU with hardware-accelerated real-time ray tracing for professional visualization and design workloads.
NVIDIA announced its first Turing architecture-based GPUs at SIGGRAPH, unveiled by founder and CEO Jensen Huang, revolutionizing the work of 50 million designers and artists by enabling them to render photorealistic scenes in real time, add new AI-based capabilities to their workflows, and enjoy fluid interactivity with complex models and scenes. The announcement introduced the NVIDIA Quadro RTX 8000, Quadro RTX 6000, and Quadro RTX 5000, which bring hardware-accelerated ray tracing, AI, advanced shading and simulation to creative professionals. The company also announced the Quadro RTX Server, a reference architecture for highly configurable, on-demand rendering and virtual workstation solutions from the datacenter.
According to Bob Pette, vice president of Professional Visualization at NVIDIA, "Quadro RTX marks the launch of a new era for the global computer graphics industry. Users can now enjoy powerful capabilities that weren't expected to be available for at least five more years. Designers and artists can interact in real time with their complex designs and visual effects in ray-traced photo-realistic detail. And film studios and production houses can now realize increased throughput with their rendering workloads, leading to significant time and cost savings." The Quadro RTX GPUs are designed for demanding visual computing workloads such as those used in film and video content creation, automotive and architectural design, and scientific visualization.
The Quadro RTX Server defines a new standard for on-demand rendering in the datacenter, combining Quadro RTX GPUs with new Quadro Infinity software available in the first quarter of 2019. This architecture enables multiple users to access a single GPU through virtual workstations, dramatically increasing datacenter density, and allows end-users to easily provision render nodes and workstations based on their specific needs. With industry-leading content creation and render software pre-installed, the solution can scale from small installations to the largest data centers at one quarter of the cost of CPU-only render farms.
The new NVIDIA RTX graphics platform includes APIs for ray tracing, AI, rasterization, and simulation plus support for NVIDIA MDL materials and Pixar USD asset interchange. Initially supported by 30 ISV applications and addressing more than 50 million users, RTX can be accessed by professionals across industries through a range of creative applications and tools. Amy Bunszel, senior vice president of Design & Creation Products at Autodesk, stated: "AI and real-time ray tracing are transforming the way designers and artists work. Autodesk and NVIDIA are working together to deliver these advancements to the market and we look forward to the new tools and capabilities Quadro RTX will deliver to our customers."
The Quadro RTX 8000 with 48GB memory carries an estimated street price of $10,000, the Quadro RTX 6000 with 24GB memory is priced at $6,300 ESP, and the Quadro RTX 5000 with 16GB memory is priced at $2,300 ESP. Quadro RTX GPUs will be available starting in the fourth quarter through nvidia.com, with shipments available from leading OEM workstation manufacturers including Dell EMC, HPE, HPI and Lenovo, as well as system builders and authorized distribution partners including PNY Technologies in North America and Europe, ELSA/Ryoyo in Japan, and Leadtek and Ingram in Asia Pacific.