AMD's new SSG Technology blends an SSD with a GPU?!

AMD's says its Solid State Graphics Technology will empower terabytes of capacity on a design card

You can never have enough memory on an expert representation card, AMD authorities said before declaring the organization's next enormous thing at the SIGGRAPH meeting on Monday night. Utilizing what AMD named SSG Technology, or Solid State Graphics Technology, the organization will unite fast NAND memory to its forthcoming line of expert GPUs. 

In doing as such, organization authorities said, it will be conceivable to associate a size more memory to a GPU than is as of now accessible. The GPU with the most memory without further ado is AMD's Radeon FirePro W9100 with 32GB of RAM. 

With SSG Technology, NAND is straightforwardly associated with the GPU center, dwelling inside the design card itself. 

Why this matters: "This will permit us to associate terabytes of memory to the GPU," said David Wattters, AMD's head of Industry Alliances. The implications aren't totally known, however Watters said SSG is as of now having any kind of effect in ultra-high-determination 8K video. What's more, no, 8K video isn't simply twofold that of 4K, either. A Ultra HD 4K video is around 8.3 megapixels. A 8K video is 7680x4320, or around 33 megapixels. As indicated by Watters, current GPUs can play crude 8K video at around 17fps; one with SSG can play the same video at 90+ fps. 


AMD showed such a situation progressively at SIGGRAPH with one framework attempting to play crude 8K video at 17 fps. A second framework furnished with a GPU with SSG couldn't just play the same 8K video at more than 90 fps yet authorities demonstrated it "scouring" or rapidly traveling through the video as easily as somebody would alter 1080P video today.

How it functions 

AMD said that given the generally little measure of memory in a design card today, the GPU must cut up workloads and afterward deal with the converging of those unique parts. At the point when the GPU needs more work, it needs to flag the CPU, which then gets information from the bigger pool of neighborhood framework RAM or essential stockpiling. This acquires inertness. 

With SSG, the CPU is circumvent completely, which extraordinarily decreases dormancy, AMD said. The organization didn't unveil excessively numerous points of interest, yet SSG gives off an impression of being founded on a standard M.2 interface utilizing PCIe. 

SSG would not supplant design RAM itself, for example, GDDR5+ or HBM or HBM2, as it would be too moderate. The organization's new Polaris-based Radeon RX 480, for instance, has around 256GBps of memory data transfer capacity on tap. As well as can be expected escape a solitary M.2 interface today is 1.5GBps to 2GBps. 

AMD authorities said the expansive pool of SSG memory will help constant representation undertakings furthermore change how experts work since that memory is likewise pervasive. An average top of the line CAD laborer may begin the morning by booting up their machine and stacking a model, which could take 60 minutes. SSG would take out that hold up. 

Essentially, the GPU can stream 4K recordings to various screens all the while, and it will permit illustrations for VR headsets to be conveyed speedier. It could lighten a few difficulties with conveying smooth representation to VR headsets like Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. 

The SSG memory would be dealt with as a feature of an immense pool of RAM. In the event that the GPU can't discover its information in the neighborhood GDDR5+ or HBM RAM, it would then pursuit the SSG. Simply after that would it need to approach the CPU for what it needs.

HP gets serious about gaming again with eye-popping Omen PCs

HP is ready to make a big splash in PC gaming again.

It's been almost a decade since HP snapped up Voodoo, the wild and wooly PC manufacturer that built some of the most powerful and odd-looking gaming PCs on the planet. Since then HP has gone through many transitions — including splitting into two companies — and buttoned down its gaming line into the powerful, yet austere Envy line.

The new HP Omen line of Windows 10 gaming laptops and desktops, which the company unveiled on Thursday, is anything but austere.

Unlike systems that might include gaming specs, but are actually multi-purpose machines, HP says the Omen line is designed exclusively for gamers. This marketing approach might remind one of Dell's Alienware line of gaming PCs (which Dell acquired in 2006).

HP Omen Desktop

IMAGE: HP

Overall, the Omen line will include laptops, a desktop and a new 32-inch Quad HD display, with a promised, and even more powerful, Omen X platform coming later this year.

HP's renewed commitment to gaming comes as welcome news for industry watchers and, potentially, gamers.

"It appears that HP Inc. is finally, fully committed to gaming given the breadth and depth of their new Omen offering," said Patrick Moorhead, President and Principal Analyst for Moor Insights & Strategy. "They had previously let Dell’s Alienware run away with the gaming category from a tier-1 OEM standpoint," he said.

The Omen desktop, which replaces HP's Envy Phoenix, will offer both Nvidia and AMD graphics options and be certified to power HTC's Vive VR headset.

"The new OMEN platform offers the features gamers rely on — power for battling on the go, graphics for smooth gameplay and advanced thermal cooling to tackle the latest AAA games. The OMEN by HP delivers gamers what they need to strike first, and last," said HP VP and  General Manager Kevin Frost in a press release on the new line.

HP 32 in. Omen display.

IMAGE: HP

On the portable side, HP will offer two screen options: 15.3 and 17.3 inches. The laptops will offer mesh lids with the new red Omen logo and a "Dragon Red" backlit keyboard. Inside, you'll find an Nvidia GTX (up to 965M) graphics card and Intel's sixth-generation Core i CPU (up to a Core i7). There will also be a couple of memory and storage options, including 16GB of memory and up 4TB of storage.

On the desktop side, you can bump up the storage to 32GB and the graphics to an Nvidia GTX 1080 Founder Edition or AMD Radeon R9 390X. The desktop also includes a liquid cooling system.

The Omen laptops, which start at $899.99 for the 15.3-inch model and $979.99 for the $17.3-inch model, arrive on July 10.

Pricing has not been set for the Omen desktop or the 32-inch display, both of which arrive in August.

Can HP win back the hearts and minds of Windows gamers? Moorhead thinks it may come down to marketing. These new systems will have to be marketed appropriately to the target audience "and that means non-conventional approaches that HP doesn’t currently do, so I’m interested in seeing their plans," he said.