Promised Platform-Independent GPU Tech Is Getting Real

Vigile writes "Last year a small company called Lucid promised us GPU scaling across multiple GPU generations with near-linear performance gains without restrictions of SLI or CrossFire. The company has been silent for some time, but now it is not only ready to demonstrate the 2nd generation hardware, but also to show the first retail product that will be available with HYDRA technology. In this article there is a quick look at the MSI 'Big Bang' motherboard that sports the P55 chipset and HYDRA chip and also shows some demos of AMD HD 4890 and NVIDIA GTX 260 graphics cards working together for game rendering. Truly platform-independent GPU scaling is nearly here and the flexibility it will offer gamers could be impressive."

Comments

Suddenly, to be released to market in 30 days

[prisma]

Finally, we can have asynchronous GPU pairing? And cross-brands to boot? What's incredible is having heard nothing about this for so long, TFA now says a product may hit the market in the next 30 days. I take it that by sidestepping Crossfire and SLI technology, they won't have to pay any licensing fees to either AMD or NVIDIA. Hopefully the patent trolls won't be able to find any fodder that would prevent and delay commercial release.

Re:can it be done in software?

[Nyall]

That would require CPU. Rendering a game at 60Hz not only requires a GPU that can render your imagery within 16.7ms, but also requires the software running on the CPU to issue its directx/openGL commands in 16.7ms.