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

Is it useful?

[MarkRose]

Let me be the first to saw aw s  e! Maybe I can finally get decent full screen flash performance on linux now!
                             e om

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?

[shentino]

Crippleware is a common method of rent seeking, and copyrights, patents, and plain old obfuscation may obstruct genuine improvements.

Case in point: Old mainframes deliberately given a "cripple-me" switch that only an expensive vendor provided technician is authorized to switch off.

Re:fuck you all

[Anonymous Coward]

I know I speak anonymously when I say that this Anonymous Coward does not speak for the rest of us Anonymous Cowards.

So, parent poster, gargle our collective balls.

Re:Great, can't wait until there's a Linux driver

[dark_requiem]

"Immoral"? What, because it's proprietary? Are you serious? Get ready to throw out your whole computer, because the whole damn thing is proprietary. You don't have circuit diagrams for the cpu or gpu, you don't have firmware code, nothing. Before you start taking the "moral" high ground about proprietary components, look at what you're typing on. There's plenty of room in the world for proprietary and open source to coexist, RMS' rantings not withstanding.

Re:Great, can't wait until there's a Linux driver

[Tom]

I hope you die young. Seriously. If we get world hunger solved, and peace eternal, people will start to complain about even less important stuff. People complain about things, it's part of human nature. Just because 500 people died in Africa today before I got out of bed doesn't mean I don't feel that particular idiot at work is a friggin' [censored].

You can't deny people's feelings with a rational appeal to global standards.

Re:Great, can't wait until there's a Linux driver

[bcmm]

We live in a world where thousands of children starve to death every day, people are killed or imprisoned for expressing their beliefs, women/minorities/everybody are oppressed, and few people really care about any of it, because it's all someone else's problem. I find it kind of funny (and more than a little sad) that the use of a driver can be blithely written off as "immoral" just because you can't download the source.

Some people rape children. How can you possibly think shoplifting is immoral?

/me steals some stuff.