Multi-Chip Graphics Processors to Power Aircraft Simulators

The most important graphics solutions providers ATI and Nvidia have started shipping multi-GPU configurations. These pieces of hardware are mostly important for the gaming industry, but their scope ranges farther than rendering heroes and fantastic explosions.

The multi-GPU cards have started to gain ground in industrial applications also, such as the "glass cockpits" - planes and helicopters flying around the world. For instance, the former 3Dfx company, now part of Nvidia, was delivering LVHP (Low Volume Higher Profit) devices, that used to power Apache helicopters. The next generation of video cards are also used inside flight simulators - the last obstacle between the pilot apprentice and a Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental.

Canadian developer of simulation and modeling software and hardware CAE has just inked a deal with Lufthansa Flight Training and Xiamen Airlines to provide four full-flight simulator machines (FFS), accompanied by additional "Simfinity" training devices. According to TGDaily, the deal would be estimated at $52.45 million, but the multi-GPU hardware will surely deliver more bang per buck than before.

The Canadian manufacturer is supposed to deliver the CAE 5000 FFS devices to simulate the Airbus A320 and a new model of CAE 7000 FFS system to simulate the Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental. The two devices will travel back to Germany at the Lufthansa Flight Training. Xiamen Airliners will receive two CAE 7000 systems that will simulate flight on the Boeing 737-800.

The flight simulators will come packed with state-of-the-art technology, such as hydraulics engines, extremely powerful computers, LCD monitors and Liquid Crystal on Silicon projectors (LcoS). Graphics rendering will be processed by the latest video technology to simulate world geographies, with airplanes taking off and landing.

The graphics hardware is still kept under the deepest secret, yet it is rumored that the flight simulators rely on ATI Radeon graphics chips linked in CrossFireX configurations, that would result in extremely powerful and expensive hardware for a different kind of gaming.