The Power of a Graphics Server

NVIDIA Corporation announced the release of a new graphics server that is intended to process remote graphics applications and offer extended support for complex rendering of 3D scenes. The NVIDIA Quadro Plex Visual Computing System ( VCS for short) Model S4 is a graphics server that will slowly but surely gain more and more market share for the single card graphics workstations as it features a record number of graphics processing units (GPUs for short) packed in a standard 1U server form factor that is easily deployable.

NVIDIA's graphics server, the Quadro Plex Visual Computing System Model S4, is designed to take the visual density to the limit as its hardware base incorporates four NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 professional GPUs that can dynamically allocate computing power for the geometry, shader and pixel processing functions needed by all modern 3D modeling applications. As the graphics servers come with a high buffer memory of 6GB that is shared between all the four GPUs, it is able to process large textures, while the hardware implementation of the Shader Model 4.0 delivers realistic effects for both DirectX 10 and OpenGL applications. Along side the hardware implemented Shader Model 4.0, the pixel programmability functions are used to enhance all images with sharper and clearer scenes.

The Model S4 server comes as a continuation of a line of desk aimed graphics workstations and it does that by offering extreme performance packed in an easy configurable form. Because of its accelerated 3D texture processing unit, the Model S4 is suitable for the visualization of large 3D images and datasets like those required by scientific research. Older models of NVIDIA graphics servers like the Quadro Plex VCS Model II are designed to power large arrays of displays because of its big frame buffer of 512MB of video memory available to its of its GPUs.

The manufacturing company, NVIDIA, hopes that the Quadro Plex Model S4 graphics servers will become a de facto industry standard when it comes to 3D applications and complex scene rendering, more so since the whole server integrates system monitoring, thermal control and fault notification.