:Proof Of Concept: Open-Source Multi-GPU Rendering!
Proof Of Concept: Open-Source Multi-GPU Rendering! Mar 13, 2010, 12 :02 UTC (0 Talkback[s]) (4590 reads) (Other stories by Michael Larabel)
"Last month NVIDIA introduced Optimus as a way for dual-GPU notebooks to seamlessly switch between the two GPUs but also to offload the rendering workload to the other graphics processor. This is somewhat similar to NVIDIA's SLI and ATI/AMD's CrossFire for splitting the rendering workload across multiple GPUs, but it has its differences. David ended up developing a proof-of-concept similar to NVIDIA's Optimus that he is calling "Prime" and it works with Intel and ATI GPUs.
"David's goals with Prime are to allow a second GPU to render 3D applications onto the screen of the first GPU, with it being configurable by the client, and just to handle the rendering side. This work isn't as simple as his vga_switcheroo implementation, but it required changes to the Linux kernel and the Graphics Execution Manager (GEM), the DRI2 protocol, the X Server and DRI2 modules, and then the actual Linux hardware drivers."
