Hydra chip promises multi-GPU revolution

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defiant007

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http://www.tcmagazine.com/comments.php?shownews=20823&catid=2

Nvidia and AMD's multi-GPU solutions, SLI and Crossfire respectively, are full of ups and downs and while their progress seems to be rather slow, one Israel-based company, Lucid is saying that revolution is just one chip away. Backed by investors like Giza Venture Capital, Genesis Partners and Intel Capital, Lucid is saying that is has built a solution that will "radically improve graphics performance for any kind of PC."

Named Hydra, Lucid's real-time distributed processing engine is a system-on-a-chip solution that will be able to stay between the CPU and the graphics cards and will direct graphic processing traffic between the GPUs in a highly-efficient efficient manner, resulting in improved graphics performance in any application.

Set to work with both DirectX 10 and OpenGL software, Hydra is also planned to offer interoperability with all GPUs and chipsets, apparently enabling the combination of AMD and Nvidia graphics cards. Able to be included either on motherboards or add-in boards, the Hydra is expected to arrive, in one way or the other during the first half of 2009.

"We're currently focusing our Hydra engine on improving everyday PC performance, but our vision is to bring more scalability, flexibility and power to all visual processing markets including graphics professionals, power gamers, design/engineering professionals and others," says Offir Remez, Lucid co-founder and president. "With strong venture backing, a superior patent portfolio and experienced leaders in all aspects of semiconductor and 3D computing graphics, we're a nimble team passionate about working with our partners to realize our vision of universally amazing graphics for all."

Assuming Intel Capital and the other investors behind Lucid are not wrong, next year could mark a major change in the multi-GPU market. Keep those fingers crossed.
Click to expand...

Sounds too good to be true, but will be keeping an eye on this.
 
Let me know how much it'll cost me, if I can upgrade my particular computer, and an actual benchmark of performance gains, and THEN I'll believe it.
 
This sounds promising but pardon my skeptisim. If this was truly possible why haven't AMD or Nvidia come up with this simple solution yet? I mean they have been spending millions for years on R&D for something they specialze in and some never heard of before company comes up with this revoultionary chip? Heh possible for imo unlikely since if it was THAT good Nvidia would have aquired that company and its tech by now. :)

-My 2 cents,
 
Could this replace the ATI/Nvidia chipset problem on motherboards ending this daft Nforce chipset restriction for SLI and Intel chipsets for Xfire?

That'd be handy even if it's performance increase is minimal.
 
I can tell you one thing for sure, SLi is a proprietary technology of nVidia and Crossfire is a proprietary technology of AMD. Even Intel needs to get a license to use those technologies on their chipset so I doubt that AMD or nVidia will let this Isreali company to use their technology without a license. Unless the company have their own GPU, their product will sooner or later be blocked in the driver from AMD and nVidia.
 
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