Exhibitor Tech Talks

Tuesday - Thursday, 7-9 August
Hall F

Comprehensive summaries of the latest technologies in computer graphics and interactive techniques. SIGGRAPH 2007 exhibitors demonstrate software, hardware, and systems; answer questions; and host one-on-one conversations about how their applications improve professional and technical performance.

Accelerating with Cell: Programming with the Mercury Cell Accelerator Board and the Cell BE Processor

Mercury Computer Systems, Inc.
Tuesday, 7 August, 9:45 - 11:30 am

The accelerator model is ubiquitous in the computer graphics and image processing industry. This talk demonstrates how the Cell Accelerator Board, coupled with the right programming tools, brings about a new generation of performance and programmability in a PCI Express form factor. It provides a hardware overview and demonstration followed by a fast-paced introduction to the MultiCore Plus software suite for programming this unique hardware.

Leigh McLeod
Mercury Computer Systems
199 Riverneck Road
Chelmsford, Massachusets 01824 USA
mcleod (at) mc.com

A Unified Development Platform for Cell, GPU, and CPU Programming RapidMind

RapidMind Inc.
Tuesday, 7 August, 1 - 2:30 pm

Michael McCool, Chief Scientist at RapidMind, demonstrates how the RapidMind Development Platform unifies the software development process and programming model for a variety of processors, including multi-core CPUs, GPUs, and the Cell BE. The generally applicable, single-source solution provided by RapidMind makes heterogeneous multi-core development as easy as single-threaded, single-core programming. Applications built with the RapidMind platform are processor-independent, and they automatically scale to any number of cores. In addition, the RapidMind platform enables high programmer productivity: high-performance portable software can be created with an order of magnitude less effort than with traditional approaches.

Marjorie Willis
RapidMind Inc.
470 Weber Street North, Unit 203
Waterloo, Ontario N2L 6J2 Canada
mwillis (at) rapidmind.net

Using IBRIX Fusion to Eliminate Storage Bottlenecks in Rendering and VFX

IBRIX
Tuesday, 7 August, 3:30 - 5:30 pm

Since the days of Tron, CPU performance has increased two million times, network bandwidth 1,000 times, and disk storage capacity 3,000 times. Conversely, performance from the storage systems that deliver image data has increased less than 100 times. This session presents case studies of performance results.

Brad Winett
IBRIX

Autodesk^® FBX^®: An Overview

Autodesk
Wednesday, 8 August, 9:45 - 11:30 am

A technical overview and deep dive for developers interested in supporting the FBX file format via the FBX SDK. Learn vital best practices to get your application reading and writing the FBX format as fast as possible. This session is intended for developers of content-creation tools, game engines, or any other applications that support the most widely used 3D format in the industry: FBX.

Autodesk
10 Duke Street
Montréal, Québec H3C 2L7, Canada
med_ent (at) autodesk.com

Training for Careers in Animation

Vancouver Film School
Wednesday, 8 August, 1 - 2:30 pm

Interested in a career in the world of animation? This session includes a screening of outstanding student work, a comprehensive overview of the Vancouver Film School's Classical & 3D animation programs, admissions requirements, discussion of career opportunities, and a question-and-answer period.

Janet Cacchioni
Vancouver Film School
200-198 West Hastings Street
Vancouver, British Columbia V6B 1 H2 Canada
jan (at) vfs.com

Speed Animation: Input-Driven 3D Animation Techniques

Craft Animations and Entertainment AB
Wednesday, 8 August, 3:30 - 5:30 pm

This seminar focuses on Speed Animation, a set of advanced techniques for extremely fast animation.

Speed Animation is a production pipeline concept for photo-real 3D animation. It makes production more than 100 times faster. The key motivation in Speed Animation is for a producer/director to be certain beforehand that everything looks and moves as expected. It streamlines the production pipeline.

One of the key technologies of Speed Animation is Craft Director Tools, a suite of plug-in modules for input-driven animation. Also key are Craft Templates: render-ready and animation-ready 3D models, which employ a combination of the different modules in the Craft Director Tools suite. Come explore the world of real-time, user-input-driven Speed Animation.

Jacob Runnerström
Craft Animations and Entertainment
Stena Center 1D
Göteborg S-41292 Sweden
jacob.runnerstrom (at) craftanimations.com

GPU Computing: The Next Big Thing for High-Performance Computing

NVIDIA
Thursday, 9 August, 9:45 - 11:45 am

GPU computing is a new high-performance computing technology designed to perform data-intensive parallel processing with a new massively parallel computing architecture designed into NVIDIA's most recent GPU. This technology leverages the company's many years of investment in powerful parallel-graphics architectures and opens it up to handle the world's most complex computing problems - problems that today require vast clusters of servers and drive the need for new, parallel-computing technologies. This talk provides an overview of NVIDIA GPU computing and summarizes how it is transforming high-performance computing.

The Art and Technology of Ruby: Whiteout

Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
Thursday, 9 August, 1 - 2:30 pm

Whiteout is significantly longer and more complex than any demo created previously by the 3D Application Research Group at AMD. When you add to this the challenges of introducing of a new hardware architecture, a new 3D API, and a new operating system, it all adds up to some very interesting experiences. Please join us for a presentation by the programmers and artists from the Demo Team, who share the knowledge they gained during this process. They describe in detail a number of advanced shader techniques used in the demo, along with the supporting art-authoring methodologies. Image Metrics joins us to discuss how we brought Ruby to life using their high-fidelity, performance-driven facial animation system.

Speakers

Abe Wiley
Lead Artist
3D Application Research Group
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
abe.wiley (at) amd.com

Thorsten Scheuermann
Lead Engine Programmer
3D Application Research Group
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
thorsten.scheuermann (at) amd.com