AMD Brings Vega To Workstations With Radeon Pro WX9100, Radeon Pro SSG

[Draven35]

The Radeon Pro branding, announced last year amid a reorganization, is still fairly new, and the family has lacked a true flagship for the workstation market. Radeon Pro WX 9100 is that product.

AMD Brings Vega To Workstations With Radeon Pro WX9100, Radeon Pro SSG : Read more

 

[redgarl]

Impressive new ideas.

 

[Rookie_MIB]

Indeed, that's some interesting stuff. I wonder if they ever thought about instead of putting a SSD on a GPU, if they created a DRAM interface and allowed people to put a stick of DDR4 in there... Not as fast as GDDR5x/GDDR6, but faster than SSD, and infinite endurance. And while a 64GB stick of DDR4 ECC might be $800-1000, it would allow the end user to select the size they want from an extra 8GB up through 64GB easily.

 

[JamesSneed]

Indeed, that's some interesting stuff. I wonder if they ever thought about instead of putting a SSD on a GPU, if they created a DRAM interface and allowed people to put a stick of DDR4 in there... Not as fast as GDDR5x/GDDR6, but faster than SSD, and infinite endurance. And while a 64GB stick of DDR4 ECC might be $800-1000, it would allow the end user to select the size they want from an extra 8GB up through 64GB easily.

I will bet they did evaluate it. I'm sure working with studios they came up with this size and RAM was out of the question for the 2TB range. Interesting stuff anyhow.

 

[hannibal]

It may be because ram always has that everything is gone if there is electricity brake. And these cards Are used to works that last Many hours to complete. Another is the memory size. You need huge amounth of ram to replase 1Tb ssd drive... these renders Also take a lot of memory and that is the Main reason why They integrate the ssd to gpu. The interface between gpu and ssd is much faster than interface between Computer and via that to normal ssd!
But new xpoint memory could be even better than ssd in here though. It is expensive as hell, but faster than ssd and Also more durable. I am guite sure that big renders like industrial light and Magic and similar companies put a lot of money if They can speed upp the rendering time in their films!

 

[Rob1C]

The Article says:

"Performance-wise, the Radeon Pro SSG is said to be identical to the WX 9100. The difference is its on-board non-volatile storage."

and

"The AMD Radeon Pro WX 9100 is expected to have an MSRP of $2,200, and the Radeon Pro SSG is expected to sell for $7,000.".

The price for the " Samsung 960 PRO Series - 2TB PCIe NVMe - M.2 Internal SSD (MZ-V6P2T0BW)" is listed as U$1,109.99 on one well known Site.

There's a U$4800 price difference for a U$1100 SSD ? - There is something that doesn't add up.

Even if they used 8 512GB SSDs (U$280*8) and a RAID setup there's still some money on the table.

 

[hannibal]

Price segmentation. iPhone 32 vs iPhone 64Gb has 100$ price difference and it has nothing to do with manufacturing costs. Same in here. The ssd version is considered more "pro" so it is sold with higher Profit margins.

 

[Immitem]

I hope to see some reviews for Maya soon, that would be sick.

 

[wwhitley]

Hi, This is House Of Whitley! Do we have a time frame whet we can purchase this graphic card. I enjoy reading your articles you have bee writing. Keep them coming. Again Thanks

 

[Rob1C]

Price segmentation. iPhone 32 vs iPhone 64Gb has 100$ price difference and it has nothing to do with manufacturing costs. Same in here. The ssd version is considered more "pro" so it is sold with higher Profit margins.

I would pay an extra hundred for 64GB iPhone over a 32GB one, it's not like a cheaper OTG Solution exists or would be better.

With a U$7K Budget I could by 2 Radeon Vega Frontiers for U$2200, and 2 Samsung 960 PRO Series for U$2200 and spend the remainder on the Computer to house them.

Not only is that U$4400 spent less than the price difference but I'd get 52.4 TFlops Half Precision and 26.2 Single and 32 Gbps access speed using DirectGMA.

Easy to add more Graphics Cards or SSDs (assuming I can find an Epyc CPU and a Motherboard with enough PCIe Slots using the remaining U$2600).

Vega Frontier Edition

Samsung 960

I understand paying a bit more to get what you choose or paying a premium for a premium product - I always pay a bit more and never use cheapness as a purchasing decision (not even for Garbage Bags which I intend to throw away).

The point is that DirectGMA already provides the same solution and spending U$4800 (or more) for less (except the all-in-one convenience) seems pointless - especially when it's going into a Chassis and will be "all-in-one" enough.

It's a ridiculous difference in price, as TECH2020 also pointed out:

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-vega-workstations-wx9100-pro-ssg,35128.html#comment-rsp_en_20015861

 

[msroadkill612]

re the comment "The price for the " Samsung 960 PRO Series - 2TB PCIe NVMe - M.2 Internal SSD (MZ-V6P2T0BW)" is listed as U$1,109.99 on one well known Site.

There's a U$4800 price difference for a U$1100 SSD ? - There is something that doesn't add up.

Even if they used 8 512GB SSDs (U$280*8) and a RAID setup there's still some money on the table."

For the record, its definitely a raid array - a/ cos amd said so on the prev ssg model, & b/ cos of the cited data transfer rates of 8GBps - its pretty likely its a striped pair.

 

[msroadkill612]

rob1c posted:

""The AMD Radeon Pro WX 9100 is expected to have an MSRP of $2,200, and the Radeon Pro SSG is expected to sell for $7,000.".

The price for the " Samsung 960 PRO Series - 2TB PCIe NVMe - M.2 Internal SSD (MZ-V6P2T0BW)" is listed as U$1,109.99 on one well known Site.

There's a U$4800 price difference for a U$1100 SSD ? - There is something that doesn't add up.

Even if they used 8 512GB SSDs (U$280*8) and a RAID setup there's still some money on the table."

Whatever, but we can extrapolate a bit from single drive speeds.

it cant be that fast (8GB read & 6GB/s write), & be a single nvme ssd (singele samsung 960 pro 500GB = ~3.2GB/s).

In theory, 2 drives could almost be that fast, but not really given benchmarks. They may gain advantage using NAND in their proprietary environment?

So maybe its 4x 500GB nvmeS?, but I would expect them to be faster.