What happened to Lucid's Hydra chip?

[poohbear]

Wht ever happened to Lucid's "hydra" multi-pu solution that scaled 100%? It created a firestorm of interest when it was announced last summer, and was supposed to be on mobos by end of last year, but have'nt heard anything about em since.

Here's one article on it :

http://www.theinquirer.net/inq...-makes-multi-gpus-easy

last i read it was gonna appear on X58 mobos but that has'nt occured. Intel funds Lucid so i thought the X58 rumors would've been true.

 

[Sylvanas]

I was thinking the same thing the other day, last I read was that 'they were in negotiations with major manufacturers'. AT even had an article on it.

 

[gigahertz20]

Probably just bull shit, like most things that are announced and never actually live up to the hype. Throughout the years I remember reading all kinds of articles on the internet talking about some great technology that will increase the speed of this or do something great, but you never see it. I'm guessing larger companies buy up most of these technologies and try to find a way it can be implemented into one of their future products lines and be cost effective.

 

[faxon]

last i heard they were bought by intel, so my expectation is they are planning something for release around the same time as larrabee

 

[Idontcare]

Intel Capital (a division of Intel) invested in them, but Intel did not buy them outright.

 

[imported_Scoop]

Why do we need it when SLI scales like that, just check the MSI X58M (p)review. Maybe not all games scale like that yet but it's just a matter of getting all the pieces together.

 

[soccerballtux]

Xfire scales better than SLI....?

 

[alyarb]

ELSA makes backplanes with a lucid chip for GPGPU HPCs.

http://www.elsa-jp.co.jp/newsrelease/2009/0130.html

But there is no other news. They haven't disappeared, they just aren't ready yet either.

 

[nitromullet]

Originally posted by: alyarb
ELSA makes backplanes with a lucid chip for GPGPU HPCs.

http://www.elsa-jp.co.jp/newsrelease/2009/0130.html

But there is no other news. They haven't disappeared, they just aren't ready yet either.

That would be awesome. A freestanding Lucid box, with it's own PSU that you could attach to any PC (with any cpu/chipset) to turn it into a multi-gpu powerhouse.

 

[Denithor]

To me the really interesting factor with Hydra was you could use different generation GPUs together and still see impressive scaling. So your old video card would no longer be completely useless as soon as you upgraded - you could use both until your next upgrade, at which point the oldest card (truly obsolete by that time, most likely) would be dropped.

 

[Kakkoii]

Well a system like Hydra needs to go through an EPIC amount of debugging and system compatibility testing. Plus they need to optimize it to the best they can so they can push out a superior product, not just an slightly improved SLI/XFire. A lot of the time most investors don't understand how great a technology is (due to being mainly broad investors, not tech enthusiasts) and thus such technology can fail due to poor investment. Lucky for Lucid that Intel invested in them.

Originally posted by: Denithor
To me the really interesting factor with Hydra was you could use different generation GPUs together and still see impressive scaling. So your old video card would no longer be completely useless as soon as you upgraded - you could use both until your next upgrade, at which point the oldest card (truly obsolete by that time, most likely) would be dropped.

Yeah, imagine let's say a large PCB of PCI-E 2.0 slots and Hydra tech that connects through 2 or 3 SATA cables to your main rig. You could have a whole separate tower of GPU's you've accumulated over time, all working together to crunch through games and work without a sweat. Would be awesome, sorta like your own GPU Server rig.

 

[aka1nas]

Originally posted by: Denithor
To me the really interesting factor with Hydra was you could use different generation GPUs together and still see impressive scaling. So your old video card would no longer be completely useless as soon as you upgraded - you could use both until your next upgrade, at which point the oldest card (truly obsolete by that time, most likely) would be dropped.

That was the part that was truly BS. You'll notice that the one announced/shipping ELSA product doesn't support that functionality.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: aka1nas

Originally posted by: Denithor
To me the really interesting factor with Hydra was you could use different generation GPUs together and still see impressive scaling. So your old video card would no longer be completely useless as soon as you upgraded - you could use both until your next upgrade, at which point the oldest card (truly obsolete by that time, most likely) would be dropped.

That was the part that was truly BS. You'll notice that the one announced/shipping ELSA product doesn't support that functionality.

You strike me as being a tad skeptical at the prospects of a dozen engineers surreptitiously stumbling upon THE perfect scaling approach which simultaneously somehow managed to elude literally thousands of engineers working on the exact same technology bottleneck at ATI and Nvidia...your lack of faith sickens me infidel...guards! remove him!

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Originally posted by: aka1nas

Originally posted by: Denithor
To me the really interesting factor with Hydra was you could use different generation GPUs together and still see impressive scaling. So your old video card would no longer be completely useless as soon as you upgraded - you could use both until your next upgrade, at which point the oldest card (truly obsolete by that time, most likely) would be dropped.

That was the part that was truly BS. You'll notice that the one announced/shipping ELSA product doesn't support that functionality.

You strike me as being a tad skeptical at the prospects of a dozen engineers surreptitiously stumbling upon THE perfect scaling approach which simultaneously somehow managed to elude literally thousands of engineers working on the exact same technology bottleneck at ATI and Nvidia...your lack of faith sickens me infidel...guards! remove him!

Hey, all it takes is one dude with a bright idea.

 

[Sheninat0r]

Vaporware, pure and simple - quickly approaching DNF hype level, I'd say. While everyone would LOVE to see a 100% scaling multi-GPU solution with any two cards put together, it's never going to happen - as IDC said, how do you think it's possible for this random startup to suddenly best SLi and Crossfire scaling, when SLi and Crossfire have been around for longer and have had much much more work put into them?

 

[seanp789]

Originally posted by: Sheninat0r
Vaporware, pure and simple - quickly approaching DNF hype level, I'd say. While everyone would LOVE to see a 100% scaling multi-GPU solution with any two cards put together, it's never going to happen - as IDC said, how do you think it's possible for this random startup to suddenly best SLi and Crossfire scaling, when SLi and Crossfire have been around for longer and have had much much more work put into them?

Innovation happens all the time at big and small companies alike. Lucid has proposed a unique approach to multi gpu rendering. The company even had a working demo. That said, they are still a start up business and there are challenges that have nothing to with the actually product. Board partners, distribution channels, marketing, regulatory requirements, etc... There is a big gap between a proof of concept and a retail product. It may just be taking longer than they expected especially considering its the middle of a recession.

I'm still skeptical of their 100% scaling claim

 

[poohbear]

Originally posted by: Denithor
To me the really interesting factor with Hydra was you could use different generation GPUs together and still see impressive scaling. So your old video card would no longer be completely useless as soon as you upgraded - you could use both until your next upgrade, at which point the oldest card (truly obsolete by that time, most likely) would be dropped.

yea that's another feature i was dying for, 100% scaling might be hard to swallow, but if i could run my 8800gt w/ a super cheap 9600gt and get, say, 30% increase in fps that would be MUCH cheaper than the 30% increase a new gtx260 would provide. i also hope i wouldnt be restricted by Nvidia/AMD selection for my SLI/Crossfire mobo, since i can buy either one.

guess we'll hafta wait and see.

 

[BFG10K]

It wasn't just the 100% scaling, it was the fact that they were claiming it was 100% transparent to the API and games, and operated at the hardware level. A ?magic box? if you will, that magically scaled everything automatically without issue.

Essentially they were promising the silver bullet of multi-GPU, and I find that quite hard to swallow.

 

[shangshang]

Have the wheels of the Hydra bandwagon begun to fall off???? I think they have money problem.

 

[geoffry]

I stumbled upon this on PCPer:

http://www.pcper.com/comments.php?nid=7372

The first use of the chip with some speculation from the PCPer writer.

 

[Schmide]

Originally posted by: soccerballtux
Xfire scales better than SLI....?

I can only get one instance of xFire to work. It does scale to full screen though. :laugh:

 

[KingstonU]

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Originally posted by: aka1nas

Originally posted by: Denithor
To me the really interesting factor with Hydra was you could use different generation GPUs together and still see impressive scaling. So your old video card would no longer be completely useless as soon as you upgraded - you could use both until your next upgrade, at which point the oldest card (truly obsolete by that time, most likely) would be dropped.

That was the part that was truly BS. You'll notice that the one announced/shipping ELSA product doesn't support that functionality.

You strike me as being a tad skeptical at the prospects of a dozen engineers surreptitiously stumbling upon THE perfect scaling approach which simultaneously somehow managed to elude literally thousands of engineers working on the exact same technology bottleneck at ATI and Nvidia...your lack of faith sickens me infidel...guards! remove him!

It took all my strength to not crack up at work when I read this. :laugh: :beer:

 

[sankhya]

a 100% scalling multi gpu system is impossible as some of the gpu processing power

is lost in the interfacing and load sharing

even assuming this chip is a wonder chip

it can at max scale 80%


but one must say that the ability to mix 2 gpus of different types and make then perform
is a wonder indeed

 

[Fox5]

Originally posted by: Sheninat0r
Vaporware, pure and simple - quickly approaching DNF hype level, I'd say. While everyone would LOVE to see a 100% scaling multi-GPU solution with any two cards put together, it's never going to happen - as IDC said, how do you think it's possible for this random startup to suddenly best SLi and Crossfire scaling, when SLi and Crossfire have been around for longer and have had much much more work put into them?

The limits of SLI and Crossfire are simply going to be bandwidth and latency. If their solution could provide better bandwidth and latency than using the pci-express bus alone, they've got a win.

Crossfire and SLI already scale near 100% in some games though, but I can't see the hydra chip working better without driver support.

 

[nemesismk2]

Originally posted by: shangshang
Have the wheels of the Hydra bandwagon begun to fall off???? I think they have money problem.

That is what I heard too