Radeon Pro SSG: Dramatically Improves Work Speed, Productivity, and Efficiency Compared to Previous Versions

AMD unveiled the Radeon™ Pro SSG, a graphics solution for large-scale dataset applications, at SIGGRAPH 2016 in Anaheim, California.

This solution features Radeon™ Solid State Graphics (SSG), which boasts superior performance compared to existing GPU memory, and based on this, it provides next-level graphics performance. AMD announced that it plans to conduct trial sales of the developer kit version of the Radeon Pro SSG solution first.

The newly released Radeon Pro SSG is a high-performance solution suitable for fields that utilize large-scale data, such as ▲8K-level video real-time post-production ▲high-resolution rendering ▲VR content creation ▲resource exploration such as oil and gas ▲computer engineering ▲radiology and life sciences.

Typically, high-level tasks like content creation and engineering require massive data processing capabilities that exceed the GPU memory capacity of conventional graphics cards. Therefore, in the past, each piece of data had to be processed individually and then integrated into software. This process also resulted in additional data in system memory, exacerbating delays. AMD expects that its Radeon Pro SSG solution, equipped with terabytes of memory, will not only eliminate this lag but also dramatically improve user productivity.

“The lack of terabyte-scale data processing capabilities is currently the single biggest obstacle to advancing GPU computing applications,” said Raja Koduri, vice president and chief architect of the Radeon Technologies Group at AMD. “The Radeon Pro SSG will not only accelerate applications that rely on large amounts of data, but also provide a new application operating environment based on the data persistence inherent in non-volatile memory. This will be a new opportunity for the advancement of graphics and computing applications.”

Previously, when GPU memory was unable to process information, it would request processing from the CPU, which would then search for the necessary content from CPU memory or the hard drive. In these cases, overhead that caused GPU performance degradation was inevitable. However, the Radeon Pro SSG is equipped with new GPU technology that expands the frame buffer capacity to 1 terabyte, enabling not only GPU-only support but also the ability to find and connect large amounts of data via a dedicated PCIe® bus. This means that when performing GPU operations, the GPU frame buffer is searched first, and only when the data does not exist in the frame buffer is it connected to the CPU.

In fact, AMD's demonstration of its Radeon Pro SSG solution demonstrated that these unique product advantages lead to remarkable performance improvements. In a demonstration of 8K uncompressed video playback using a Radeon Pro SSG-based system, timeline movement speeds dramatically increased from 17 frames per second to over 90 frames per second. This is a high-definition content processing capability that is more than five times better than before, and AMD expects that this performance improvement will significantly improve the work environment, productivity, and efficiency of video content creators in the future.

“The Radeon Pro SSG is a major step forward for AMD, which has long pursued memory technology innovation,” said Patrick Moorhead, founder and principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy. “The expansion of graphics card memory accelerates tasks that require large amounts of data, while also ensuring high-resolution processing capabilities and high task accuracy. This is a historic achievement that will mark a turning point in the advancement of graphics and computing applications.”