Introducing the AMD FirePro(TM) S7100X, the Industry's First and Only Hardware-Virtualized GPU for Blade Servers

SUNNYVALE, CA--(Marketwired - May 25, 2016) - AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) today announced AMD Multiuser GPU (MxGPU) for blade servers, AMD FirePro™ S7100X GPU. AMD MxGPU is the industry's first and only hardware-virtualized GPU compliant with the SR-IOV (Single Root I/O Virtualization) PCIe® virtualization standard. The AMD FirePro S7100X GPU is a simple, secure solution for graphics virtualization providing workstation-class experience for up to 16 users that is practically indistinguishable from a native desktop experience. Using AMD Multiuser GPU (MxGPU) technology, the AMD FirePro™ S7100X GPU harnesses silicon expressly designed for graphics virtualization and conforming with the virtualization industry standard, SR-IOV to allow easy integration into existing hypervisor ecosystems. The AMD FirePro™ S7100X GPU is the newest addition to the AMD line of graphics virtualization products, designed in an ultra-compact form factor with a TGP of just 100W that makes it ideal for blade server deployments. Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is the first to offer the AMD FirePro S7100X GPU in HPE ProLiant WS460c Gen9 Graphics Server Blades available now.

The industry's first hardware-virtualized GPU for blade servers
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) offers a number of benefits associated with security, manageability, and remote access while helping to lower total cost of ownership (TCO). Users who require GPUs for 3D and GPU compute applications need a thoughtful solution such as VDI to realize these benefits. Competing GPU virtualization technologies adapt a standard GPU architecture to virtualize via software in the hypervisor, which can result in inconsistent performance.

Rather than repurposing existing GPUs and adding a software layer to accommodate virtualization requirements, AMD MxGPU harnesses an entirely new class of GPU architecture designed with virtualization capabilities built into the silicon. Compliant with the well-established PCIe virtualization standard SR-IOV specification, AMD MxGPU unburdens the hypervisor from proprietary and complex software implementations, leveraging the existing PCIe device management logic in the hypervisor to manage GPU virtualization. Each virtualized GPU instance appears as a full-featured, native graphical device to the virtual machine's guest operating system, allowing it to be used with certified professional graphics applications and for GPU compute with effectively the same experience as an application run on a native device.