ATI CrossFire Technology White Paper

In 2001, ATI began working with Evans & Sutherland to collaborate on multi-GPU workstation products. The
result was the powerful simFUSION ® image generator, which uses up to 4 ATI GPUs per board. Versions built
using the Radeon® 9700 and 9800 series GPUs feature ATI’s exclusive Supertiling and Super AA technologies,
and can support up to 24-sample anti-aliasing at extremely high resolutions in real time.
For even more demanding applications, multiple simFUSION image generators can be linked together. The
Evans & Sutherland RenderBeast ® visualization system uses up to 16 simFUSION boards in parallel, for a total
of 64 GPUs. The complete system is capable of rendering up to 768 billion pixels per second and supporting up
to 384-sample anti-aliasing. This technology has proven ideal for ultra-high fidelity military simulators,
commercial flight simulators, planetariums, automotive design visualization, and other industrial applications.
Multi-GPU Workstation products developed by Evans & Sutherland.
Left: SimFUSION ® 6000q board with quad Radeon 9800 GPUs.
Right: RenderBeast ® visualization system with 64 parallel Radeon GPUs.
While these multi-GPU technologies were revolutionary, limitations in supporting platform technology have kept
them from being able to deliver their full benefits to a wide range of PC users. To make that a reality, a fast,
cost-effective, bi-directional interface between PC components was needed. In 2004, the introduction of the PCI
Express® platform fulfilled this requirement, and enabled a new generation of highly efficient multi-GPU
technology for PCs.
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