Israeli start-up company Lucid Logix has outlined a breakthrough in parallel graphics technology that allows for a mix and match of any graphics cards, no matter the GPU, and still have a performance scaling beyond the current multi-GPU technologies from ATI and NVIDIA. The solution is called Hydra, the beast with many heads, and will work with any CPU or chipset. It combines a system-on-a-chip (SoC) with exclusive software that balances the workload among the graphics processors.
“We’re currently focusing our HYDRA engine on improving everyday PC performance, but our vision is to bring more scalability, flexibility and power to all visual processing markets including graphics professionals, power gamers, design/engineering professionals and others,” says Offir Remez, Lucid co-founder and president. “With strong venture backing, a superior patent portfolio and experienced leaders in all aspects of semiconductor and 3D computing graphics, we’re a nimble team passionate about working with our partners to realize our vision of universally amazing graphics for all.”
Lucid says it is working with leading OEMs, ODMs and PC builders to bring the Hydra technology to the market in Q1 2009. The Hydra engine requires no modification of existing software and already supports DirectX, alas there is no mention of OpenGL. The performance scaling is supposed to be in the range of 100% and more in optimal situations. The company described its Hydra creation as a “real-time distributed processing engine”.
Lucid is backed by leading venture capitalists Giza Venture Capital, Genesis Partners and Intel Capital.
