Nvidia Quadro

History

The Quadro line of GPU cards emerged in an effort at market segmentation by Nvidia. In introducing Quadro, Nvidia was able to charge a premium for essentially the same graphics hardware in professional markets, and direct resources to properly serve the needs of those markets. To differentiate their offerings, Nvidia used driver software and firmware to selectively enable features vital to segments of the workstation market; e.g., high performance anti-aliased lines and two-sided lighting were reserved for the Quadro product. In addition, improved support through a certified driver program was put in place. These features were of little value in the gaming markets that Nvidia's products already sold to, but prevented high end customers from using the less expensive products.

There are parallels between the market segmentation used to sell the Quadro line of products to workstation (DCC) markets and the Tesla line of products to engineering and HPC markets.

In a settlement of a patent infringement lawsuit between SGI and Nvidia, SGI acquired rights to speed binned Nvidia graphics chips which they shipped under the VPro product label. These designs were completely separate from the SGI Odyssey based VPro products initially sold on their IRIX workstations which used a completely different bus. SGI's Nvidia-based VPro line included the VPro V3 (Geforce 256), VPro VR3 (Quadro), VPro V7 (Quadro2 MXR), and VPro VR7 (Quadro2 Pro).

Quadro SDI

Actual extra Cards only for Quadro 4000 Cards and higher

SDI Capture:

SDI Output:

Quadro Plex

Quadro Plex consists of a line of external servers for rendering videos. A Quadro Plex contains multiple Quadro FX video cards. A client computer connects to Quadro Plex (using PCI Express ×8 or ×16 interface card with interconnect cable) to initiate rendering. More Data in Nvidia Tesla Cards

Quadro SLI and SYNC

Scalable Link Interface SLI is the next generation of Plex. SLI can improve Frame Rendering, FSAA ,.

Quadro SLI support Mosaic for 2 Cards and 8 Monitors.

With Quadro SYNC Card support of max. 16 Monitors (4 per Card) possible.

Most Cards have SLI-Bridge-Slot for 2, 3 or 4 cards on one main board.

Also acceleration of Science calculations is possible with CUDA and OpenCL.

NVIDIA has 4 types of SLI bridges:

Standard Bridge (400 MHz Pixel Clock and 1GB/s bandwidth)

LED Bridge (540 MHz Pixel Clock)

High-Bandwidth Bridge (650 MHz Pixel Clock)

PCIe-Lanes only reserved for SLI

More see SLI.

Quadro VCA

Nvidia shows his own Solution of SLI and Supercomputing: Visual Computing Appliance with 8 GPUs. Nvidia IRAY, Nvidia V-RAY and Nvidia OPTIX accelerate Raytracing for Maya, 3DS Max, Cinema4D, Rhinoceros and others. All Software with CUDA or OpenCL like ANSYS, NASTRAN, ABAQUS, OpenFoam can use VCA with great advantages.

Actual available is DGX-1 with 8 GP100 Cards.

More Data in Nvidia Tesla Cards

GeForce

Many of these cards use the same core as the game- and action-oriented GeForce video cards by Nvidia. Those cards that are identical to the desktop cards can be software modified to identify themselves as the equivalent Quadro cards and this allows optimized drivers intended for the Quadro cards to be installed on the system. While this may not offer all of the performance of the equivalent Quadro card, it can improve performance in certain applications, but may require installing the MAXtreme driver for comparable speed.

The performance difference comes in the firmware controlling the card. Given the importance of speed in a game, a system used for gaming can shut down textures, shading, or rendering after only approximating a final output—in order to keep the overall frame rate high. The algorithms on a CAD-oriented card tend rather to complete all rendering operations, even if that introduces delays or variations in the timing, prioritising accuracy and rendering quality over speed.

Software

With Caps Viewer (1.31.1 in Nov. 2016) all Windows Users can see data of the graphic Card, the installed Driver and can test some Features. GPU-Z reads also data of the graphic cards and the user can send some data for better database.

Quadro Drivers

Curie-Architecture Last drivers see Driver Portal of NVIDIA

Tesla-Architecture (G80+, GT2xx) in Legacy Mode Quadro Driver 340+: OpenGL 3.3, OpenCL 1.1, DirectX 10.0/10.1,

Fermi (GFxxx): OpenCL 1.1, OpenGL 4.5, some OpenGL 2016 Features with Quadro Driver 375+

Kepler (GKxxx): OpenCL 1.2, OpenGL 4.5, Vulkan 1.0 with Quadro Driver 375+

Maxwell (GMxxx): OpenCL 1.2, OpenGL 4.5, Vulkan 1.0 with Quadro Driver 375+

Pascal (GPxxx): Maxwell Features + Full new OpenGL 2016 Features with Quadro driver 375+

OpenCL 2.0 Evaluation support with Driver 378.66 (Pascal, Maxwell, Kepler)

CUDA

Tesla Architecture and Later

Supported CUDA Level of GPU and Card. See direct also Nvidia:

CUDA SDK 6.5: Last Version with support for Tesla-Architecture with Compute Capability 1.x

CUDA SDK 7.5 support for Compute Capability 2.0 - 5.x (Fermi, Kepler, Maxwell)

CUDA SDK 8.0 support for Compute Capability 2.0 - 6.x (Fermi, Kepler, Maxwell, Pascal)

Next CUDA SDK Version no support for Fermi (2.x)

For own Card Test see CUDA-Z Tool

Quadro FX (without CUDA and OpenCL)

Architecture Rankine, Curie

Rankine (NV3x): DirectX 9.0a, Shader Model 2.0a, OpenGL 2.1

Curie (NV4x, G7x): DirectX 9.0c, Shader Model 3.0, OpenGL 2.1

Quadro FX (with CUDA and OpenCL)

Architecture Tesla (G80+, GT2xx) with OpenGL 3.3 and OpenCL 1.1

Tesla (G80+): DirectX 10, Shader Model 4.0, only Single Precision (FP32) available for CUDA and OpenCL

Tesla 2 (GT2xx): DirectX 10.1, Shader Model 4.1, Single Precision (FP32) available for CUDA and OpenCL (Double Precision (FP64) available for CUDA and OpenCL only for GT200 with Cuda Level 1.3 and higher)

Quadro

Architecture Fermi (GFxxx), Kepler (GKxxx), Maxwell (GMxxx), Pascal (GPxxx), (except Quadro 400 with Tesla 2)

All Cards with Display Port 1.1+ can support 10bit per Channel for OpenGL (HDR for Graphics Professional (Adobe Photoshop and more))

Vulkan 1.0 and OpenCL 1.2 available with Driver 370+ for Kepler, Maxwell, Pascal

All can do Double Precision with Compute Capability 1.3 and higher (see CUDA)

¹ Nvidia Quadro 342.01 WHQL: support of OpenGL 3.3 and OpenCL 1.1 for legacy Tesla microarchitecture Quadros.

² Nvidia Quadro 376.84 WHQL: support of OpenGL 4.5, OpenCL 1.1 for Fermi, OpenCL 1.2 for Kepler, Maxwell & Pascal.

³ OpenCL 1.1 is available for Tesla-Chips, OpenCL 1.0 for some Cards with G8x, G9x and GT200 by MAC OS X

Desktop AGP

Architecture Celsius (NV1x): DirectX 7, OpenGL 1.2 (1.3)

Architecture Kelvin (NV2x): DirectX 8 (8.1), OpenGL 1.3 (1.5), Pixel Shader 1.1 (1.3)

Architecture Rankine (NV3x): DirectX 9.0a , OpenGL 1.5 (2.1), Shader Model 2.0a

Architecture Curie (NV4x): DirectX 9.0c, OpenGL 2.1, Shader Model 3.0

Desktop PCI

Architecture Rankine (NV3x): DirectX 9.0a , OpenGL 1.5 (2.1), Shader Model 2.0a

For business NVS

The Nvidia Quadro NVS graphics processing units (GPUs) provide business graphics solutions for manufacturers of small, medium, and enterprise-level business workstations. The Nvidia Quadro NVS desktop solutions enable multi-display graphics for businesses such as financial traders.

Architecture Celsius (NV1x): DirectX 7, OpenGL 1.2 (1.3)

Architecture Kelvin (NV2x): DirectX 8 (8.1), OpenGL 1.3 (1.5), Pixel Shader 1.1 (1.3)

Architecture Rankine (NV3x): DirectX 9.0a , OpenGL 1.5 (2.1), Shader Model 2.0a

Architecture Curie (NV4x): DirectX 9.0c, OpenGL 2.1, Shader Model 3.0

Architecture Tesla (G80+): DirectX 10.0, OpenGL 3.3, Shader Model 4.0, CUDA 1.0 or 1.1, OpenCL 1.1

Architecture Tesla 2 (GT2xx): DirectX 10.1, OpenGL 3.3, Shader Model 4.1, CUDA 1.2 or 1.3, OpenCL 1.1

Architecture Fermi (GFxxx): DirectX 11.0, OpenGL 4.5, Shader Model 5.0, CUDA 2.x, OpenCL 1.1

Architecture Kepler (GKxxx): DirectX 11.2, OpenGL 4.5, Shader Model 5.0, CUDA 3.x, OpenCL 1.2

Architecture Maxwell 1 (GM1xx): DirectX 12.0, OpenGL 4.5, Shader Model 5.0, CUDA 5.0, OpenCL 1.2

Quadro FX M

Architecture Rankine (NV3x), Curie (NV4x, G7x) and Tesla (G80+, GT2xx)

Config Core Rankine, Curie: Vertex Shader : Pixel Shader : TMUs : ROPs Render Config Core Tesla: Shading Units: TMU : ROPs : SM

Quadro M

Architecture Fermi, Kepler, Maxwell, Pascal in 1st quarter 2017

All can do Double Precision with compute Capability 1.3 and higher

Render Config Core Fermi: Shading Units : TMUs : ROPs : SM

Render Config Core Kepler: Shading Units: TMU : ROPs : SMX

Quadro NVS M

Architecture Curie (NV4x, G7x): DirectX 9.0c, OpenGL 2.1, Shader Model 3.0

Architecture Tesla (G80+): DirectX 10.0, OpenGL 3.3, Shader Model 4.0, CUDA 1.0 or 1.1, OpenCL 1.1

Architecture Tesla 2 (GT2xx): DirectX 10.1, OpenGL 3.3, Shader Model 4.1, CUDA 1.2 or 1.3, OpenCL 1.1

Architecture Fermi (GFxxx): DirectX 11.0, OpenGL 4.5, Shader Model 5.0, CUDA 2.x, OpenCL 1.1

Architecture Kepler (GKxxx): DirectX 11.2, OpenGL 4.5, Shader Model 5.0, CUDA 3.x, OpenCL 1.2

Architecture Maxwell 1 (GM1xx): DirectX 12.0, OpenGL 4.5, Shader Model 5.0, CUDA 5.0, OpenCL 1.2