We were first introduced to NVIDIA's 12nm Volta GV100 GPU architecture back in early May 2017 when the Tesla V100 Accelerator debuted . NVIDIA later extended its GV100 GPU to the Titan V (you can read the HotHardware review here ), which is aimed at professional and academic deep learning applications. Now, NVIDIA is ready to unleash the Quadro GV100, which brings Volta GPU architecture to the company's lineup of professional graphics cards.

NVIDIA is really throwing down the hammer with the Quadro GV100, as the graphics card has 32GB of HBM2 onboard, which is scalable to a 64GB addressable frame buffer when using two-way NVLink interconnect technology (basically slapping two GPUs together). On the performance front, NVIDIA says that the Quadro GV100 is good for 7.4 teraflops of double-precision performance or 14.8 teraflops of single-precision performance. When it comes to deep learning tasks, that figure climbs to a bodacious 118.5 teraflops.

Developers will be able to leverage the Quadro GV100 with NVIDIA RTX Technology, which aims to bring real-time ray tracing to the mainstream market. Ray tracing is seen as the next step beyond traditional rasterization that is used in today's games and 3D applications. Using technologies like NVIDIA RTX and DirectX RayTracing, you'll be floored by photorealistic scenes with properly cast shadows, coloring, and reflections. Explosion and smoke effects in games will also take on a more realistic look with ray tracing.

Unfortunately, ray tracing is incredibly resource intensive, which is why GPU hardware hasn't been able to deliver performance that's acceptable for developers and gamers. However, the Volta GPU architecture is finally delivering enough sheer processing power to make real-time ray tracing a reality. In fact, NVIDIA claims that with artificial intelligence elements enabled, Quadro GV100 delivers a 10x to 100x uplift in ray tracing performance compared to modern CPUs.

To see the cinematic-quality visuals possible with real-time ray tracing, take a look at this demo produced by Epic Games and ILMxLab using the Unreal Engine:



Update, 3/27/2018 - 6:11PM - Here, in a similar demo to last week's preview at Game Developer's conference, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang and his assistant explain the technologies behind real-time ray tracing in Epic's Unreal Engine Star Wars demo...

For another example, we suggest that you also take a look at the Futuremark DirectX Raytracing tech demo:

"NVIDIA has reinvented the workstation by taking ray-tracing technology optimized for our Volta architecture, and marrying it with the highest-performance hardware ever put in a workstation," said Bob Pette, NVIDIA VP of Professional Visualization. "Artists and designers can simulate and interact with their creations in ways never before possible, which will fundamentally change workflows across many industries."

Businesses that are looking to incorporate the Quadro GV100 into their workstation will be glad to know that it is available now from NVIDIA.com. In addition, NVIDIA's OEM partners -- including Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo -- will begin shipping workstation systems with Quadro GV100 in April.