NVIDIA SLI Multi-GPU Technology

NVIDIA has been rather secretive regarding their SLI capability that has been built into NV40 GPU ever since GeForce 6800 was launched and has waited for the right moment to announce this technology. VR-Zone has the opportunity to talk to David Kirk, NVIDIA’s Chief Scientist to know more about the SLI as well.

When we first spotted the
NV45 card over
at Computex, no one has a clue about the special connector at the top of the
card. Well the answer is finally unveiled today and that special connector which
is none other than the SLI (Scalable Link Interface) connector. NVIDIA has been
rather secretive regarding their SLI capability that has been built into NV40
GPU ever since GeForce 6800 was launched and has waited for the right moment to
announce this technology. We can say that Alienware’s demonstration of their
Video-Array enabled ALX systems in E3 this May has provided a glimpse of what
NVIDIA SLI Multi-GPU technology can offer, though they are somewhat different.

It seems like we are back in the good old 3Dfx days where their
Voodoo 2 cards offer support for SLI (Scan Line Interleave) with two PCI Voodoo
2 cards sharing the graphics workload and thereby boosting performance.
Definitely, hardcore gamers that time are out to get the SLI Voodoo 2 cards to
get the fastest frame rates out of their Quake II game.

We have a good opportunity to talk to David Kirk, NVIDIA’s Chief
Scientist where he shared with us the future directions of NVIDIA and of course
SLI technology when he visited NVIDIA Asia Pacific office here in Singapore last
week.