I am testing Houdini 19 XPU render with the bar scene, it took 7M 44S to render with XPU on an 8cores AMD and a GTX 1650 with 4GB of VRAM, some bits don't seem to work and I get an Optix error, but it's darn fast, CPU 1H 23M 40S, but much cleaner render, but still, XPU is very promising indeed!

I made a second test and I am sharing the scene file on this post:
https://www.sidefx.com/forum/topic/81348/#post-350453 [www.sidefx.com]

This chart shows what is in Karma CPU and Karma XPU compared to Mantra:

https://www.sidefx.com/faq/question/karma-vs-mantra/ [www.sidefx.com]

rmagee
This chart shows what is in Karma CPU and Karma XPU compared to Mantra:

https://www.sidefx.com/faq/question/karma-vs-mantra/ [www.sidefx.com]

Thanks a bunch, so far I am loving it, R&D did a great job for sure!

rmagee
This chart shows what is in Karma CPU and Karma XPU compared to Mantra:

https://www.sidefx.com/faq/question/karma-vs-mantra/ [www.sidefx.com]

It seems Karma doesn't support nested dielectrics in H19, is it planned to support it eventually? the table doesn't specify...

Nice, thanks for sharing. I wonder what are the minimum specs for XPU and Karma. For Renderman I know min spec for your GPU is at least 12GB or VRAM.

SIgor420
Nice, thanks for sharing. I wonder what are the minimum specs for XPU and Karma. For Renderman I know min spec for your GPU is at least 12GB or VRAM.

No requirements specific to XPU it seems, only one GPU at the moment, might change in the future!
https://www.sidefx.com/Support/system-requirements/ [www.sidefx.com]

Since they only support Nvidia, I wonder if they'll ever support NVLINK?

SIgor420
Nice, thanks for sharing. I wonder what are the minimum specs for XPU and Karma. For Renderman I know min spec for your GPU is at least 12GB or VRAM.

There isn't really a set minimum VRAM, it depends on the size of the scene. More VRAM means being able to render more complex scenes with more, larger textures.

GCharb
only one GPU at the moment, might change in the future!
https://www.sidefx.com/Support/system-requirements/ [www.sidefx.com]

From the system requirements page:
GPU acceleration currently does NOT make use of multiple OpenCL devices (i.e. two or more graphics cards) but this may change at a future date. An exception to this is Karma XPU, which is currently in Alpha.

GCharb
Since they only support Nvidia, I wonder if they'll ever support NVLINK?

XPU uses Optix, an Nvidia library. Perhaps Mark can speak to Nvlink support.

jsmack

GCharb
Since they only support Nvidia, I wonder if they'll ever support NVLINK?

XPU uses Optix, an Nvidia library. Perhaps Mark can speak to Nvlink support.

I don't think we've tried Nvlink, but we have tried multiple GPUs. In fact, one sharp eyed person noticed that in this Entagma video, it looks like there are 4 GPUs working with alongside the CPU to render the image: https://youtu.be/tI4zqTezniI?t=602 [youtu.be] (top right corner of the Karma render).

mark
I don't think we've tried Nvlink, but we have tried multiple GPUs. In fact, one sharp eyed person noticed that in this Entagma video, it looks like there are 4 GPUs working with alongside the CPU to render the image: https://youtu.be/tI4zqTezniI?t=602 [youtu.be] (top right corner of the Karma render).

Sharp eyed indeed, this is very cool, now if GPU prices could come down, that would be perfect timing, thanks for the info!

A second test, this time I build a simple Solaris scene with MaterialX shaders, I reduced the scan model to 280k polygons, this time I get no OptiX error, still rendered on an AMD 8-core CPU and a GTX 1650 GPU with 4 GB of VRAM, I used no denoise, I would love to know how fast this renders under XPU compared to CPU only, but with a decent CPU/GPU combo!

I rendered to mplay at 1280 X 720 pixels
XPU: 10:49
CPU: 55:07

You can download the full scene directory below:

Where is the rhino model coming from? I`d like to test on my machine, AMD Ryzen 5950X and RTX 3080 TI

I found it on the net and kind of matched it up.

Render times in my case :

XPU: 1M 25S

Sygnum
Where is the rhino model coming from? I`d like to test on my machine, AMD Ryzen 5950X and RTX 3080 TI

Look at my post, I shared the full scene!

GCharb

Sygnum
Where is the rhino model coming from? I`d like to test on my machine, AMD Ryzen 5950X and RTX 3080 TI

Look at my post, I shared the full scene!

Yeah, I opened that but the rhino file loader pointed to an external file and doesn't show up, only the backdrop thing.

It's pointing to $JOB/geo/rhino.geo but should to $HIP/geo/rhino.bgeo

1280x720
XPU: 6m 14s
GPU: Nvidia 2060 super

Faitel
It's pointing to $JOB/geo/rhino.geo but should to $HIP/geo/rhino.bgeo

I fixed the file, thanks for pointing it out!

01:24 XPU
(01:07) second try
Threadripper 3995wx
Titan RTX
2080 Ti RTX

beautiful thing to see all threads on all devices maxed out