I have been doing interviews with the legends of the CAD,
CAE and PLM industry for a while now. I must admit, I always wanted to
interview someone from hardware sector, especially graphics card! Which helps
CAD, CAM, CAE software to enhance its performance and upgrade user experience.
I've always been curious to know something more about
graphics card technology, to me; it was a great opportunity to interview Mr. Ed
Caracappa, Director of Global Sales & Business Development, Professional
Graphics at AMD. I tried to learn more about him, his company, products for
CAD, AMD’s latest focus, direction and strategies for India. Here is the
interview:
 |
| With Mr. Ed Caracappa, Director AMD |
Ed Caracappa, can you
tell us a bit about yourself and your professional activities?
Well, I am an electrical engineering graduate from
University of Arizona. I started my career as a production engineer with
Motorola. But, soon realized that shop floor job does not interest me much! So,
I switched to sales and marketing job. Before, joining AMD, I had an
opportunity to work with esteemed organizations like NextComputing, LLC, Escape
Studios and BOXX Technologies. I am with AMD since January 2012 and take care
of global sales & business development.
Tell us about your
organization?
Sure, AMD is fortune 500 company, our mission is to deliver the most visually rich and meaningful
digital experiences to every technology user we touch. AMD is the second-largest global supplier of
microprocessors. After acquisition of ATI
Technologies in 2006 company
dominated CPU as well as GPU market worldwide.
Established in 1969, with
it’s headquarter at Sunnyvale, California. At present, we have more than
10,000 employees worldwide. With the long history of innovations, company has
achieved its revenue targets. AMD has record growth of $5.42 billion
for year 2012.
Please tell us about AMD’s latest FirePro
W-series graphics cards and what are its advantages for professional CAD users?
FirePro W-series workstation graphics delivers
incredible performance, superb visual quality and outstanding multidisplay
design experiences to CAD/CAE professionals. We offer mid-range boards for
mainstream CAD applications like AMD FirePro™
W5000, AMD FirePro™
W5000 DVI and AMD FirePro™
W7000.
AMD FirePro™
W8000 and AMD FirePro™
W9000 are dedicated boards for high-end CAD, CAE, FEA and CFD
applications. All W-series cards are single-slot solution that provides smoother
interactivity when working with complex 3D models and allows design engineers
to quickly visualize and render designs.
AMD’s FirePro W-Series is based on the Graphics Core Next
(GCN) architecture and offers
more memory bandwidth, which makes it more than five times faster than
competing solution. W-series is tested and certified for its enhanced 3D
performance capability by
all mainstream CAD/CAE vendors.
What performance advantages with AMD
FirePro graphics cards can be expected by CAD users and why?
Today, the CAD
models are becoming increasingly complex, visually rich and used for further
analysis, and simulation. Many organizations are using CAD models directly for
creating marketing material and presentations. So, using right professional
graphics solution has become very critical to accelerate the functionality of CAD
tools that speeds up 3D rendering and visualization, allows large CAD models to load faster, run simulations in
parallel without impacting the quality of the graphics.
AMD works closely
with all relevant software vendors in the CAx space, and gets graphics hardware
tested for every new release. Our cards are certified for all major CAD tools. Users
achieve 3x graphics
performance increase with SolidWorks 2013 when using the new AMD FirePro
W-series graphics cards.
Recently we had a
collaboration with PTC, we now offer powerful new GPU-accelerated functionality
in PTC Creo Parametric 2.0 that speeds up 3D rendering of transparent surfaces
by up to 900% through the use of “OIT” (order independent transparency) -
an advanced OpenGL programming method.
Similarly, Siemens PLM Femap and AMD FirePro have
become best choice for the engineering and simulation professionals. Use of VBO's (vertex buffer objects) running on the
AMD FirePro W5000 and W7000 graphic cards has resulted in exceptional Femap 11
software performance.
What is AMD Eyefinity technology
and what impact it has on CAD workflow?
It’s a technology that enables user to run up to six
independent and simultaneous displays with a single graphics card. It supports
advance workflows, where CAD users switch between applications including
analysis, simulation and data management. User can see more detail than ever,
increasing his workflow productivity. Can manage multitasking more efficiently,
and view more data, applications, and images at once.
What is your product roadmap for the professional
graphics market?
We have product line that
enhance and accelerate the user experience across PCs, gaming systems, digital
devices, CAD applications and cloud servers.
The AMD Radeon is positioned for the gaming and main stream PC
market. V and W-series are for the professional graphics card market. We also
have partnered with the workstation OEMs, who use our cards for building
professional workstations.
AMD applications are developed using OpenCL (Open Computing Language). OpenCL can natively talk to a large
range of devices and its easy synchronization makes it more flexible. So, we
clearly have the advantage over our competitors when developing a new product
with the open source language.
Tell us about AMD India, do you have design and development
center in India?
India is unique! Lot of
well educated and technically sound people coupled with passion, talent and
potential are easily available. AMD
India plays a significant role in the design of microprocessors, AMD
Family of Accelerated Processing Units (APU) SoCs, graphics and media
solutions.
We have two design centers in India, located in Hyderabad
and Bengaluru. With top-tier engineering talent, state of the art facilities,
and world class management, AMD India has been delivering world-class,
cost-effective System-On-Chips (SOCs), Hardware and Software platforms and high
quality Intellectual Property.
AMD India is also responsible for AMD's sales &
marketing activities in the 'India Region' (comprising of India, Nepal,
Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka), and is focused on expanding our market share in the
rapidly growing PC and graphics market in this region.
AMD India strives to recruit and retain the best talent,
make AMD a great place to work, and be an integral part of the AMD family by
continuing to contribute significantly to AMD's success.
Please share with us the AMD India strategy and
how is your sales network here?
We have very good relationship with global OEMs. We work with them
and offer bundle products for PCs, gaming
systems, digital devices, CAD workstations and cloud servers.
We also work with the local
VARs of CAD vendors, like PTC and SolidWorks Re-sellers across India to fulfill
the requirement of the CAD designers. VARs are the right people who can guide
the CAD users to select the best and certified graphics card as per his requirement. This year we had done 6 road shows in India
and we are overwhelmed with the response our products got from the people
across India.
How are AMD products doing with small and
medium companies in India?
It’s not only the automotive giants like Tata and Mahindra and
Mahindra are our customers In India. We have had many wins especially in the
education, consumer products, medical imagining, defense and R&D segments. Our
client includes reputed companies like BHEL, TACO, DRDO and Godrej.
Small company like Hema Engineering in Pune also uses our graphics
card to enhance and accelerate the functionality of their CAD tools. There are many such small scale engineering
and service providers using our solutions across India.
Any message for DailyCADCAM’s readers?
I’m excited with the growth we had in India for last
two years. Indian mechanical, civil, architectural, medical and film industry
are breaking the new barriers with the high quality products, infrastructure
and services. We
have a deep passion for graphics and visual processing and AMD is eagerly looking
forward to digitize your needs.
So designers, if you face any issue working with the large
CAD models, 3D rendering and visualization, running
simulations, whatever! Do talk to our local channel partners to get the best
possible solution to accelerate you work.
Thank you,
