Fusion-io Unveils High-Capacity ioFX for Workstations

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Heading into the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) 2013 trade show this week, Fusion-io (FIO) announced that the ioFX workstation acceleration platform is now available with 1.6 TB of capacity, in addition to the original 420 GB form factor. The high capacity ioFX is ideal for video editing and computer assisted design (CAD),

"Digital production is undergoing a resolution revolution as production moves to 4K and beyond, while production budgets and deadlines continue to tighten," said Vincent Brisebois, Fusion-io Director of Visual Computing.  "To overcome these opposing forces, the Fusion ioFX can help digital artists efficiently deliver creative work faster, even when faced with the most demanding production requirements. Fusion-io is proud to collaborate with industry leading software developers and hardware companies to deliver breakthrough acceleration for the tools used by professional artists worldwide."

Targeted at artists who compose, edit, playback and finish digital content, the ioFX is also ideal for encoding, transcoding, particle simulations and working with large amounts of cached data. The 1.6 TB ioFX connects via PCI Express, and significantly improves workstation application performance.  Fusion-io has worked closely with the industry’s leading entertainment hardware and software providers to optimize the ioFX for visual effects production.

"NVIDIA GPUs provide powerful performance to professional workstations, which is further boosted with the ioFX high speed memory platform," said Greg Estes, industry executive, media and entertainment, NVIDIA. "ioFX dramatically increases the amount of high-resolution content that can be sent to NVIDIA Quadro graphics boards for processing at extremely high speeds, enabling better artist interactivity and, ultimately, better client satisfaction for our customers."

"From accelerating 3D painting in MARI, to reviewing shots in HIERO, to compositing in NUKE, Fusion ioFX adds powerful acceleration that can significantly enhance our applications,” said Bruno Nicoletti, Head of Technology and Founder at The Foundry. “All of our software is designed to remove as many technical barriers from production as possible, and Fusion-io acceleration takes that one step further with the ioFX integrated into artist workstations. As the amount of data artists work with in today’s highresolution formats continues to increase, the ioFX can help creatives spendmore time manipulating their work with much more interactivity than before.”

Fusion ioMemory products such as the ioFX also include Fusion ioSphere remote monitoring and management software, allowing IT teams to monitor and manage all Fusion-io solutions deployed throughout a studio from a single interface.  The 1.6 TB Fusion ioFX will be available in summer 2013, and will be on display at NAB 2013, at a number of leading Fusion-io software and hardware Technology Alliance Program member booths.

HP Z Workstations feature Fusion ioFX

Fusion-io also announced that it is collaborating with global workstation leader HP to integrate the Fusion ioFX into the award-winning HP Z820, Z620 and Z420 Workstations. Additionally, professionals interested in adding the Fusion ioFX to their current HP Workstation can purchase the ioFX as a custom integration component.   The new solution will integrate the Fusion ioFX into the powerful HP Z Workstations with Intel Xeon processors. The architecture is designed to deliver an industry-leading platform for digital content creation applications by moving beyond the performance limitations and bottlenecks of traditional systems.

"I consider HP one of the best engineering companies in the world, so I’m thrilled to see HP and Fusion-io working together to advance workstation computing architectures," said Steve Wozniak, Fusion-io Chief Scientist. "The Fusion ioFX brings the intelligence of the Fusion-io approach to HP’s incredible workstations, adding even more powerful application performance to the precision engineering HP is known for around the world."

"HP is the workstation industry leader, and our customers demand to be the first to get cutting edge solutions that deliver performance, reliability and innovation," said Jeff Wood, vice president of product management, Commercial Solutions Business Unit, HP. "Providing the Fusion ioFX in our high-end HP Z Workstations will offer customers improved performance to tackle their most challenging projects faster."