3D Power to Go

With exploding graphics capabilities, new hyper-powered laptopsgo beyond mere editing.

Dell’s Precision Workstation M50 offers 1.8GHz or 2.0GHz P4-Mprocessors, 5400rpm 40 or 60GB ATA-100 hard disk drive support, abuilt-in FireWire port, and a 15in. UXGA display. "We’ve got acomplete set of ISV certification for the system," says SantoshSirdeshmukh, Dell’s DCC ISV manager and the Precision M50product-marketing manager. The Fujitsu Celsius Mobile H laptop offers asimilar parts list, though without the integrated FireWire port andwith the addition of a wireless keyboard..

Over the years, the mantra “faster, cheaper, better” hassounded throughout the computer industry. And it's true. It's no secretthat today's desktop PCs and Macs, for example, can feature graphicspower equal to or exceeding that of high-end workstations.

But did you know that a new generation of CPUs and GPUs (graphicsprocessing units) enables you to take that graphics power on the road?Combine that with the recent trend of lower-priced packages from thetop 3D graphics, modeling, and animation companies, and you've got anideal recipe for taking your graphics and effects-heavy productions onthe road.

But why would anyone want to do 3D graphics and effects on a laptopin the first place?

Well, consider that corporate video you've just shot on location.Showing the client a rough version on your laptop, you're now able toadd once-complicated 3D effects such as particle animation, or show howmotion tracking and compositing will work on that last shot.

Opening up more workspace is another consideration. Even if youwon't be taking your 3D chops on the road, a laptop makes tightquarters work better. Small studios can create virtual edit baysby making storage arrays accessible on a plug-and-play basis to anylaptop user in the shop.

But until recently, suggesting that you could easily run Maya,Softimage XSI, or 3ds Max on a PC laptop would be met with a skepticalresponse. Although Apple's latest PowerBooks have the chops, therewasn't enough 3D graphics software written for OS X.

But now, new CPUs and GPUs make it possible to take graphics andeffects production on the road, matching in power all but the top PCand Mac desktops.

According to one manufacturer, the need to pump up laptop powerfirst came from the desire to shed some weight.

“The real requirement [for portable laptop workstations] camefrom CAD/CAM engineers who were literally tired of lugging arounddesktop workstations to their customers,” says Jon Kies, directorof product marketing, vertical application markets at Fujitsu PC.

The engineers' need to run graphics-demanding CAD/CAM programs, saysKies, pushed Fujitsu to develop its Celsius Mobile H laptop, introducedthis past August. It just so happens the machine is ideal for 3Dgraphics, too.

Other graphics-potent laptops include Dell's Precision M50 andApple's Titanium PowerBook.

So what makes a laptop into a hot box these days? Let's concentrateon the two most important factors: the main processor and the graphicscard or chipset. (The smaller chipsets are built into the motherboard,rather than on a separate card.)

CPUs, even for the desktop, only recently gained significantlyimproved capabilities. Intel's Pentium 4, for example, came out in late2000. It featured the first new top-to-bottom chip redesign in fiveyears, and graphics users especially benefited from the NetBurstmicroarchitecture.

NetBurst includes an interlocking feature set that delivers improvedbandwidth, along with a new type of cache, deep or “hyper”pipelines, and other boosts to code execution. The NetBurst designspecifically improves 3D content creation, audio and video encoding,digital imaging, and multimedia.

Aided by the new 845MP support chipset, the Pentium 4 has a fewother important features. A 400MHz internal processor bus bumps theinternal data-transfer rate to 3.2GBps, a 3X improvement over theprevious generation. The 512KB of on-chip L2 cache is a sizable lump.The chip also supports up to 1GB of DDR 266MHz memory, AGP4X graphics,and six channels of surround sound.

Apple's 800MHz PowerPC G4 runs its top Titanium PowerBook. Does thatlower speed make it inferior to the P4 line?

As anyone attending Macworld or reading the company website canattest, Apple keeps drilling the troops that parts of the G4 such asthe Velocity Engine work differently — so direct comparisons ofraw speed don't give you the whole story.

To a great extent, that's true, at least at the Pentium's currentspeeds. (By 2007, Intel estimates it will have crossed the 10GHzbarrier, where raw speed makes just about any chip architecturemoot.)

The G4 does offer considerable improvement over the previous G3 CPUvia its 3X speedup of system bus bandwidth. Improving the CPU's corepathway moves data faster among memory, graphics, and bus devices— just the things that deliver faster graphics.

The G4 also includes a 1MB hunk of L3 DDR cache memory. Cache RAMimproves code execution, since important code can be stored closer tothe CPU than RAM. (L1 and L2 caches, built on the same piece of siliconas the CPU, are the speediest. L3 cache is a bit slower, since it isphysically separated from the CPU.) The G4's design requires less powerthan the P4's, so there's no separate mobile version of the G4.

While CPUs have soared, graphics processing power had remainedmiddling until last year, when the first of a new generation of mobilegraphics chipsets debuted from two leading — and very competitive— graphics vendors, Nvidia and ATI.

The constant one-upmanship between Nvidia and ATI delivers greatbenefits to users. While it had some rocky times financially, ATI issolid again. The Toronto-area company knows it must take league-leaderNvidia head on if it wants to remain a player. This will becomeapparent in the next few months with the release of a mobile version ofATI's very fast FireGL GPU, answering the challenge of Nvidia'sflagship mobile chipset, the Quadro4 500 GoGL.

Currently ATI's top-of-the-line mobile chipset, thesecond-generation Mobility Radeon 7500 holds up against Nvidia. Appleuses the 7500 in its PowerBook; the chipset also appears in laptopsfrom several PC vendors.

For the 7500 GPU, ATI developed the Charisma Engine, said to deliverimproved character animation as well as full TCL (transform, clipping,and lighting) capability for improved 3D detail and performance. The7500 offers 32MB of 128-bit DDR memory as well as HydraVision, asoftware/hardware combo that enables users to connect two monitors andbuild a contiguous workspace.

Meanwhile, Nvidia's Quadro4 500 GoGL GPU features workstation-levelcapabilities such as hardware-accelerated anti-aliased lines, OpenGLhardware overlay planes, and two-sided lighting. The 500 sports a 64MB,128-bit unified-memory interface, which allows dynamic allocation ofmemory between the chip's graphics subsystems.

Similar to ATI's HydraVision, Nvidia's nView app can controlmultiple displays. Users can opt to create one contiguous work areawith two monitors side by side, or use them as separate workspaces.

It's the CPU/GPU combination that delivers the most bang to this newgeneration of workstation-class laptops. But here's a quick look atsome of the other necessary components.

Fast hard drives stand just behind the CPU and GPU in theirimportance for graphics production. While 4200rpm drives have beenstandard for some time in laptops, the move is on to 5400rpm for thetop systems.

Portable FireWire drives can solve the need for added storage, asinternal drives currently max out at 60GB. However, both Dell andFujitsu employ a modular architecture in their workstation laptops.This allows changing out the CD/DVD drive, for example, and replacingit with another hard drive. The Fujitsu Celsius-H can even handle athird drive, which yields a total of 180GB.

Workstation LCD screens are moving to higher pixel counts, better tohandle the four-view port layout common with 3D apps. Thehigh-resolution 1600×1200 screen of the Dell M50 and FujitsuCelsius-H laptops even beat most desktop LCD monitors.

While Apple's Titanium PowerBook doesn't offer that resolution, thecompany did change its screens from 1152×768 to 1280×854pixels, which yields 23% more workspace, according to Sandy Green,director of PowerBook product marketing at Apple.

To get even more workspace, the PowerBook can control two screens atonce, including the knockout 23in. Cinema HD display, which offers1920×1200 pixels.

Whatever your choice, it's finally the age of workstationlaptops.

Dan Ochiva is technical editor of Video Systems andMillimeter magazines. Email him at dochiva@primediabusiness.com.

To comment on this article, email the Video Systems editorialstaff at vsfeedback@primediabusiness.com.