Quadro was

Nvidia Nvidia CorporationOfficially written as NVIDIA and stylized in its logo as VIDIA with the lowercase "n" the same height as the uppercase "VIDIA"; formerly stylized as VIDIA with a large italicized lowercase "n" on products from the mid 1990s to ...

brand A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that distinguishes one seller's good or service from those of other sellers. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising for recognition and, importantly, to create an ...

for

graphics cards A graphics card (also called a video card, display card, graphics adapter, VGA card/VGA, video adapter, display adapter, or mistakenly GPU) is an expansion card which generates a feed of output images to a display device, such as a computer moni ...

intended for use in

workstations A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by a single user, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems. The term ''workstat ...

running professional

computer-aided design Computer-aided design (CAD) is the use of computers (or ) to aid in the creation, modification, analysis, or optimization of a design. This software is used to increase the productivity of the designer, improve the quality of design, improve c ...

(CAD),

computer-generated imagery Computer-generated imagery (CGI) is the use of computer graphics to create or contribute to images in art, printed media, video games, simulators, and visual effects in films, television programs, shorts, commercials, and videos. The images may ...

(CGI),

digital content creation Content creation is the contribution of information to any media and most especially to digital media for an end-user/audience in specific contexts. Content is "something that is to be expressed through some medium, as speech, writing or any of ...

(DCC) applications, scientific calculations and machine learning. Differences between the professional Quadro and mainstream GeForce lines include the use of

ECC memory Error correction code memory (ECC memory) is a type of computer data storage that uses an error correction code (ECC) to detect and correct n-bit data corruption which occurs in memory. ECC memory is used in most computers where data corruption c ...

and enhanced

floating point In computing, floating-point arithmetic (FP) is arithmetic that represents real numbers approximately, using an integer with a fixed precision, called the significand, scaled by an integer exponent of a fixed base. For example, 12.345 can be ...

precision. These are desirable properties when the cards are used for calculations which, in contrast to graphics rendering, require reliability and precision. The Nvidia Quadro product line directly competed with

AMD Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California, that develops computer processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets. While it initially manufactur ...

Radeon Pro Radeon Pro is AMD's brand of professional oriented GPUs. It replaced AMD's FirePro brand in 2016. Compared to the Radeon brand for mainstream consumer/gamer products, the Radeon Pro brand is intended for use in workstations and the running of ...

(formerly FirePro/FireGL) line of professional workstation cards. Nvidia has moved away from the Quadro branding for new products, starting with the launch of the Ampere architecture-based RTX A6000 on October 5, 2020. To indicate the upgrade to the Nvidia Ampere architecture for their graphics cards technology,

Nvidia RTX Nvidia GeForce RTX (Ray Tracing Texel eXtreme) is a professional visual computing platform created by Nvidia, primarily used for designing complex large-scale models in architecture and product design, scientific visualization, energy exploratio ...

is the product line being produced and developed moving forward for use in professional workstations.

History

The Quadro line of GPU cards emerged in an effort towards market segmentation by Nvidia. In introducing Quadro, Nvidia was able to charge a premium for essentially the same graphics hardware in professional markets, and direct resources to properly serve the needs of those markets. To differentiate their offerings, Nvidia used driver software and firmware to selectively enable features vital to segments of the workstation market, such as high-performance anti-aliased lines and two-sided lighting, in the Quadro product. The Quadro line also received improved support through a certified driver program. These features were of little value to the gamers that Nvidia's products already sold to, but their lack prevented high-end customers from using the less expensive products. There are parallels between the market segmentation used to sell the Quadro line of products to workstation (DCC) markets and the Tesla line of products to engineering and HPC markets. In a settlement of a patent infringement lawsuit between

SGI SGI may refer to: Companies *Saskatchewan Government Insurance *Scientific Games International, a gambling company *Silicon Graphics, Inc., a former manufacturer of high-performance computing products *Silicon Graphics International, formerly Rac ...

and Nvidia, SGI acquired rights to speed-binned Nvidia graphics chips which they shipped under the VPro product label. These designs were completely separate from the SGI Odyssey based

VPro The VPRO (stylized vpro; originally an acronym for , ) is a Dutch public broadcaster, which forms a part of the Dutch public broadcasting system. Founded in 1926 as a liberal Protestant broadcasting organization, it gradually became more soc ...

products initially sold on their

IRIX IRIX ( ) is a discontinued operating system developed by Silicon Graphics (SGI) to run on the company's proprietary MIPS workstations and servers. It is based on UNIX System V with BSD extensions. In IRIX, SGI originated the XFS file system and ...

workstations which used a completely different bus. SGI's Nvidia-based VPro line included the VPro V3 (Geforce 256), VPro VR3 (Quadro), VPro V7 (Quadro2 MXR), and VPro VR7 (Quadro2 Pro).

Quadro SDI

Actual extra cards only for Quadro 4000 cards and higher: *SDI Capture: *SDI Output:

Quadro Plex

Quadro Plex The Nvidia Quadro Plex is an external graphics processing unit ''(Visual Computing System)'' designed for large-scale 3D visualizations. The system consists of a box containing a pair of high-end Nvidia Quadro graphics cards featuring a variety ...

consists of a line of external servers for rendering videos. A Quadro Plex contains multiple Quadro FX video cards. A client computer connects to Quadro Plex (using PCI Express ×8 or ×16 interface card with interconnect cable) to initiate rendering. More data in Nvidia Tesla Cards.

Quadro SLI and SYNC

Scalable Link Interface Scalable Link Interface (SLI) is a brand name for a deprecated multi-GPU technology developed by Nvidia for linking two or more video cards together to produce a single output. SLI is a parallel processing algorithm for computer graphics, meant ...

, or SLI, is the next generation of Plex. SLI can improve Frame Rendering, FSAA. Quadro SLI support Mosaic for 2 Cards and 8 Monitors. With Quadro SYNC Card support of max. 16 Monitors (4 per Card) possible. Most Cards have SLI-Bridge-Slot for 2, 3 or 4 cards on one main board. Acceleration of scientific calculations is possible with CUDA and OpenCL. Nvidia has 4 types of SLI bridges: *Standard Bridge (400 MHz Pixel Clock and 1GB/s bandwidth) *LED Bridge (540 MHz Pixel Clock) *High-Bandwidth Bridge (650 MHz Pixel Clock) *PCIe-Lanes only reserved for SLI More see SLI.

Quadro VCA

Nvidia supports SLI and supercomputing with its 8-GPU Visual Computing Appliance. Nvidia Iray, Chaosgroup V-Ray and Nvidia OptiX accelerate Raytracing for Maya, 3DS Max, Cinema4D, Rhinoceros and others. All software with

CUDA CUDA (or Compute Unified Device Architecture) is a parallel computing platform and application programming interface (API) that allows software to use certain types of graphics processing units (GPUs) for general purpose processing, an approach ca ...

OpenCL OpenCL (Open Computing Language) is a framework for writing programs that execute across heterogeneous platforms consisting of central processing units (CPUs), graphics processing units (GPUs), digital signal processors (DSPs), field-progra ...

, such as ANSYS, NASTRAN, ABAQUS, and OpenFoam, can benefit from VCA. The DGX-1 is available with 8 GP100 Cards. More data in Nvidia Tesla Cards.

Quadro RTX

The Quadro RTX series is based on the Turing microarchitecture, and features real-time raytracing. This is accelerated by the use of new RT cores, which are designed to process

quadtree A quadtree is a tree data structure in which each internal node has exactly four children. Quadtrees are the two-dimensional analog of octrees and are most often used to partition a two-dimensional space by recursively subdividing it into four q ...

s and spherical hierarchies, and speed up collision tests with individual triangles. The Turing microarchitecture debuted with the Quadro RTX series before the mainstream consumer GeForce RTX line. The raytracing performed by the RT cores can be used to produce reflections, refractions and shadows, replacing traditional raster techniques such as cube maps and

depth map In 3D computer graphics and computer vision, a depth map is an image or image channel that contains information relating to the distance of the surfaces of scene objects from a viewpoint. The term is related (and may be analogous) to ''depth ...

s. Instead of replacing rasterization entirely, however, the information gathered from ray-tracing can be used to augment the shading with information that is much more physically correct, especially regarding off-camera action. Tensor cores further enhance the image produced by raytracing, and are used to de-noise a partially rendered image. RTX is also the name of the development platform introduced for the Quadro RTX series. RTX leverages

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

's DXR,

OptiX Nvidia OptiX (OptiX Application Acceleration Engine) is a ray tracing API that was first developed around 2009. The computations are offloaded to the GPUs through either the low-level or the high-level API introduced with CUDA. CUDA is only av ...

and

Vulkan Vulkan is a low- overhead, cross-platform API, open standard for 3D graphics and computing. Vulkan targets high-performance real-time 3D graphics applications, such as video games and interactive media. Vulkan is intended to offer higher perform ...

for access to raytracing. Turing is manufactured using

TSMC Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC; also called Taiwan Semiconductor) is a Taiwanese multinational corporation, multinational semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company. It is the world's most valuable semicon ...

's 12 nm

FinFET A fin field-effect transistor (FinFET) is a multigate device, a MOSFET (metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor) built on a substrate where the gate is placed on two, three, or four sides of the channel or wrapped around the channel, f ...

fabrication process Semiconductor device fabrication is the process used to manufacture semiconductor devices, typically integrated circuit (IC) chips such as modern computer processors, microcontrollers, and memory chips such as NAND flash and DRAM that are p ...

. Quadro RTX also uses

GDDR6 Graphics Double Data Rate 6 Synchronous Dynamic Random-Access Memory (GDDR6 SDRAM) is a type of synchronous graphics random-access memory (SGRAM) with a high bandwidth, " double data rate" interface, designed for use in graphics cards, game cons ...

memory from

Samsung Electronics Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (, sometimes shortened to SEC and stylized as SΛMSUNG) is a South Korean multinational corporation, multinational electronics corporation headquartered in Yeongtong-gu, Suwon, South Korea. It is the pinnacle of ...

Video cards

GeForce

Many of these cards use the same core as the game- and action-oriented GeForce video cards by Nvidia. Those cards that are nearly identical to the desktop cards can be modified to identify themselves as the equivalent Quadro card to the operating system, allowing optimized drivers intended for the Quadro cards to be installed on the system. While this may not offer all of the performance of the equivalent Quadro card, it can improve performance in certain applications, but may require installing the MAXtreme driver for comparable speed. The performance difference comes in the

firmware In computing, firmware is a specific class of computer software that provides the low-level control for a device's specific hardware. Firmware, such as the BIOS of a personal computer, may contain basic functions of a device, and may provide h ...

controlling the card. Given the importance of speed in a game, a system used for gaming can shut down textures, shading, or rendering after only approximating a final output—in order to keep the overall

frame rate Frame rate (expressed in or FPS) is the frequency (rate) at which consecutive images (frames) are captured or displayed. The term applies equally to film and video cameras, computer graphics, and motion capture systems. Frame rate may also be ca ...

high. The algorithms on a CAD-oriented card tend rather to complete all rendering operations, even if that introduces delays or variations in the timing, prioritising accuracy and rendering quality over speed. A Geforce card focuses more on texture fillrates and high framerates with lighting and sound, but Quadro cards prioritize wireframe rendering and object interactions.

Software

With Caps Viewer (1.38 in 2018) all Windows Users can see data of the graphic Card, the installed Driver and can test some Features. GPU-Z reads also data of the graphic cards and the user can send some data for better database.

Quadro/RTX drivers

* Curie-Architecture Last drivers see Driver Portal of Nvidia (End-of-Life) * Tesla-Architecture (G80+, GT2xx) in Legacy Mode Quadro Driver 340: OpenGL 3.3, OpenCL 1.1, DirectX 10.0/10.1 (End-of-Life) *

Fermi Enrico Fermi (; 29 September 1901 – 28 November 1954) was an Italian (later naturalized American) physicist and the creator of the world's first nuclear reactor, the Chicago Pile-1. He has been called the "architect of the nuclear age" and ...

(GFxxx): OpenCL 1.1, OpenGL 4.5, some OpenGL 2016 Features with Quadro Driver 375, in legacy mode with version 391.74 (End-of-Life) *

Kepler Johannes Kepler (; ; 27 December 1571 – 15 November 1630) was a German astronomer, mathematician, astrologer, natural philosopher and writer on music. He is a key figure in the 17th-century Scientific Revolution, best known for his laws o ...

(GKxxx): OpenCL 1.2, OpenGL 4.6, Vulkan 1.2 with RTX Enterprise/Quadro Driver 470 (End-of-Life) * Maxwell (GMxxx): OpenCL 3.0, OpenGL 4.6, Vulkan 1.3 with RTX Enterprise/Quadro Driver 525+ *

Pascal Pascal, Pascal's or PASCAL may refer to: People and fictional characters * Pascal (given name), including a list of people with the name * Pascal (surname), including a list of people and fictional characters with the name ** Blaise Pascal, Fren ...

(GPxxx): OpenCL 3.0, OpenGL 4.6, Vulkan 1.3 with RTX Enterprise/Quadro driver 525+ *Volta (GVxxx): OpenCL 3.0, OpenGL 4.6, Vulkan 1.3 with RTX Enterprise/Quadro driver 525+ *

Turing Alan Mathison Turing (; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, and theoretical biologist. Turing was highly influential in the development of theoretical co ...

(TUxxx): OpenCL 3.0, OpenGL 4.6, Vulkan 1.3 with RTX Enterprise/Quadro driver 525+ *

Ampere The ampere (, ; symbol: A), often shortened to amp,SI supports only the use of symbols and deprecates the use of abbreviations for units. is the unit of electric current in the International System of Units (SI). One ampere is equal to elect ...

(GAxxx): OpenCL 3.0, OpenGL 4.6, Vulkan 1.3 with RTX Enterprise/Quadro driver 525+ *

Ada Lovelace Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (''née'' Byron; 10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852) was an English mathematician and writer, chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's proposed mechanical general-purpose computer, the A ...

(ADxxx): OpenCL 3.0, OpenGL 4.6, Vulkan 1.3 with RTX Enterprise/Quadro driver 525+

CUDA

*Tesla Architecture and later Supported

Level of GPU and Card. *CUDA SDK 6.5 support for Compute Capability 1.0 - 5.x (Tesla, Fermi, Kepler, Maxwell) Last Version with support for Tesla-Architecture with Compute Capability 1.x *CUDA SDK 7.5 support for Compute Capability 2.0 - 5.x (Fermi, Kepler, Maxwell) *CUDA SDK 8.0 support for Compute Capability 2.0 - 6.x (Fermi, Kepler, Maxwell, Pascal) Last version with support for compute capability 2.x (Fermi) *CUDA SDK 9.0/9.1/9.2 support for Compute Capability 3.0 - 7.2 (Kepler, Maxwell, Pascal, Volta) *CUDA SDK 10.0/10.1/10.2 support for Compute Capability 3.0 - 7.5 (Kepler, Maxwell, Pascal, Volta, Turing) Last version with support for compute capability 3.x (Kepler). *CUDA SDK 11.0/11.1/11.2/11.3/11.4/11.5/11.6/11.7 support for Compute Capability 3.5 - 8.9 (Kepler(GK110, GK208, GK210 only), Maxwell, Pascal, Volta, Turing, Ampere, Ada Lovelace) *CUDA SDK 11.8 support for Compute Capability 3.5 - 8.9 (Kepler(GK110, GK208, GK210 only), Maxwell, Pascal, Volta, Turing, Ampere, Ada Lovelace) *CUDA SDK 12.0 support for Compute Capability 5.0 - 8.9 (Maxwell, Pascal, Volta, Turing, Ampere, Ada Lovelace) For own Card Test see CUDA-Z Tool

Desktop PCI Express

Quadro FX (without CUDA, OpenCL, or Vulkan)

Rankine Rankine is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: * William Rankine (1820–1872), Scottish engineer and physicist ** Rankine body an elliptical shape of significance in fluid dynamics, named for Rankine ** Rankine scale, an absolute-te ...

(NV3x): DirectX 9.0a, Shader Model 2.0a, OpenGL 2.1 *

Curie In computing, a CURIE (or ''Compact URI'') defines a generic, abbreviated syntax for expressing Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs). It is an abbreviated URI expressed in a compact syntax, and may be found in both XML and non-XML grammars. A CURIE ...

(NV4x, G7x): DirectX 9.0c, Shader Model 3.0, OpenGL 2.1

Quadro FX (with CUDA and OpenCL, but no Vulkan)

* Architecture Tesla (G80+, GT2xx) with OpenGL 3.3 and OpenCL 1.1 * Tesla (G80+): DirectX 10, Shader Model 4.0, only Single Precision (FP32) available for CUDA and OpenCL * Tesla 2 (GT2xx): DirectX 10.1, Shader Model 4.1, Single Precision (FP32) available for CUDA and OpenCL (Double Precision (FP64) available for CUDA and OpenCL only for GT200 with CUDA Compute Capability 1.3 )

Quadro

* Architecture Fermi (GFxxx), Kepler (GKxxx), Maxwell (GMxxx), Pascal (GPxxx), Volta (GVxxx) (except Quadro 400 with Tesla 2) * All Cards with Display Port 1.1+ can support 10bit per Channel for OpenGL (HDR for Graphics Professional (Adobe Photoshop and more)) * Vulkan 1.2 available with Driver Windows 456.38, Linux 455.23.04 for Kepler, Maxwell, Pascal, Volta * All Kepler, Maxwell, Pascal, Volta and later can do OpenGL 4.6 with Driver 418+ * All Quadro can do OpenCL 1.1. Kepler can do OpenCL 1.2, Maxwell and later can do OpenCL 3.0 * All can do Double Precision with Compute Capability 2.0 and higher (see

) ¹ Nvidia Quadro 342.01 WHQL: support of OpenGL 3.3 and OpenCL 1.1 for legacy Tesla microarchitecture Quadros. ² Nvidia Quadro 377.83 WHQL: support of OpenGL 4.5, OpenCL 1.1 for legacy Fermi microarchitecture Quadros. ³ Nvidia Quadro 474.04 WHQL: support of OpenGL 4.6, OpenCL 1.2, Vulkan 1.2 for legacy Kepler microarchitecture Quadros. ⁴ Nvidia Quadro 527.27 WHQL: support of OpenGL 4.6, OpenCL 3.0, Vulkan 1.3 for Maxwell, Pascal & Volta microarchitecture Quadros. ⁵ OpenCL 1.1 is available for Tesla-Chips, OpenCL 1.0 for some Cards with G8x, G9x and GT200 by MAC OS X

Quadro RTX/RTX series (With Ray tracing)

(TU10x) microarchitecture *

(GA10x) microarchitecture *

(AD10x) microarchitecture

Quadro RTX Mobile

*Turing, Ampere microarchitecture

Desktop AGP

*Architecture Celsius (NV1x): DirectX 7, OpenGL 1.2 (1.3) *Architecture Kelvin (NV2x): DirectX 8 (8.1), OpenGL 1.3 (1.5), Pixel Shader 1.1 (1.3) *Architecture Rankine (NV3x): DirectX 9.0a, OpenGL 1.5 (2.1), Shader Model 2.0a *Architecture Curie (NV4x): DirectX 9.0c, OpenGL 2.1, Shader Model 3.0

Desktop PCI

*Architecture Rankine (NV3x): DirectX 9.0a, OpenGL 1.5 (2.1), Shader Model 2.0a

For business NVS

The Nvidia Quadro NVS graphics processing units (GPUs) provide business graphics solutions for manufacturers of small, medium, and enterprise-level business workstations. The Nvidia Quadro NVS desktop solutions enable multi-display graphics for businesses such as financial traders. *Architecture Celsius (NV1x): DirectX 7, OpenGL 1.2 (1.3) *Architecture Kelvin (NV2x): DirectX 8 (8.1), OpenGL 1.3 (1.5), Pixel Shader 1.1 (1.3) *Architecture Rankine (NV3x): DirectX 9.0a, OpenGL 1.5 (2.1), Shader Model 2.0a *Architecture Curie (NV4x): DirectX 9.0c, OpenGL 2.1, Shader Model 3.0 *Architecture Tesla (G80+): DirectX 10.0, OpenGL 3.3, Shader Model 4.0, CUDA 1.0 or 1.1, OpenCL 1.1 *Architecture Tesla 2 (GT2xx): DirectX 10.1, OpenGL 3.3, Shader Model 4.1, CUDA 1.2 or 1.3, OpenCL 1.1 *Architecture Fermi (GFxxx): DirectX 11.0, OpenGL 4.6, Shader Model 5.0, CUDA 2.x, OpenCL 1.1 *Architecture Kepler (GKxxx): DirectX 11.2, OpenGL 4.6, Shader Model 5.0, CUDA 3.x, OpenCL 1.2, Vulkan 1.2 *Architecture Maxwell 1 (GM1xx): DirectX 12.0, OpenGL 4.6, Shader Model 5.0, CUDA 5.0, OpenCL 3.0, Vulkan 1.3

Mobile applications

Quadro FX M (without Vulkan)

* Architecture Rankine (NV3x), Curie (NV4x, G7x) and Tesla (G80+, GT2xx)

Quadro NVS M

*Architecture Curie (NV4x, G7x): DirectX 9.0c, OpenGL 2.1, Shader Model 3.0 *Architecture Tesla (G80+): DirectX 10.0, OpenGL 3.3, Shader Model 4.0, CUDA 1.0 or 1.1, OpenCL 1.1 *Architecture Tesla 2 (GT2xx): DirectX 10.1, OpenGL 3.3, Shader Model 4.1, CUDA 1.2 or 1.3, OpenCL 1.1 *Architecture Fermi (GFxxx): DirectX 11.0, OpenGL 4.6, Shader Model 5.0, CUDA 2.x, OpenCL 1.1 *Architecture Kepler (GKxxx): DirectX 11.2, OpenGL 4.6, Shader Model 5.0, CUDA 3.x, OpenCL 1.2, Vulkan 1.1 *Architecture Maxwell 1 (GM1xx): DirectX 12.0, OpenGL 4.6, Shader Model 5.0, CUDA 5.0, OpenCL 1.2, Vulkan 1.1

Quadro M

* Architecture Fermi, Kepler, Maxwell, Pascal * Fermi, Kepler, Maxwell, and Pascal support OpenGL 4.6 with driver versions 381+ on Linux or 390+ on Windows * All can do Double Precision with compute Capability 1.3 and higher * Vulkan 1.2 on Kepler and 1.3 on Maxwell and later *Quadro 5000M has 2048MB of VRAM, of which 1792MB is usable with ECC enabled.

NVENC and NVDEC support matrix

HW accelerated encode and decode are supported on NVIDIA Quadro products with Fermi, Kepler, Maxwell, Pascal, Turing, and Ampere generation GPUs.

Notes

References

External links

Quadro Professional Workstation Solutions

Nvidia Nsight

{{Graphics Processing Unit

Quadro Quadro was Nvidia's brand for graphics cards intended for use in workstations running professional computer-aided design (CAD), computer-generated imagery (CGI), digital content creation (DCC) applications, scientific calculations and machine ...

Graphics cards