Nvidia K5000 for Mac GPUs Sport Kepler Architecture

Processor manufacturer Nvidia announced the debut of the Quadro K5000 for Mac Pro systems. The graphics processing unit (GPU) is based on Nvidia’s Kepler architecture and sports a new display engine that can drive up to four displays simultaneously. Among the other features is Cinema 4K display support (4096 by 2160 resolution), which enables content creators to process and view high-resolution cinema content.

The Quadro K5000 for Mac GPUs is scheduled to be available later this year from select Apple resellers and system integrators and from Nvidia’s roster of authorized distribution partners, according to a company release. Estimated pricing will start at $2,249, according to a company release. The GPU is also designed to retain its full performance and features when using Apple Boot Camp and running Microsoft Windows-based professional PC applications.

“The Nvidia Quadro K5000 has great OpenGL and CUDA performance, so it’s ideal to use as a shared GUI and image-processing GPU in DaVinci Resolve 9,” Grant Petty, CEO of Blackmagic Design, said in a prepared statement. “Like many artists who use DaVinci Resolve, colorists seek the highest performance possible from their systems, and with just one of the new Kepler GPUs, our users will be able to work with 4K imagery on their Mac Pros in real time.”

The Kepler high-performance computing (HPC) architecture delivers more processing performance and efficiency through a streaming multiprocessor design that allows a greater percentage of space to be applied to processing cores versus control logic, while dynamic parallelism simplifies GPU programming by allowing programmers to accelerate all parallel nested loops. In addition, multiple CPU cores can simultaneously use a single Kepler GPU, which helps advance programmability and efficiency.

Based on Nvidia’s internal tests, the Kepler architecture enables the Quadro K5000 GPU for Mac to run key content-creation applications up to twice as fast at lower power than the Fermi-based Quadro 4000 for Mac, while the new chips also provide support for OpenGL, OpenCL and Nvidia’s Cuda architecture, a parallel computing platform and programming model invented by the company to increase computing performance.

“Quadro K5000 for Mac will have a transformational impact on the digital content-creation workflow,” Greg Estes, a media and entertainment industry executive at Nvidia, said in a press statement. “We’re giving Mac Pro users the most powerful professional GPU ever for the Mac, with features and performance that will make a substantial difference in their workflows and allow them to create digital content at speeds never before possible.”