NVIDIA unveiled at SIGGRAPH a new product that takes the graphic sub-system outside of the computer. If we knew that NVIDIA was working on such a system since the company has taken a patent a few months ago, the details were up to this date unknown. The Quadro Plex 1000 is dedicated to image professionals and consist in an external 3D and video processing unit.
The format chosen by NVIDIA allow you to place two graphic cards in an external unit that connects to the computer via a cable and a small card placed in the graphic PCI Express slot. It is roughly a PCI Express extension that allows the use of an external graphic card. They are of course equipped with their own power supply (520W) and cooling system. If the configuration includes a SLI motherboard, it will be possible to connect two Quadro Plex 1000.
Two Quadro Plex 1000 can fit in a 3U rack.
3 models are announced and equipped with Quadro FX 5500 or Quadro FX 4500 X2. With 2 Quadro Flex 1000 model II, it is possible to benefit from the power of 8 GPUs!
The Quadro Flex 1000 will be available in September. We don't know yet the price but we fell that, because of the market targeted, it will probably be very high
