NVIDIA today launched the second generation of its workstation platform, NVIDIA Maximus, featuring the Kepler GPU architecture.

The Maximus platform, introduced in November, gives workstation users the ability to simultaneously perform complex analysis and visualization on a single machine. Now supported by Kepler-based GPUs, Maximus delivers even higher performance and efficiency to professionals in fields as varied as manufacturing, visual effects and oil exploration.

Maximus initially broke new ground as a single system that handles interactive graphics and the compute-intensive number crunching required to simulate or render them -- resulting in accelerated workflows. With this second generation of Maximus, compute work is assigned to run on the new NVIDIA Tesla K20 GPU computing accelerator, freeing up the new NVIDIA Quadro K5000 GPU to handle graphics functions. Maximus unified technology transparently and automatically assigns visualization and simulation or rendering work to the right processor.

Key NVIDIA Quadro K5000 GPU features include:

- Bindless Textures that give users the ability to reference over 1 million textures directly in memory while reducing CPU overhead
- FXAA/TXAA film-style anti-aliasing technologies for high image quality
- Increased frame buffer capacity of 4 GB, plus a next-generation PCIe-3 bus interconnect that accelerates data movement by 2x compared with PCIe-2
- An all-new display engine capable of driving up to four displays simultaneously with a single K5000 - Display Port 1.2 support for resolutions up to 3840x2160 @60Hz

Key NVIDIA Tesla K20 GPU features include:

- SMX streaming multiprocessor technology for up to a 3x performance per watt advantage
- Dynamic Parallelism and Hyper-Q GPU technologies for simplified parallel programming and faster performance

Second generation NVIDIA Maximus-powered desktop workstations featuring the new NVIDIA Quadro K5000 ($2,249 MSRP, USD) plus the new NVIDIA Tesla K20 GPU ($3,199 MSRP, USD) will be available starting in December 2012. The NVIDIA Quadro K5000 will be available as a separate discrete desktop GPU starting in October 2012.

The world's leading workstation OEMs -- including HP, Dell, Lenovo, and Fujitsu, plus systems integrators such as BOXX Technologies and Supermicro -- will offer second generation NVIDIA Maximus-powered workstations.