Throwing more AIBs (add-in graphics boards) into a PC doesn’t result in commensurate increase in performance. Adding in a second AIB usually only ups performance by around 50 per cent (or slightly more on selected apps). Furthermore, load balancing remains the greatest challenge and makes scaling improvements complex.
ATI and Nvidia have come up with their own ways of getting the most out of multiple graphics boards: the Green Goblin’s SLI (Scalable Link Interface) concept and ATI’s Crossfire method. LucidLogix, however, has gone with a front-end approach to multiple AIBs. It has designed a different load balancing technique for scaling, and can use more than two AIBs. That is truly innovative. According to JPR, Hydra’s scaling isn’t quite as good as Crossfire’s or SLI’s for VGAs yet, but that scarcely matters with its purported ability to scale far beyond just two GPUs.
