NVIDIA Ushers In the Era of Personal Supercomputing

High-performance computing in fields like the geosciences, molecular biology, and medical diagnostics enable discoveries that transform billions of lives every day. Universities, research institutions, and companies in these and other fields face a daunting challenge: as their simulation models become exponentially complex, so does their need for vast computational resources.

NVIDIA took a giant step in meeting this challenge with today's announcement of a new class of processors based on a revolutionary new graphics processing unit (GPU). Under the NVIDIA Tesla brand, NVIDIA will offer a family of GPU computing products that will place the power previously available only from supercomputers in the hands of every scientist and engineer. Today's workstations will be transformed into "personal supercomputers."

"Today's science is no longer confined to the laboratory; scientists employ computer simulations before a single physical experiment is performed. This fundamental transition to computational methods is forging a new path for discoveries in science and engineering," said Jen-Hsun Huang, president and CEO of NVIDIA. "By dramatically reducing computation times, in some cases from weeks to hours, NVIDIA Tesla represents the single most significant disruption the high-performance computing industry has seen since Cray 1's introduction of vector processing."

The Tesla family of GPU computing solutions span PCs to large scale server clusters. The new family includes:

-- NVIDIA Tesla GPU Computing Processor, a dedicated computing board that scales to multiple Tesla GPUs inside a single PC or workstation. The Tesla GPU features 128 parallel processors, and delivers up to 518 gigaflops of parallel computation. The GPU Computing processor can be used in existing systems partnered with high-performance CPUs.

-- NVIDIA Tesla Deskside Supercomputer, a scalable computing system that includes two NVIDIA Tesla GPUs and attaches to a PC or workstation through an industry-standard PCI-Express connection. With multiple deskside systems, a standard PC or workstation is transformed into a personal supercomputer, delivering up to 8 teraflops of compute power to the desktop.

-- NVIDIA Tesla GPU Computing Server, a 1U server housing up to eight NVIDIA Tesla GPUs, containing more than 1000 parallel processors that add teraflops of parallel processing to clusters. The Tesla GPU Server is the first server system of its kind to bring GPU computing to the datacenter.

Computing on NVIDIA Tesla is now available to any software developer through the world's only C-language development environment for the GPU. NVIDIA CUDA is a complete software development solution that includes a C-compiler for the GPU, debugger/profiler, dedicated driver, and standard libraries. CUDA simplifies parallel computing on the GPU by using the standard C language to create programs that process large quantities of data in parallel. Programs written with CUDA and run on Tesla are able to process thousands of threads simultaneously, providing high computational throughput to enable the GPU to quickly solve complex, computational problems. The NVIDIA CUDA development environment is currently supported on the Linux and Microsoft Windows XP operating systems.

Most applications that require massive compute power can leverage the power of NVIDIA Tesla to make parallel computing power more pervasive and affordable. CUDA's recent success can be seen in both the academic and the application development communities. In addition to adoption by leading universities that are pioneering new courses in parallel computing, CUDA is being actively used by thousands of developers and scientists in applications from molecular simulation to seismic analysis to medical device design.

"Many of the molecular structures we analyze are so large that they can take weeks of processing time to run the calculations required for their physical simulation," said John Stone, senior research programmer at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. "NVIDIA's GPU computing technology has given us a 100-fold increase in some of our programs, and this is on desktop machines where previously we would have had to run these calculations to a cluster. NVIDIA Tesla promises to take this forward with more flexible computing solutions."

Source: NVIDIA

Related stories:

Eyes turn to dawn of 'visual computing'
Lifelike graphics are breaking free of elite computer games and spreading throughout society in what industry insiders proclaim is the dawning of a "visual computing era."
Graphics processing installation to boost Argonne's Blue Gene/P visualization capabilities
(PhysOrg.com) -- The IBM Blue Gene/P Intrepid at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF), located at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, will soon have the data analytics and visualization capability to complement its distinction as the fastest computer in the world for open science and the third fastest overall computer in the world.
UC San Diego Unveils Highest Resolution Scientific Display System in the World
As the size of complex scientific data sets grows exponentially, so does the need for scientists to explore the data visually and collaboratively in ultra-high resolution environments. To that end, the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) has unveiled the highest-resolution display system for scientific visualization in the world at the University of California, San Diego.
NVIDIA Announced New Geforce GTX 200 GPUs
Imagine instead of taking over five hours to convert a video for your iPod, it only takes 35 minutes. Imagine using your PC to simulate protein folding to help find a cure for debilitating diseases. Imagine that your PC can dramatically accelerate everyday tasks, and deliver an exciting visual experience in the process.
Stanford, tech giants team up to enable software for parallel computers
Stanford and many of the biggest companies in computing will announce Friday, May 2, a joint effort to address a major missed opportunity in information technology: the dearth of software that can harness the parallelism of the multiple processors that are being built into virtually every new computer. The Pervasive Parallelism Lab (PPL) pools the efforts of many leading Stanford computer scientists and electrical engineers with support from Sun Microsystems, Advanced Micro Devices, NVIDIA, IBM, Hewlett Packard and Intel.
Engineers construct 220 million pixel computer display
Engineers at the University of California, San Diego have constructed the highest-resolution computer display in the world – with a screen resolution up to 220 million pixels.
AMD Details Next-Generation Platform for Notebook PCsAMD Details Next-Generation Platform for Notebook PCs
At a press conference in Tokyo, Japan, AMD today officially disclosed more details of its next-generation open platform for notebook computing. Codenamed “Puma,” the platform is designed to deliver battery life, graphics and video processing enhancements and improved overall system performance for an enhanced visual experience.
Interview: Alienware's gaming challenge
Childhood friends and Alienware co-founders Nelson Gonzalez and Alex Aguila never thought their love for computer games would lead to a place out of this world. Together, they have nurtured Alienware to become a major manufacturer of customized, high-performance computer gaming systems. With its vibrant colors, Alienware machines may appear extraterrestrial to novice computer users but are well-recognized by the computer industry and fellow gaming enthusiasts.

News discussion:

Can it run WOW in Electronic Devices news