Wednesday, 28. October 2009, 09:21:56
GPU, Cloud, 3D, computing
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At the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco recently, NVIDIA announced a GPU-powered 3D Web platform. Called the NVIDIA RealityServer, it consists of Tesla GPUs, rendering software and a Web service environment, all integrated into a platform designed to deliver photorealistic image streams via a cloud computing model. The new offering is yet another example of how the company intends to push its high-end GPUs into CPU territory.
The basic idea behind RealityServer is to do all the heavy computation lifting of image rendering on the server side, such that photorealistic 3D content can be delivered interactively across the Web. That means mass-market devices from smart phones to desktops and everything in between can be used to do high-end imaging.
Applications include architectural design, product design, manufacturing and apparel styling, as well as HPC visual applications in such areas as oil and gas, medical diagnostics, and scientific research. As a result, potential users span the entire population: consumers, artists, product designers, doctors, architects, engineers, and scientists.
Source:
http://www.hpcwire.com/features/NVIDIA-Pitches-GPU-Computing-in-the-Cloud-65217572.html
Monday, 19. October 2009, 10:06:06
processor, architecture, GPU, Computer
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GPU Computing 2.0 is upon us. Today at the NVIDIA GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, Calif., company CEO Jen-Hsun Huang unveiled a seriously revamped graphics processor architecture representing the biggest step forward for general-purpose GPU computing since the introduction of CUDA in 2006. The stated goal behind the new architecture is two-fold: to significantly boost GPU computing performance and to expand the application range of the graphics processor.
The new architecture, codenamed "Fermi," incorporates a number of new features aimed at technical computing, including support for Error Correcting Code (ECC) memory and greatly enhanced double precision (DP) floating point performance. Those additions remove the two major limitations of current GPU architectures for the high performance computing realm, and position the new GPU as a true general-purpose floating point accelerator.
Source:
http://www.hpcwire.com/features/NVIDIA-Takes-GPU-Computing-to-the-Next-Level-62800147.html
Tuesday, 1. September 2009, 08:38:59
nanometer, GPU, Computer, CPU
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Intel will focus on its next generation of smaller and faster chips at a conference next month as it prepares to ship new chips for systems in 2010.
Intel plans to shed more light on the Westmere architecture at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF), which will be held Sept. 22-24 in San Francisco. The company is expected to talk about the architecture behind its future chips for servers, laptops and desktops.
Chips based on Westmere will be made using the advanced 32-nanometer process and should deliver performance and power benefits over existing Intel chips made using the 45-nm process. Initial chips will integrate a CPU and graphics processor in a single package, which could improve graphics performance while drawing less power.
Source:
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9137000/Intel_to_focus_on_next_generation_of_chips
Wednesday, 13. May 2009, 08:18:28
processor, GPU, Computer, CPU
Been itching to get your hands on a personal supercomputer, as NVIDIA's ad wizards put it? The company has just announced that its CUDA-based Tesla C1060 GPU is now available in Dell's Precision R5400, T5500 and T7500 workstations. And just to put things into perspective, NVIDIA points out that a Dell workstation rockin' a single Tesla C1060 has enough going on under the hood to power the control system for the European Extremely Large Telescope project ("the world's largest," apparently).
According to one of the developers, Jeff Meisel at National Instruments, a workstation "equipped with a single Tesla C1060 can achieve near real-time control of the mirror simulation and controller, which before wouldn't be possible in a single machine without the computational density offered by GPUs."
Source:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/06/nvidia-tesla-gpus-now-shipping-with-dell-personal-supercomputer/
Thursday, 11. December 2008, 08:24:58
FPGA, GPU, HPC, computing
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With all the recent hoopla about GPU-accelerated HPC, reconfigurable computing with Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) has been getting proportionally less attention. While NVIDIA has led the GPU push in HPC, there is no single vendor in the reconfigurable computing space that has jumped into the driver's seat. That hasn't kept a variety of smaller players from trying.
Unlike GPUs -- or CPUs for that matter -- FPGAs require an unconventional programming model. This stems from the fact that the chip's logic elements must be custom-configured before applications can run on them. This process is accomplished via software, which in this case is used to implement the best-fit hardware design for the application code. This is not something the average programmer is trained to do. Some have likened it to writing assembly code, but it is actually worse that. It's more like designing the assembly language itself.
Source:
http://www.hpcwire.com/features/Reconfigurable-Computing-Prospects-on-the-Rise_35498449.html
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