NVIDIA to Sponsor New Stanford Parallel Computing Research Lab
Posted on April 30, 2008
Filed Under Tech Biz
SANTA CLARA, Calif., April 30 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — NVIDIA
Corporation has announced that it is a founding member of Stanford
University’s new Pervasive Parallelism Lab (PPL). The PPL will develop new
techniques, tools, and training materials to allow software engineers to
harness the parallelism of the multiple processors that are already
available in virtually every new computer.
NVIDIA’s investment complements the company’s ongoing strategy to solve
some of the world’s most computationally intensive problems with its
market-leading GPUs and world-class tools and software. The company has
enjoyed significant success to date with its Tesla(TM) line of GPU
computing hardware solutions and, more importantly, with CUDA(TM)
technology, its award-winning programming environment that gives developers
access to the massively parallel architecture of the GPU through the
industry-standard C language.
“Parallel programming is perhaps the largest problem in computer
science today and is the major obstacle to the continued scaling of
computing performance that has fueled the computing industry, and several
related industries, for the last 40 years,” says Bill Dally, chair of the
computer science department at Stanford.
Until recently, computer installations delivering massive parallelism
could only be deployed in large-scale computer centers with hundreds to
thousands of separate computer systems. With the recent introduction of
many-core processors such as the GPU and the multi-core CPU, most new
computer systems come equipped with multiple processors that require new
software techniques to exploit parallelism. Without new software
techniques, computer scientists are concerned that rapid increases in the
speed of computing could stall.
From fundamental hardware to new user-friendly programming languages
that will allow developers to exploit parallelism automatically, the PPL
will allow programmers to implement their algorithms in accessible,
“domain-specific” languages while at deeper, more fundamental levels of
software, the system would do all the work for them in optimizing the code
for parallel processing.
“NVIDIA has been tackling parallel computing challenges since its
founding and, as a result, the GPU has evolved into an incredibly powerful
processor, capable of running thousands upon thousands of concurrent
operations,” said David Kirk, chief scientist at NVIDIA. “We applaud, and
are proud to be a part of, Stanford University’s formation of the PPL and
its mission to push the software industry to expose the inherent
parallelism in today’s computers.”
NVIDIA GPU technology, combined with the CUDA programming environment
have delivered speed increases anywhere from 8x to 50x over conventional
processing technologies. Some examples include:
Seismic Imaging http://www.hess.com 45x
AutoDock Protein Docking http://www.siliconinformatics.com/ 12x
Financial Options Pricing http://www.hanweckassoc.com 50x
Medical Imaging http://www.techniscanmedicalsystems.com/ 8x
H.264 Video Transcoding http://www.elementaltechnologies.com/ 19x
EDA - SPICE Simulation http://www.nascentric.com/ 8x
NVIDIA joins with AMD, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Intel, and Sun
Microsystems in this venture.
For more information on NVIDIA GPU Computing solutions, please visit
http://www.nvidia.com/tesla.
About NVIDIA
NVIDIA (Nasdaq: NVDA) is the world leader in visual computing
technologies and the inventor of the GPU, a high-performance processor
which generates breathtaking, interactive graphics on workstations,
personal computers, game consoles, and mobile devices. NVIDIA serves the
entertainment and consumer market with its GeForce(R) graphics products,
the professional design and visualization market with its Quadro(R)
graphics products, and the high-performance computing market with its Tesla
computing solutions products. NVIDIA is headquartered in Santa Clara,
Calif. and has offices throughout Asia, Europe, and the Americas. For more
information, visit http://www.nvidia.com.
Certain statements in this release including, but not limited to,
statements as to: the benefits, purpose and mission of the PPL; the
benefits, performance, capabilities and uses of Tesla, CUDA and GPUs; new
software technology; the computing industry; and our strategy are
forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that
could cause results to be materially different than expectations. Important
factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include:
development of competitive technologies to increase the speed of computing;
issues associated with design of technology and products; unanticipated
changes in industry standards and interfaces; slower than anticipated
adoption of a new industry standard or interface; manufacturing or software
defects; the impact of technological development and competition; as well
as other factors detailed from time to time in the reports NVIDIA files
with the Securities and Exchange Commission including its Form 10-K for the
period ended January 27, 2008. Copies of reports filed with the SEC are
posted on our website and are available from NVIDIA without charge. These
forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and
speak only as of the date hereof, and, except as required by law, NVIDIA
disclaims any obligation to update these forward-looking statements to
reflect future events or circumstances.
Copyright (C) 2008 NVIDIA Corporation. All rights reserved. NVIDIA, the
NVIDIA logo, TESLA, and CUDA are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of
NVIDIA Corporation in the U.S. and other countries. Other company and
product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they
are associated.
SOURCE NVIDIA Corporation
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