NVIDIA nTeresting Newsletter - 16 November 2012

In This Issue:

· NVIDIA Tesla K20 powers the Oak Ridge Lab's Titan Supercomputer to the number 1 spot on The Top500 list.

· Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 is out, and NVIDIA is using it to poke the beehive on some old rivalries.

· Tegra 3 powers some cool gadgets for holiday shopping.

Tesla K20 Powers Titan to the Top!

At the SC12 supercomputing conference this week, NVIDIA unveiled the NVIDIA Tesla K20 family of GPU accelerators, the highest performance, most efficient accelerators ever built.

"The new Tesla K20 chips are based on NVIDIA's next-generation Kepler architecture, allowing them to reach processing speeds nearly three times those reached by GPUs based on the chip maker's prior-generation Fermi architecture. The Kepler-based design also makes the new Tesla K20 lineup more power-efficient than earlier GPU models, a feature that is crucial in high-performance computing environments, where intensive workloads must be handled quickly, without compromising efficiency."

It is also the technology powering Titan, the world's fastest supercomputer according to the TOP500 list.

"In the battle of the DOE labs, Oak Ridge Lab's Titan supercomputer has taken the title from the former TOP500 champ, Lawrence Livermore's Sequoia. The GPU-charged Titan, using the new NVIDIA K20X-equipped XK7 blades from Cray, delivered 17.6 petaflops to Sequoia's 16.3 petaflops on Linpack, the sole metric for TOP500 rankings."

But Tesla K20 is Kepler, and that means it uses power efficiently.

"Titan looks like it will also take the energy-efficiency title from Sequoia and the Blue Gene/Q platform. The Oak Ridge super delivers 2,120 megaflops/watt, besting Sequoia's current mark of 2,100 megaflops/watt. The results, however, won't be official until the Green500 list is announced later this week."

Duty Time!

NVIDIA is elated about the release of Call of Duty: Black Ops II this week. Besides being glad to finally play the game, our excitement stems from the franchises renewed emphasis on PC gaming.

We will be celebrating its release by launching the first-ever "GeForce GTX Call of Duty Rivalries" competition which pits top colleges against each other in Call of Duty: Black Ops II four-person, last team standing multiplayer matches. Participants in the first round of competition include the storied rivalries of Cal vs. Stanford, USC vs. UCLA and UNC vs. NC State. Two additional wildcard colleges from any accredited college in the United States will also be chosen by the Facebook community to field teams. See details on GeForce.com or visit NVIDIA's Facebook page

The Call of Duty franchise first began on the PC in 2003 and has been one of the most popular PC games ever since.

"Activision announced today Call of Duty Black Ops 2 made $500 million on its first day at retail, eclipsing the franchise's previous record of $400 million as set by Modern Warfare 3 last year. Back then Modern Warfare 3 sold 6.5 million copies in the US and UK to make that figure, suggesting even greater numbers of copies sold this time around."

Black Ops II builds on its award-winning gameplay and stunning graphics by being the first in the Call of Duty series to be powered by Direct X11. The PC version of Call of Duty: Black Ops II is a visual masterpiece, differentiated with visual enhancements such as ambient occlusion, depth-of-field and TXAA anti-aliasing.

Finally we released GeForce driver 310.54 drivers earlier this week.

"Now that you've called in sick to work or decided to skip this morning's chemistry lab in order to play through a few more missions in Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, you might as well squeeze the most performance out of the game as possible. To help you do that, NVIDIA has made available a new set of beta drivers that promise to boost framerates by up to 26 percent in the latest CoD title."

It is also up to 18% faster performance in Assassin's Creed III. Read more on the driver and the PC version of Call of Duty: Black Ops II on our blog post: https://blogs.nvidia.com/2012/11/equip-your-pc-for-battle-faster-geforce-drivers-arrive-in-time-for-call-of-duty/

Thanks for including us in your Call of Duty coverage and look for us online!

The Ultimate Holiday Gadgets Powered by Tegra 3

With the holidays just around the corner, consumers are thinking of the hottest tech gifts for friends and family.

Well, be sure to check out two Tegra-powered devices drawing kudos - the Google Nexus 7, one of the most popular tablets on the market, and the HTC One X+ super phone, with blazing fast speeds on the AT&T LTE network.

Here's why experts are recommending the Nexus 7 and One X+:

"The Nexus hits the near-perfect price-to-performance ratio with NFC, a front-facing camera, and one of the most comfortable designs of any tablet, all at a $199 price."

"Despite steady adoption, decent tablets still command pretty hefty prices. The Nexus 7 beats them by more than half."

"The Nexus 7 is the best $199 7-inch tablet out there and for good reasons: Google pushed the envelope on the entertainment front like there is not tomorrow, providing a great 1280×800 IPS display, good performance for gaming thanks to the Tegra 3 processor and great video playback with good audio, and all of this packaged in a very light and well balanced body."

"While the One X remains awesome to this day, power hungry shoppers may prefer to wait for the One X+, which combines a quad-core Tegra 3, a larger 2,100mAh battery and 32GB or 64GB of internal storage."

"The HTC One X was among the best smartphones of 2012, but things got a bit better when HTC released the improved version. The One X+ bests its predecessor by including a 1.7 GHz quad-core Tegra 3 processor that is compatible with LTE...This one is truly a no-brainer if you love the HTC One X but want something that competes directly with the latest and greatest."

"The HTC One X+ LTE is the prettiest Android device to come out yet... It features a whopping 64GB of internal storage, all for a price that's much lower than other 64GB devices."

Looking for a tablet, take a peek at the Microsoft Surface RT, Asus VIVO Tab RT or Lenovo Yoga 11.

Microsoft Surface RT

"The 10.6-inch slate is also impeccably built, and the cool matte surface feels great in the hand."

Lenovo Yoga 11

"The ARM-powered Yoga 11 takes the cake for most unique form factor: as its name implies, it sports a flip-and-fold design that lets it transform from a notebook into a slate and vice versa."

Asus VIVO Tab RT

"This device features the thin-and-light design and long battery life we loved from ASUS' Android-based Transformer tablets..."