NVIDIA nTerresting News: 24 September 2010

In this issue:

• It's GTC Week and the announcements and excitement are at full-throttle!
• GeForce has full line-ups of killer GPUs for desktops and notebooks that do gaming and much more!
• The world is going 3D and NVIDIA 3D Vision is leading the way for the PC.
• NVIDIA Optimus is easy, simple and everywhere --­ 6 of the top 7 OEMs offer Optimus systems today.

GTC Week!!

The epicenter of the GPU computing revolution has shifted this week to the San Jose Convention Center. It's serving as home of this year's GPU Technology Conference, where several thousand attendees are learning more about what researchers are doing on the GPU front from medical to video animation.

"Don't kid yourself. GPUs are a game-changer." said Frank Chambers, a GTC conference attendee shopping for GPUs for his finite element analysis work. "What we are seeing here is like going from propellers to jet engines. That made transcontinental flights routine. Wide access to this kind of computing power is making things like artificial retinas possible, and that wasn't predicted to happen until 2060.

NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang kicked things off in a big way with a sweeping view of the state-of-the-art of GPUs.

He gave attendees a glimpse in to the future of GPUs:

"At its GPU Technology conference, Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang disclosed the company's plans for new GPU architectures every two years. The current architecture, code-named Fermi, came out at the end of last year and forms the basis for the company's current midrange and high-end chips, currently built on a 40nm process. This will be followed by an architecture code-named "Kepler," to be built on 28nm technology due out in 2011. In 2013, this is to be followed by "Maxwell". (PC Magazine's coverage is here.)"

Other key happenings included:

Matlab, a leadinghigh-level language for technical computing and used by over a million by a million-plus engineers and scientists,runs dramatically faster, now that it supports GPUs. MathWorks, developer of the numeric computation environment, announced Monday that this new capability is provided within its Parallel Computing Toolbox and Distributed Computing Server.

Mathematica, a software for mathematicians, is GPU accelerated, too. Its developer, Wolfram Research, said Monday that it's boosting by more than 100x the speed in functions such as modeling, simulation and visualization.

GE Unitopts for GPU acceleration. GE Intelligent Platforms announced Monday an integrated, hardware and software development environment for GPGPU computing, as well as AxisLib-GPU, a software environment for development and debugging CUDA apps.

NextIOunveiled Monday the first 1U expansion system to support Tesla M2070 GPUs. The network-consolidation solutions group said it's doing so through its vCORE Express product line.

"I think we are witnessing the birth of a new computing ecosystem here. The exhibitors are incredibly enthusiastic and have great demos to show. Today's news may not seem like a big deal at first look, but, as one speaker said today, the porting of MATLAB opens up GPU computing to anyone who knows math. To me, that adds up to a rising groundswell."

Renowned computational biologist Klaus Schulten discussed his team's pioneering work with the computational microscope.

*Update* NVIDIA has written a blog post about the keynote and its GREAT! So I'm not even going to try to keep up. Here is the link to check it out!"

NVIDIA has in recent years been working to establish its own ecosystem for companies trying to further the capabilities of GPU technology. The idea is to promote the myriad ways in which GPUs are used in order to inspire other small companies to tap the power of the GPU for their own businesses. The results are presented in the Emerging Companies Summit at GTC.

Other must see presentations were given by The Foundry, Walt Disney Animation Studios and Harvard luminary Hanspeter Pfister.

"I consider the GPU Technology Conference to be the single best place to see firsthand the amazing work enabled by the GPU," said Professor Hanspeter Pfister, School of Engineering & Applied Sciences, Harvard University and GTC 2009 keynote speaker. "It's a great venue for meeting researchers, developers, scientists, and entrepreneurs from around the world and I'm looking forward to GTC 2010."

In this video wrap-up from day one, Ujesh Desai, VP of product marketing, provides highlights from the show floor. Rob Csongor, VP of corporate marketing, describes the day's excitement live from the show floor on Day 2. Dan Vivoli, senior vice president at NVIDIA, recaps Day 3. GTC is a wrap!

GeForce is Best

With a full line up of ‘Fermi;-based GPUs on the market, the next-generation architecture is starting to set itself apart from the crowd.

"Its new hardware tessellation support will enable games to reach an entirely new caliber of graphics."

On the mobile front, users are seeing the benefit of the GeForce 400M Series of GPUs:

"Not everybody needs the world's fastest mobile GPU, so NVIDIA is sagely trickling down its Fermi magic to more affordable price points today. The 400M family is being fleshed out with five new midrange parts -- GT 445M, GT 435M, GT 425M, GT 420M and GT 415M, to give them their gorgeous names -- and a pair of heavy hitters known as the GTX 470M and GTX 460M."

And on desktop PCs, the newly-released GeForce GTS 450 is making big noise:

"The right match for users who want DirectX 11 gaming under $200. It's a great SLI choice as well with its lower price."

It is even better in SLI mode:

"Great SLI performance of GTS450 proves that the wait is over and SLI setup can now be included in the price/performance discussion."

And the GeForce GTX 460 shows no signs of slowing down, with the Palit GTX460 Sonic Platinum alone winning over 31 awards!

3D Grows Stronger

Interest in 3D Vision and 3D content is strong and growing.

"NVIDIA's technology is certainly the most technologically impressive on the market right now, both in terms of the quality of the 3D Visuals and the long-term comfort it allows when playing games..."

What Laptop, October 2010

3D Vision unit sales are in the hundreds of thousands and will grow with the continued introduction of new 3D platforms. Some 30 million 3D PCs are expected by 2012. Already, six of the 10 largest monitor makers are shipping 3D displays; and Asus, Toshiba, Clevo and Acer are shipping notebooks. Streaming web content, such as 3D Vision Live, and sporting events, like the US Open Tennis Finals, are happening. There are 3D cameras and projectors supported, and Blu-ray 3D players from Cyberlink and Arcsoft. And over 425 games are supported with 3D Vision technology.

Optimus is Easier

Optimus optimizes the mobile experience by letting the user get the performance of discrete graphics from a notebook while still delivering great battery life. JagetReviews looked at 14 Optimus notebooks available today in Indonisia.

"In addition to the power-efficiency, this technology can provide higher performance when needed. Semua itu disuguhkan dengan kemudahan pakai yang sangat sederhana. Everyone can use it because the ease of use is very simple. Anda tidak perlu menjadi seorang geek atau jagoan IT untuk dapat memanfaatkan teknologi ini. You do not need to be a geek or IT whiz to be able to utilize this technology."

Optimus accomplishes this by automatically and seamlessly selecting the right graphics processor for the job between an NVIDIA discrete GPU or an Intel integrated GPU-seamlessly and automatically. Make your next notebook an Optimus notebook.