CUDA Turns 5!
This week marks the fifth anniversary of the CUDA programming model. To celebrate the occasion, we caught up with Ian Buck, inventor of CUDA and NVIDIA’s General Manager for GPU Computing. Here is a preview of the interview:

NVIDIA: Ian, how did you get hooked on computing with GPUs?

Ian: During my Ph.D. studies at Stanford, the trends in programmable graphics hardware were really exciting to me as well as the opportunity to work on technology that could influence a wide breadth of sciences, whether it was molecular dynamics, mechanical engineering or turbulence research. I could see that GPUs were becoming powerful enough to help people working on the big questions in science.

NVIDIA: How did you first start using GPUs? Was it as a programmer or a gamer?

Ian: Let’s just say that Stanford had a great internet connection, and as a result, we had an awesome QuakeServer.

NVIDIA: What’s next for GPU computing?

Ian: GPU computing is going mainstream. And it’s not just about NVIDIA. Just look at the great work being done with tools, compilers and apps. Ad hoc GPU user groups are popping up all over the world. A gigantic ecosystem is coming to life. Today, any kind of meaningful simulation is done with GPUs. This focused activity will enable us to solve some of the fundamental problems in science.

NVIDIA: What have you learned along the way, since your days at Stanford working on Brook to your current role as GM for GPU Computing?

Ian: First of all, hire great people. Don’t compromise. The people who use CUDA in industry and academia are intensely driven. I look for the same drive in the people we hire to work on CUDA at NVIDIA -- intellectual curiosity combined with a passion to solve cool and interesting problems. Second, don’t underestimate the value of working on productivity features for developers. The CUDA technology roadmap is focused on making GPU computing easier. Anything we can do to make a developer’s life easier is always worth it.

- Read the full interview with Ian Buck

Editor’s Note: Next week, Ian will be at the SC11 conference in Seattle and would be happy to meet up with current and future CUDA users. If you can’t attend in person, be sure to check out our Facebook live stream from SC11 at: http://apps.facebook.com/nv-supercomputing/

(To suggest a CUDA Spotlight, email cuda_week_in_review@nvidia.com)

CUDA 4.1 Release Candidate

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The CUDA Toolkit v4.1 release candidate (RC1) is now available to CUDA Registered Developers. New features include an open source LLVM-based compiler, 1000+ new image processing functions and a redesigned Visual Profiler with automated performance analysis.
- See: http://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-toolkit-41-rc1

2X in 4 Weeks. Guaranteed.

Double your application performance with directives and GPUs. Simply insert a few "hints" into the compiler and it automatically optimizes and accelerates your code. To help you get started, NVIDIA and PGI are offering a free 30-day license of the directives-based PGI Accelerator compiler. Not only that, we are guaranteeing your application will achieve at least a 2X speedup in 4 weeks or less.
- See: www.nvidia.com/2xin4weeks

Leading Apps Add Multiple GPU Acceleration Support

Four top applications for materials science and biomolecular modeling - LAMMPS, GROMACS, GAMESS and QMCPACK - have added support for multiple GPU acceleration, enabling a reduction in simulation times from days to hours.
- See: http://bit.ly/uqOmu2

New CULA Sparse from EM Photonics

EM Photonics released the general availability version of CULA Sparse, a collection of matrix solvers for sparse systems on NVIDIA GPUs. In addition, new functionality has been added to CULA R13.
- See: www.culatools.com

MSC Software Announces MSC Nastran 2012

MSC Software announced MSC Nastran 2012, available for download in late November. The software will be GPU accelerated.
- See: www.mscsoftware.com/About-Us/News/Default.aspx?articleid=1355

Chinese Researchers Simulate H1N1 Virus

Chinese researchers achieved a breakthrough by creating the world’s first computer simulation of a whole H1N1 influenza virus at the atomic level. Researchers at the Institute of Process Engineering of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS-IPE) are using molecular-dynamics simulations as a "computational microscope" to peer into the structure of the virus. The work is performed on a supercomputer with 2000+ Tesla GPUs.
- See: http://www.nvidia.com/object/newsroom.html

New Research from IDC

IDC published a report on "Heterogeneous Computing: A New Paradigm for the Exascale Era."
- See: http://blogs.nvidia.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/IDC-Exascale-Executive-Brief_Nov2011.pdf

New CUDA Course in Egypt from Applied Parallel Computing

Applied Parallel Computing will hold an advanced three-day course on GPU computing and CUDA in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, Dec. 13-16.
- See: http://cuda-training.eventbrite.com/

GPU Computing Gems - Jade Edition

The second volume of Morgan Kaufmann’s GPU Computing Gems series offers insights, ideas and hands-on skills. The 30 chapters are written to be accessible to researchers from any industry.
- See: http://www.amazon.com/GPU-Computing-Gems-Jade-Applications/dp/0123859638

GPU@BU Workshop

Boston University held a research symposium and tutorial this week on GPUs in scientific computing. The event was organized by Lorena Barba, Richard Brower, Martin Herbordt and Claudio Rebbi.
- See: http://blogs.bu.edu/gpu/gpubu-workshop/

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Path to Exascale Computing, by Sumit Gupta
GPU Acceleration Made Easy, by Roy Kim

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NEW: Each week we highlight a session from a GPU Technology Conference event. Here is our pick for this week: Large-Scale CCTV Face Recognition (GTC 2010) by Abbas Bigdeli and Ben Lever, NICTA
- see: http://nvidia.fullviewmedia.com/gtc2010/0923-c-2173.html

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NEW: Sportvision is seeking a Senior Software Engineer with a proven track record working with computer vision based products. Requirements: Enthusiasm and ability to participate in solving interesting and complex problems.
- See: http://www.sportvision.com/info/srsoftwareengineer
(To submit a job listing, email cuda_week_in_review@nvidia.com)

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The GPU Meetups offer a great way to learn about GPU computing and meet interesting people in a relaxed environment.

GPU Meetup of Seattle, Wed., Nov. 16, 7:00 pm (networking), 7:45 pm (program)

Special SC11 Meetup! Talks by NVIDIA, Microsoft, LexisNexis. Location: Amazon

GPU Meetup of New Mexico, Wed., Nov. 16, 7:00 pm

Topic: ROMIO and MPI-IO in Hybrid HPC

GPU Meetup of Brisbane, Nov. 17, 6:00 p.m

GPU Meetup of New York City, Nov. 21, 6:00 pm

(Would you like to start a Meetup? Email cuda_week_in_review@nvidia.com)

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GTC U.S. 2012 (May 14-17)
Poster deadline: Dec. 8
http://www.gputechconf.com/page/participate.html
https://gtc-submissions.confreg.com/

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- Supercomputing 2011 (SC11)

Nov. 12-18, Seattle, Washington

Learn about NVIDIA activities at SC11: http://www.nvidia.com/sc11

For more information on SC11, visit http://sc11.supercomputing.org/

Join the GPU Technology Theater from your desk via the SC11 Facebook live stream: http://apps.facebook.com/nv-supercomputing/

- GPU Programming for Defense/Intelligence — AccelerEyes (Webinar)

Nov. 15, 2011

Learn to accelerate common defense and intelligence algorithms using easy, powerful programming libraries, with Jacket for use with MATLAB and LibJacket for C/C++/Fortran.

http://bit.ly/rdZ8pH

- Heterogeneous Data-Parallel Programming (Webinar)

Nov. 16, 2011

Presenter: Prof. Satnam Singh, University of Birmingham, U.K.

https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/164396834

- NEW: CUDA 4.1 RC1 (Webinar)

Nov. 22, 2011

Presented by NVIDIA

https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/775971282

- CUDA Training (Basic and Advanced) — CAPS

Nov. 22-24, 2011, Rennes, France

Presented by CAPS

http://t.co/DWe0Zqka

Email: training (at) caps-entreprise.com

- CUDA 4-Day Training Course – Acceleware

Nov. 22-25, 2011, Frankfurt, Germany

Presented by Acceleware with Microsoft

Instructor: Michael Durocher

http://www.acceleware.com//nov22munich

December 2011

- AGU (American Geophysical Union) Meeting

Dec. 5, 2011, San Francisco

Session on High-Res Modeling Using GPU and Many-Core Architectures

http://sites.agu.org/fallmeeting/scientific-program/session-search/530

- Intro to GPU Programming Workshop - La Maison de la Simulation

Dec. 5-9, 2011, France

http://www.maisondelasimulation.fr/index.php

- NEW: Advanced CUDA 3-Day Training Course - Applied Parallel Computing

Dec. 13-16, Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt

http://cuda-training.eventbrite.com/

- GTC Asia

Dec. 14-15, 2011, Beijing, China

Featuring the latest GPU computing breakthroughs, demos and presentations.

http://www.gputechconf.cn/home.html

- LibJacket CUDA Library for Maximus — AccelerEyes (Webinar)

Dec. 15, 2011

Learn to integrate computations with visualizations in a CUDA-based app through simple visualization functions for plotting, image and volume rendering, and more.

http://bit.ly/rdZ8pHs

2012

- NEW: CUDA Programming 1-Day Course - Delft University of Technology

Feb. 3, 2012, Netherlands

http://ta.twi.tudelft.nl/users/vuik/gpu.html

(To list an event, email: cuda_week_in_review@nvidia.com)

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– Want to test drive a GPU? Try the Tesla Molecular Dynamics SimCluster: www.nvidia.com/simcluster
Downloads
– CUDA 4.0: www.nvidia.com/getcuda – Parallel Nsight: http://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-parallel-nsight
Webinars
– CUDA: www.nvidia.com/webinars – Parallel Nsight: http://developer.nvidia.com/developer-webinars

CUDA Registered Developer Program

– Sign up: www.nvidia.com/paralleldeveloper

CUDA GPUs

– List of CUDA-enabled GPUs: http://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-gpus

CUDA on the Web

– See previous issues of CUDA: Week in Review: http://is.gd/cBXbg
– Follow CUDA & GPU Computing on Twitter: www.twitter.com/gpucomputing
– Network with other developers: www.gpucomputing.net
– Stay tuned to GPGPU news and events: www.gpgpu.org
– Learn more about CUDA on CUDA Zone: www.nvidia.com/cuda
– Check out the NVIDIA Research page: www.nvidia.com/research

CUDA Recommended Reading

– Future of Computing Performance: http://bit.ly/hYqH2H
– Supercomputing for the Masses, Part 21: http://is.gd/Fj56gf
– CUDA books: http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_books.html

CUDA Recommended Viewing

– The Third Pillar of Science: www.nvidia.com/object/race-for-better-science.html

– GTC 2010 presentations: www.nvidia.com/gtc

– SC10 presentations: www.nvidia.com/object/sc10_theater.html

CUDA is a parallel computing platform and programming model invented by NVIDIA. It enables dramatic increases in computing performance by harnessing the power of the graphics processing unit (GPU). NVIDIA provides a complete toolkit for programming on the CUDA architecture, supporting standard computing languages such as C, C++ and Fortran as well as APIs such as OpenCL and DirectCompute. Send comments and suggestions to: cuda_week_in_review@nvidia.com

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CUDA: WEEK IN REVIEW

CUDA 4.1 Release Candidate

2X in 4 Weeks. Guaranteed.

Leading Apps Add Multiple GPU Acceleration Support

New CULA Sparse from EM Photonics

MSC Software Announces MSC Nastran 2012

Chinese Researchers Simulate H1N1 Virus

New Research from IDC

New CUDA Course in Egypt from Applied Parallel Computing

GPU Computing Gems - Jade Edition

GPU@BU Workshop

November 2011

December 2011