CUDA GPGPU Parallel Computing Newsletter - Issue 56

Thurs., June 9, 2011, Issue #56 - Newsletter Home

WELCOME
Welcome to CUDA: Week in Review, an online news summary for the worldwide CUDA™, GPU computing and parallel programming ecosystem.

CUDA SPOTLIGHT
Dr. Axel Kohlmeyer, Temple University

CUDA TOP STORIES

Sharpen Your Skills This Summer

GPU Acceleration: Easier than Ever

Supermicro’s New SuperServers

LIBJACKET v1.0 from AccelerEyes

EmPro 2011.07 from Agilent

CONTENTS

GPU-Accelerated Discovery
This week’s spotlight is on Dr. Axel Kohlmeyer, an expert in high-performance computing with a focus on molecular dynamics (MD) and visualization.

Dr. Kohlmeyer is associate director of the Institute for Computational Molecular Science and associate professor of research in the College of Science and Technology at Temple University. Here’s an extract of our interview:

NVIDIA: Axel, when did you start using GPUs?

Axel: John Stone of the University of Illinois is to blame for my involvement in GPUs :). Since about 2003 I have become more and more involved with John’s main project, VMD (the molecular visualization program)…. I got started for real with GPUs when I learned about HOOMD (Highly Optimized Object-oriented Many-particle Dynamics), written by Joshua Anderson. It turned out that HOOMD was a good match for a new coarse grain molecular dynamics model that is being developed in our group. Two colleagues and I implemented a few additionally required features into HOOMD and were impressed by the performance of running MD on a GPU.

NVIDIA: What is exciting in molecular dynamics today?

Axel: Advances in processor speed and parallelization (including CUDA) are allowing us to undertake calculations routinely that were ’impossible’ just a short time ago. This has spawned a lot of creativity in studying compound systems, like large bio-molecules embedded into realistic environments such as membranes.

NVIDIA: Temple recently installed a new high-performance computing cluster, based on an NSF grant.

Axel: This is a big win for Temple and a great opportunity in many different ways. Many areas of research are moving towards using high-performance computing tools, thus well-funded and well-supported local facilities are important.

NVIDIA: As computing becomes more powerful, what does the future hold?

Axel: Computing will become much more pervasive and ubiquitous, up to the point where we will often forget that we are using a computer. However, this also presents a huge challenge: where are we going to find people who are capable and motivated enough to develop future technologies? In many ways, we have begun to think that things "just work" and so we have stopped wondering what makes them "tick."

When I was a child, I loved the feeling of discovery. This is what ultimately drove me to work in an academic environment, where I have the opportunity to discover something new every day and experience the excitement that motivated me as a child. I am concerned that kids these days are missing out on that sense of discovery, the "rush" that you feel when you can suddenly connect the dots and understand what is behind what you see in front of you.

- Read the complete interview here

(Would you like to be in the CUDA Spotlight? Email cuda_week_in_review@nvidia.com)

Sharpen Your Skills This Summer

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Here are two new resources to help you enhance your GPU computing knowledge:
- GTC Learning Center (education, news and insight):
www.gputechconf.com/page/gtc-learning-center.html
- CUDA Webinar Series (from basics to deep dives): www.nvidia.com/webinars

GPU Acceleration: Easier than Ever
CUDA Toolkit 4.0 and Parallel Nsight 2.0 for Visual Studio are now available to the public, making it easier than ever to accelerate performance with GPUs.
- CUDA 4.0 features include Unified Virtual Addressing (UVA), Thrust C++ Template Performance
  Primitives Libraries and GPUDirect 2.0. Download at www.nvidia.com/getcuda
- Parallel Nsight 2.0 features include full support for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, CUDA 4.0.
  Download at www.nvidia.com/GetParallelNsight

Supermicro’s New SuperServers
At Computex in Taiwan, Supermicro introduced its latest high-end GPU SuperServers, which pack four GPUs in a 1U form factor and up to six GPUs in a slim 2U. These enterprise servers incorporate advanced energy-efficient components and support CUDA-based Tesla M2050, M2070 and M2090 GPUs.
- See: http://www.supermicro.com/newsroom/pressreleases/2011/press110531_Computex.cfm

LIBJACKET v1.0
AccelerEyes released version 1.0 of LIBJACKET, enabling GPU programmers to achieve better performance. The library is available for C, C++, Fortran and Python.
- See: http://www.accelereyes.com/news/libjacket_1.0

EmPro 2011.07
Agilent Technologies, a leading supplier of electronic design automation (EDA) software, announced a new version of Electromagnetic Professional (EmPro), an electromagnetic modeling and simulation platform. The EmPro Finite Difference Time Domain simulator offers GPU acceleration, resulting in a 6X speedup when using CUDA-based systems.
- See: http://www.agilent.com/about/newsroom/presrel/2011/07jun-em11067.html

CUDA Momentum in Germany
Planning a trip to Germany this summer? Here’s a roundup of CUDA activities to check out:
     1. Frankfurt: Wolfram Research’s European Tour lands in Frankfurt on June 15.
         www.wolfram.com/events/computationalfinance2011
     2. Hamburg: The HP-CAST (HP Consortium for Advanced Scientific and Technical) user
         meeting is on June 16-18. Sessions include a talk on Petascale Systems by Jeffrey
         Vetter of the Georgia Inst. of Technology and a GPU Roadmap presentation by
         Geoff Ballew of NVIDIA.
         http://h20311.www2.hp.com/HPC/cache/277925-0-0-0-121.html?jumpid=go/hpcast
     3. Hamburg: The International Supercomputing Conference (ISC) takes place June 19-23.
         Be sure to tune in to the debate on "GPUs - Fast Lane on Road to Better Science?"
         http://h20311.www2.hp.com/HPC/cache/277925-0-0-0-121.html?jumpid=go/hpcast
     4. Berlin: A CUDA workshop will be held July 2-3 for developers who want to learn how
         to program and utilize the GPU using CUDA, hosted by Dr. Kashif Rasul of Freie
         Universitat Berlin.
         http://cuda.eventbrite.com

CUDA Action in India
- New CUDA Teaching Centers:
        C-DAC ACTS, Bangalore
        Jaypee University of Information Technology, Shimla

- New Academic Partnership Program members:
        Prof. Raja Banerjee from IIT, Hyderabad (focus is on computational fluid dynamics)
        Prof. Kirti Sahu from IIT, Hyderabad (focus is on multiphase flow simulations)

New GPGPU Meetup Groups!
- Washington, DC: www.meetup.com/HPC-GPU-Supercomputing-Group-of-Washington-DC/
- Southern Florida: http://www.supercomputinggroup.com/

NEW: Each week we highlight sessions from GTC 2010 and SC10. Here are our picks for this week:

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      Using CUDA to Accelerate Radar Image Processing (GTC10)
      Aaron Rogan - Neva Ridge Technologies
      http://nvidia.fullviewmedia.com/gtc2010/0923-k-2003.html

      Keeneland — A Resource for Open Computational Science (SC10)
      Jeffrey Vetter - Oak Ridge National Laboratory/Georgia Tech
      http://www.nvidia.com/content/PDF/sc_2010/theater/Vetter_SC10.pdf

NEW: Samsung is recruiting CUDA software engineers for a six-month project in Southern California. Requirements: Two+ years of experience in CUDA optimization, C++; BSCS degree; Experience with image/video processing software. Contact: Charles Jo, charles.jo@sisa.samsung.com

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If you are travelling to any of these cities, feel free to drop in.
Austin Meetup — June 24, 6:00 pm
New York Meetup — June 27, 6:00 pm
Boston Meetup — July 7, 6:00 pm
Silicon Valley Meetup — July 18, 6:15 pm
Australian GPU Users Tele-Meetup — July 21, 4:00 pm

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June 2011	back to the top

- NEW: Wolfram Research European Tour

June 14, 2011, Zurich and June 15, 2011, Frankfurt

www.wolfram.com/events/computationalfinance2011

- Internat’l. Supercomputing Conference (ISC)

June 19-23, 2011, Hamburg, Germany, booth #630

Tutorial: HPC with CUDA (June 19): http://bit.ly/eEKn7B
Debate: GPUs - Fast Lane on Road to Better Science? (June 21): http://bit.ly/lvtDhz
http://www.supercomp.de/isc11/

- CUDA/OpenCL Training - Microsoft, Acceleware

June 20-23, 2011, Cambridge, Mass.

http://acceleware.com/boston-jun20

- NEW: GPU Computation Using Mathematica and OpenCL Webinar (S72)

June 24, 2011

http://www.wolfram.com/services/education/seminars/s72.html

- Internat’l. Conference on Computer Systems and Applications

June 27-30, 2011, Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt

http://aiccsa2011.hpcl.gwu.edu/

July 2011

- NEW: CUDA GPU Programming Workshop

July 2-3, Berlin, Germany

http://cuda.eventbrite.com/

- 2011 World Congress on Engineering (WCE 2011)

July 6-8, 2011, London, England

http://www.iaeng.org/WCE2011/ICPDC2011.html

- NEW: Lattice 2011 Conference

July 11-16, 2011, Lake Tahoe, California

https://latt11.llnl.gov/

- Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO)

July 12-16, 2011 Dublin, Ireland

www.sigevo.org/gecco-2011/index.html

- World Congress in C.S., Computer Engineering, Applied Computing (WORLDCOMP’11)

July 18-21, 2011, Las Vegas, Nevada

www.world-academy-of-science.org/worldcomp11/ws

- Application Accelerators in High Performance Computing (SAAHPC 2011)

July 19-21, 2011, Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee

http://illinois.edu/lb/article/2100/45663

- NEW: GTC Workshop Japan

July 22, 2011, Tokyo

Hosted by NVIDIA, with the Tokyo Institute of Technology

http://www.nv-jp-event.jp/gtc-workshop2011/

Aug. - Sept. 2011

- NEW: LAMMPS Users’ Workshop

Aug. 9-11, 2011, Albuquerque, New Mexico

Learn more about LAMMPS: http://lammps.sandia.gov/index.html

- Advanced Numerical Methods on GPUs

Mini-symposium at ENUMATH 2011

Sept. 5-9, 2011, Univ. of Leicester, Leicester, UK

http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/mathematics/research/enumath2011/minisymposia

- Parallel Processing and Applied Mathematics (PPAM 2011)

Sept. 11-14, 2011, Torun, Poland

Note: Scientific Computing with GPUs tutorial, incl. session by Tim Schroeder, NVIDIA

http://ppam.pl/tutorials/21

- Geospatial Summit

Sept. 13-14, 2011, Herndon, Virginia

http://cfp.foseinstitute.org/gis2011

- SPIE Conference on High-Performance Computing in Remote Sensing

Sept. 19-22, 2011, Prague, Czech Republic

http://spie.org/rs11

- SEG (Society of Exploration Geophysicists) Annual Meeting

Sept. 18-23, 2011, San Antonio, Texas

http://www.seg.org/events/annual-meeting/sanantonio2011/am2011techprogram

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

Downloads	back to the top
– CUDA 4.0: www.nvidia.com/getcuda – Parallel Nsight: http://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-parallel-nsight

Webinars

– CUDA: http://developer.nvidia.com/gpu-computing-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: www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_gpus.html

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
– Stayed 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

– 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 NVIDIA’s parallel computing hardware architecture. 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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