Say hello to NVlink, a new technology by NVIDIA that is not constrained by PCIe bandwidth and latency limitations, but you will have to wait for the Pascal generation of 2016 GPUs to get it. NVlink is NVIDIA's properitary "DRAM speed and latency" class interface for CPU to GPU and GPU to GPU point-to-point communications. The basic building block for NVLink is a high-speed, … [Read more...]
PGI 14.4 is now released with lots of OpenACC C++ Goodness!
PGI 14.4 is now released with lots of OpenACC C++ goodness. Give it a try! Here is the link for or those with existing licenses. If need be, get a 15 day trial license and use some of my OpenACC tutorials. PGI Trial keys Trial license keys are used for evaluating PGI software. They are valid for fifteen days. If you haven't already done so, you … [Read more...]
The CUDA Thrust API Now Supports Streams and Concurrent Tasks
The CUDA Thrust API now supports streams and concurrent kernels through the use of a new API called Bulk created by Jared Hoberock at NVIDIA. The design of Bulk is intended to extend the parallel execution policies described in the evolving Technical Specification for Parallel Extensions for C++ N3960. Note that bulk is not part of the CUDA 6.0 distribution and must be … [Read more...]
NVIDIA HBAO+ and TXAA Enhanced Gaming Video
A fun video showing the progress being made in near photo realistic gaming imagery. THe big news in this video is the use of HBAO+ (for ambient occlusion) and TXAA (anti-aliasing) technologies. I imagine such video platforms can be used for small studio animation projects as well. The Watchdog game highlighted in the video will be released May 27, … [Read more...]
OpenCL + Java Acceleration on Mobile Promises 8x speedup with 3x Less Power
In what will certainly become a flood of papers about GPU acceleration of Java applications on mobile devices, a masters theses by Iype P. Joseph at the University of Ottawa claims 8x performance gains and 3x reductions in power consumption through the use of Java binding with OpenCL 1.1 on a a Freescale i.MX6Q SabreLite board. With NVIDIA entering the programmable mobile GPU … [Read more...]
K1-powered NVIDIA Shield 2 Benchmarks Appear
The good folks at Tom's Hardware are lending credibility to the Antutu benchmarks of a K1 powered NVIDIA Shield 2 (link). It is not surprising that the NVIDIA Shield would be one of the first platforms to contain the newest NVIDIA Tegra chip. The claimed specs for the Shield-2 appear reasonable: A screen resolution of 1440 x 810, 4 GB of RAM 16 GB of internal … [Read more...]
PGI 14.4 Release Contains Much OpenACC C++ Goodness
PGI released their 14.4 and upcoming 14.7 OpenACC 2.0 roadmap. The expectation is that we will see the 14.4 release in early May and the 14.7 release in early July. Note: these are not official PGI dates. Analysis: The 14.4 support of atomic operations will enable many low-wait algorithms such as counters and massively parallel stacks. Improved reduction performance in … [Read more...]
(4/24 update) Signals from Nvidia’s Sumit Gupta
Sumit Gupta is a busy man. Named by HPCwire as a 2013 "Person to Watch", Sumit does not idly take time to create a blog post unless it conveys a message about the NVIDIA Tesla development and marketing effort. His recent blog, "Fostering an Explosion of Innovation in the Data Center", posted by Steve Hamm, recognizes how the data-center is going to be supporting mobile … [Read more...]
Calling all Android Developers Interested in Using Microsoft Visual Studio on NVIDIA Tegra
The NVIDIA Developer Tools team is conduction a survey to assess interest in Microsoft Visual Studio as a development tool for Tegra Android devices. Not a registered developer? No problem! click here. NVIDIA is working on making development on Tegra platforms the best possible environment for Android application development. We are conducting interest from our Tegra developer … [Read more...]
Battery Powered Supercomputing for the Masses: First Impression of the NVIDIA Jetson TK1 board
GTC 2014 demonstrated that we have now entered the "Battery Powered Supercomputing for the Masses" era. I had the opportunity to experience a Jetson TK1 board running ubuntu 13.04 at the hands-on lab. First impressions were very positive with a snappy response to the Ubuntu window system.. The GTC hands-on labs are oriented for techies and not the press. They provide a very … [Read more...]