Thursday, 25 August 2011

The NVIDIA Blog

The NVIDIA Blog

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A GPU Mini-Supercomputer for Every Scientist

Posted: 25 Aug 2011 09:00 AM PDT

What if every graduate student, researcher and professor could have access to a supercomputer, right in their own university? Can you imagine what kind of scientific breakthroughs they could make with this level of computing power?

The problem with traditional supercomputers is that they are large and expensive, and so accessible to only a select few scientists. Today, however, there is an alternative to high-performance computers with large footprints and lofty price tags.

HP ProLiant SL390 G7 server with NVIDIA Tesla M2070 GPUs

HP has just launched the GPU Starter Kit, which makes it easier and more affordable than ever to put the power of a supercomputer in the hands of researchers everywhere. The Kit is a fully preconfigured cluster of HP servers accelerated by NVIDIA Tesla GPUs – the computational engine under the hoods of the world's fastest supercomputers, like the Tianhe-1A in China and Tsubame 2.0 in Japan.

Better yet, at half the typical list price, the GPU Starter Kit is an attractive option for a wide variety of researchers and scientists. But, don't think that "mini" systems like these are small on performance.

The fact is, amazing science is mushrooming all over the world on smaller installations of GPU-powered servers:

  • At the University of Delaware, researchers are accelerating discoveries in human pathological conditions. With GPUs, their research is done 10x faster.
  • Researchers at the University of Padua, Italy, are using a 16 GPU cluster to better understand the beginning of the universe.
  • In a joint collaboration between University of North Carolina Charlotte and Georgia Tech, researchers are looking to GPUs to better understand protein-DNA interactions for future drug design. With 32 GPUs, they are able to achieve higher performance than with 1,200 CPUs alone.

Nothing inspires us more than empowering scientists to do amazing things. We believe one way to equip the thousands of university researchers with the tools they need is to start small. That's where the GPU Starter Kit comes in.

So what is the GPU Starter Kit from HP? It's a pre-configured cluster of eight HP Proliant SL390 servers with 24 NVIDIA Tesla M2070 GPUs. It is packaged to help researchers hit the ground running with an easy out-of-the-box experience. More details on the configuration are available as a direct PDF download here.

Many researchers rely on popular scientific applications that are already accelerated with GPUs. But for those who own proprietary applications, the kit includes a broad set of development tools at special discount prices.

With this offering, HP and NVIDIA are putting mini-supercomputers right in the researchers' offices, empowering them to do great things.  Ultimately this will mean even more breakthrough science with GPUs.

You can email us at hpstarterkit @ nvidia.com if you need more info.

 

Game Demo: Sprinkle for Tegra-powered Android devices

Posted: 25 Aug 2011 06:00 AM PDT

With the launch of TegraZone.com, we asked the two-man development team at Malmö, Sweden-based Mediocre to talk about their new Android game Sprinkle. It’s exclusive to Tegra-powered Android super phones and tablets sporting dual-core processors, and will soon support NVIDIA’s Project Kal-El, the next-generation Tegra quad-core mobile processor.

The casual gaming genre has taken off in recent months, what with simple, addictive games that have you snipping some string and flinging furious fowl. As popular as those games have proven to be, Henkrik Johansson, co-founder of Mediocre, believes that there's room in this gaming space "for more interactivity, action, movement and more vivid environments." That's where Sprinkle comes in.

The idea behind Sprinkle is to use your fire hose to extinguish fires before they burn the cute, blueberry-esque villagers' houses to the ground. To make things harder, the game places interactive obstacles in the way of your water stream and intermittently bombards the village with flaming rocks. Combine those elements with tricky maps that make you think before you douse, and you've got a recipe for a game that's easy to pick up but hard to put down.

Sprinkle is available for Tegra-powered Android devices today on Tegra Zone, and it takes advantage of Tegra's horsepower for some very cool graphics. The fluid simulation used to make the water look and act as it would in real life is "a very computing intensive task." To pull off a realistic water effect, the game leverages both of Tegra 2's two processing cores, along with specific Tegra optimizations, to deliver realistic fluid dynamics.

It's clear that two processing cores deliver better performance than a single core. Add even more cores, and you get even more performance. To that end, Mediocre is preparing a future version of Sprinkle that will take advantage of NVIDIA's upcoming quad-core Kal-El mobile processor.

As Mediocre puts it, "With Project Kal-El around the corner, these are interesting times for mobile game developers – especially for those of us who are making physics-based games. We think Sprinkle is a good example of how to use complex physics simulation for gameplay and not just effects."

You can find this extended version of Sprinkle, with 24 extra levels, on Tegra Zone and Android Market for $1.99.

Check the video below to see Sprinkle in action.

 

Tegra Zone Hits The Web

Posted: 25 Aug 2011 06:00 AM PDT

The Tegra Zone app on your Tegra-powered Android superphone already makes it easy to catch up on the Android games optimized for your Tegra device.

Well, today we're launching the Tegra Zone website at www.tegrazone.com to give you access from your laptop or desktop to the latest game news, reviews and release information for Tegra-optimized games.

TegraZone.com includes professional game reviews, high-res screenshots, HD gameplay videos, game developer interviews, all the latest gaming news and one-click downloads through Android Market. As an added bonus, we've included community forums that you can use to discuss your favorite Tegra-optimized Android games.

If you're thinking about buying a Tegra-powered mobile device, TegraZone.com is a convenient way to learn about some of the best Android games. Those with a Tegra device now have another convenient destination to brush up on all your Tegra games. You can also tell your friends about Tegra games and news by sharing web links via Facebook and Twitter.

For all you Android developers out there, we'd like to offer you the opportunity to give your game more visibility by featuring it on TegraZone.com. With over 250,000 Android games in the Android Market, it can be a challenge to get your game noticed. Let us know about your game over at Zone In, the Tegra Developer Zone (developer.nvidia.com/zone-in), and just might see your game listed on Tegra Zone!

To commemorate our launch, we're giving away five Acer Iconia Tab A500 Android tablets, powered by the dual-core Tegra 2 processor, during our launch month – enter now on TegraZone.com*.

* The promotion is open to participants in the United States and Canada only.

NVIDIA Mentors On Mission To Brighten Young Lives

Posted: 24 Aug 2011 03:40 PM PDT

When the NVIDIA Foundation asks employees about which social issues we should address, education is always at the top. As a high tech company, our success is founded on engineering. So, it makes sense that NVIDIAns embrace the We Teach Science (WTS) program.

WTS pairs every student with an NVIDIA employee who will help teach Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) subject matter throughout an entire academic year. In our weekly sessions, we mentor students via virtual whiteboard collaboration software on issues related to STEM.

As part of WTS, I get the opportunity to show young students how STEM impacts their lives. I can show them alternatives to learning from textbooks filled with sterile or contrived lessons. I help them think about what they see in sports, movies, and life in general. It’s not about being 100% right but making the effort to gain understanding.

Students in the WTS program get the help they need before they fall behind in school – prevention here is much more effective than playing catch-up. The program also nurtures students' aspirations to succeed in higher education. This kind of encouragement and reinforcement is something you can only do with the one-on-one mentoring offered by WTS.

We sometimes mentor as a group to share examples.

I walked away from the program feeling like I really made a difference in the mindset of the student. Sure I helped with math skills, but I felt that this was the first time the student spoke with a non-teacher, non-parent about education. Over the year, we spoke about topics beyond problem solving and really established a relationship. My hope is that he came away with an understanding of the importance of education and that the program instilled in him a desire to continue to learn.

Would I do it again? Was it worth it? You bet. This year, NVIDIA will continue to offer the WTS program, and has already signed up over 40 mentors, including myself. Last year was a great learning experience for everyone involved and we are ready to apply those lessons and take the program to new heights.
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