The NVIDIA Blog

Posted: 17 Nov 2011 09:31 AM PST

Five years to the week that CUDA was launched, let's consider just how much has been achieved in this groundbreaking architecture:

350 million CUDA-enabled GPUs have been installed.
More than one million downloads have been made of the CUDA Toolkit.
500 universities around the world teach CUDA and GPU computing courses.
More than a dozen CUDA books have been written. The most recent is GPU Computing Gems – Jade Edition.
150 institutions are formally recognized as CUDA Centers of Excellence or CUDA Research and Training Centers, fostering close relationships between NVIDIA Research and academia.
More than 1,000 people this year alone have participated in GPU Meetups in the U.S., rubbing elbows and learining about GPU technology.
The GPU computing ecosystem grows daily, offering up new tools, compilers, codes, applications and research papers covering hundreds of domains.

Industry analyst Rob Enderle recently summed up CUDA's importance in an online column. CUDA, he wrote, "is a platform that could save the world or my life someday…. It is allowing people who otherwise couldn’t afford, or couldn’t get access to supercomputing resources the critical capability to get their work done. The kind of work ranges from medical to environmental research, and the result could be the safety of the human race.”

For CUDA’s five-year milestone, we thought it fitting to catch up with Ian Buck, the inventor of CUDA and NVIDIA's General Manager for GPU Computing. We interview Ian about the early days of CUDA and what’s on the horizon for GPU computing. Check out the full interview with Ian on CUDA Zone.

At SC11 this week in Seattle, Wash., HPCWire honored CUDA with the “Best HPC Software Product or Technology: NVIDIA Next-generation CUDA Architecture” award. If you are at SC11 in person, be sure to stop by the NVIDIA GPU Technology Theater and say hello to Ian and the rest of the NVIDIA team. If you can’t make it in person, watch the presentations from your desk or laptop via our Facebook live stream.

The story of GPU computing is just beginning.

Posted: 16 Nov 2011 12:03 PM PST

Popular Science magazine today bestowed their coveted Best of What's New Award in the Gadgets category on the NVIDIA Tegra 2 mobile processor, calling it an “Android Life Saver”.

Tegra 2 is helping to reshape the notion of what a mobile device can do. It's done its part to usher in a new wave of mobile devices pushing high performance yet consuming little power. These new super phones and tablets come from some of the world's largest device makers and now serve as gaming consoles, music players, video players and much more.

Tegra 2 is shipping in over 60 phones in 70 countries, and in more than 20 tablet models available in 60 countries. You'll find it in such popular devices like the T-Mobile LG G2x, Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, Sony Tablet S and Asus Eee Pad Transformer.

Thanks to its multi-core processor design and GeForce GPU, Tegra 2 devices are also redefining mobile games. They are capable of delivering more realistic and immersive games through Tegra Zone – games with real-time physics, higher-resolution textures and smoother gameplay. And, if you have a compatible device, you can even play these games on a big screen TV with a full-size game controller.

"For 24 years, Popular Science has honored the innovations that surprise and amaze us − those that make a positive impact on our world today and challenge our views of whatʼs possible in the future." said Mark Jannot, Editor-in-Chief of Popular Science. "The Best of Whatʼs New Award is the magazineʼs top honor, and the 100 winners − chosen from among thousands of entrants − represent the highest level of achievement in their fields."

Read more about Tegra 2 on PopSci's website. If you'd like to peruse the rest of Popular Science's Best of What's New 2011 lineup, click this link.

Do you own a Tegra device? We’d love to know which device you own and how you use it in the comments below.