The NVIDIA Blog

GPU Computing Experts Join CUDA Fellow Ranks

Posted: 21 May 2012 04:04 PM PDT

Two more researchers have been added to the ranks of nine existing CUDA Fellows, who are recognized by NVIDIA for their contributions to the areas of CUDA architecture and parallel computing.

John Owens, an associate professor at the University of California at Davis, and Massimo Bernaschi, chief technology officer at the Institute of Applied Computing at Italy's CNR (National Research Council) received the honor. This entitles them to the latest NVIDIA Tesla GPUs, a travel stipend, technical support from NVIDIA and priority access to NVIDIA GPU hardware and software.

The CUDA Fellow Program was established to recognize, reward and assist researchers who use the CUDA architecture within their disciplines or geographies. CUDA Fellows have demonstrated the benefits of GPU computing to advance their fields of research and have been instrumental in introducing GPU computing to their peers.

Here's a bit of background information on the pair:

John Owens is an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at University of C Davis, which he joined in 2003.

His group pursues research problems in GPU computing in both GPU fundamentals (data structures, algorithms, and multi-GPU computing) and applications. His graduate students have won five NVIDIA Graduate Research Fellowships. He graduated from Stanford with a Ph.D. in electrical engineering in 2002 and from Berkeley with a B.S. in EECS in 1995.

Massimo Bernaschi is chief technology officer of the Institute for Applied Computing at Italy's CNR (National Research Council). He is also an adjunct professor of Systems Programming at “Sapienza” University in Rome; trainer in Digital Forensics at “Sapienza” and Modena Universities; and advisor of the Consortium for Supercomputing Applications.

Prior to CNR in 1998, he spent 10 years at the IBM European Center for Scientific and Engineering Computing where he developed the IBM PVMe product and received two Outstanding Technical Achievement Awards.

Enhance Max Payne 3, Diablo III with GeForce R300 Drivers

Posted: 22 May 2012 09:00 AM PDT

Gamers: a couple of the hottest games of 2012, Diablo III and Max Payne 3, are now upon us. That means it's time for some new GeForce R300 drivers.

Released today, the new NVIDIA GeForce R300 drivers are WHQL-certified and primed for both Diablo III and Max Payne 3. Looking for SLI, Ambient Occlusion, or FXAA? GeForce R300 drivers deliver those features in spades.

Download the new GeForce R300 drivers on GeForce.com.

We previously released a beta version of GeForce R300 drivers to give all you gamers out there an early look at the latest industry-defining features like NVIDIA FXAA, Adaptive VSync, and Frame Rate Target. We also highlighted numerous performance gains as high as 23 percent in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

Today's new GeForce R300 drivers (version 301.42) support all of the new GeForce GTX 600-series products, including GeForce GTX 690, GeForce GTX 680 and GeForce GTX 670. It also adds support for several new GeForce GT 600-series GPUs.

R300 highlights:

Boosts performance in several top PC games by up to 23 percent with a single GPU (tested on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim) and by up to 23 percent with SLI (tested on Just Cause 2), when compared to the R295 drivers. Read our R300 article on GeForce.com for details and a complete list of performance increases.
Adds NVIDIA FXAA technology to the NVIDIA Control Panel, enabling ultra-fast anti-aliasing (up to 60 percent faster than MSAA).
Enables NVIDIA Adaptive VSync, which provides a smoother gaming experience by dynamically enabling and disabling vertical sync based on your current frame rate.
Enables NVIDIA Frame Rate Target in third-party applications, like EVGA Precision X, for automatic and dynamic adjustment of frame rate to a user-specified target.
Introduces several new NVIDIA Surround capabilities:

Add a fourth accessory display for access to email, web, or other applications while you game with GeForce GTX 600-series GPUs.
Maximize an application to a single physical display when in Surround mode.
Confine the Windows Taskbar to the center display.
Enable bezel peeking to temporarily peek behind the monitor bezels when using bezel-corrected resolutions.
Add or remove resolution settings from the list of Surround resolutions.
Full center display acceleration for single-wide display modes.

Adds or updates NVIDIA SLI support for numerous new games such as Max Payne 3, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Street Fighter X Tekken, Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City, Risen 2: Dark Waters and more.
Adds or updates NVIDIA 3D Vision support for several new games such as Dirt: Showdown (rated Good), World of Tanks (now rated Excellent), Oil Rush (rated 3D Vision Ready), Rayman Origins (rated Good), and Wargame: European Escalation (rated Good) and more.