Wednesday 20 June 2012

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Russian Masterpieces Put on Display Using NVIDIA GPU Technology

Posted: 20 Jun 2012 10:05 AM PDT

square of arts Russian Museum 1

The Russian Museum in St. Petersburg is Russia's first state museum of national art. Since opening in 1898, it's provided access to some of the country's greatest masterpieces in painting, sculpture and iconography.

Now, with the help of NVIDIA GPU technology, visitors to this palatial complex can view these works in sumptuous detail, and immerse themselves in a rich viewing experience previously not possible.

The Russian Museum's new multimedia center – which relies on NVIDIA Mosaic multi-display technology and NVIDIA Quadro professional GPUs to showcase super-wide-format images in incredibly high resolution – offers this one-of-a-kind art experience in its 22-seat auditorium.

"The auditorium is very compact and one single projector can't display an image on the entire screen – the distance from the opposite wall is too short," explained Vladimir Barzionov, technical director at CineSoft, a software developer for the center.

Using NVIDIA Mosaic, The Russian Museum can
display gigantic views of classis art

The output from two projectors needed to be imperceptibly blended into a single image for viewers, which includes art experts who will use the center to study craquelures – cracks on a lacquered or painted layer of a painting – on images scaled to 8 meters wide.

Simplifying the configuration and management, NVIDIA Mosaic technology makes the auditorium's two projectors essentially work as one large display. Mosaic synchronizes the projectors, ensuring that the overlap area blends seamlessly with no visual artifacts. The end result is a 3,600 х 1,080 pixel display surface capable of faithfully reproducing the artwork.

With this capability in place, the center enables visitors to get a behind-the-scenes look at museum activity, tour virtual paintings and normally inaccessible palace interiors, and even take simulated flights over St. Petersburg. Plus, the center can broadcast its events over the internet to the Russian Museum's nearly 100 associate branches across the country as well as to museums around the world.

The system lets presenters choose, view and group images and video, create and save playlists, and control content broadcast to the screen and from or to the internet – all controlled by a touch interface. The lightproof, soundproof auditorium is also equipped with audio equipment, a special lighting system, a 50-inch plasma touchscreen for viewing and controlling multimedia content, and a webcasting system.

"This is the first solution in Russia and Commonwealth of Independent States countries that includes support for several projectors displaying onto complex geometrical surfaces, and controlling the content with gestures," said Andrey Popov, executive producer at Polden, the firm leading the multimedia center's overall design.

Using the latest display technology from NVIDIA to reach a broader audience appears to be a recipe for success. According to Vladimir Gusev, director of the Russian Museum, "Once people visit our virtual branches, they strive to get to the real Russian Museum."

NVIDIA In A Minute – Live From Hamburg

Posted: 20 Jun 2012 10:15 AM PDT

congress-center-hamburg-international-supercomputing-conference-isc

The 27th International Supercomputing Conference (ISC'12) is in full swing, with several scientific research developments unveiled as being powered by NVIDIA GPUs.

Germany's Forschungszentrum Jülich, which hosts one of Europe's largest and most powerful supercomputing resources, the Jülich Supercomputing Centre, is using GPUs to accelerate advanced neurological research with the aim of one day unlocking the secrets of the human brain. And researchers from the nearby Jülich Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine are deploying Tesla GPUs to accelerate the reconstruction of histological brain sections. This will allow them to create a high-definition, structurally accurate and realistic computer model of the human brain for research purposes.

NVIDIA GPUs also play an integral role in joint research by scientists in the U.K. and Thailand that's shedding new light on the deadly H1N1 influenza virus. Using computer simulations, researchers have observed how H1N1 mutations can cause changes in the chemical and biological aspects of key viral enzymes. And, for the first time, scientists are gaining insight into how these H1N1 mutations resist existing anti-influenza drugs, like Tamiflu, which could lead to the development more effective drugs to fight future epidemics.

Additionally, India's most power supercomputer, SAGA, is using NVIDIA GPUs to dramatically speed up the design of satellite delivery vehicles that are critical to the nation's space program.

For more, check out Tesla general manager Sumit Gupta talking about the cutting edge of GPUs in science, in this week's NVIDIA In A Minute.

[Featured image: An aerial view of the Congress Center Hamburg - home to ISC]

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