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| NVIDIA Names Brazil’s First CUDA Center of Excellence Posted: 19 Jul 2012 08:34 AM PDT  In another landmark for the CUDA parallel programming environment, NVIDIA has named the Fluminense Federal University (UFF) of Brazil as the country's first CUDA Center of Excellence. The recognition is a result of UFF's ongoing work in parallel computing research and education using NVIDIA GPUs and the CUDA parallel computing environment. Located in the state of Rio de Janeiro, UFF is one of Brazil's top computer science research and education centers. Its departments have a large computing infrastructure, including a 32 Fermi GPU-based cluster, a virtual reality and simulation center and an extensive CUDA-enabled teaching lab.
As one of the world's 20 CUDA Centers of Excellence, UFF will use equipment and grants provided by NVIDIA to support research and academic programs across its mathematics, physical and life sciences departments. "With NVIDIA's support, we can continue to enhance our CUDA evangelism, engage in other CUDA-based research projects and develop new programs to reach larger numbers of researchers and students," said Professor Esteban Clua, principal investigator at Fluminense Federal University In one ongoing project, the Computer Science Department of UFF, together with Brazil's National Institute for Space Research, is investigating new and alternative physics and computational models, with important results for modern physics. Requiring the computation of the interactions of billions of particles, the research is being implemented on a cluster made entirely of GPUs. According to the researchers, without GPUs it would take many years to achieve and validate the results that now take a few months. This same group is also investigating and proposing a national GPU computing grid for cosmological research. Other important research projects involve wave propagation calculation for oil and gas exploration, crowd simulations, GPU and NVIDIA OptiX real-time ray tracing, and fluid simulations. "GPUs and CUDA are making possible the dream of personal clusters, and this is drastically changing the way of conducting science," said Clua. The CUDA Center of Excellence program was created to foster collaboration with leading institutions at the forefront of parallel computing research and education. | ||
| GPU Startup Story: Cortexica Lets Every Picture Tell A Story Posted: 18 Jul 2012 03:00 PM PDT  [Editor's note: Nearly three dozen companies participated in the Emerging Companies Summit, held during NVIDIA's GPU Technology Conference in May. Below is one in a series of company profiles showcasing how startups are innovating with GPU technology.] Think of Cortexica Vision Systems as turning the camera on your smartphone into a virtual encyclopedia. The device no longer just captures an image but can access a galaxy of information associated with it. Point your phone or tablet at a bottle in your local wine store and get served up tasting notes, the price and what food to pair it with. Snap a picture of an ad and learn more about the product, where to buy it and maybe get a discount coupon. Take a shot of a movie or TV show and find out more about it and where to rent or buy it.
Cortexica makes this possible by mimicking the brain's visual cortex, according to Iain McCready, CEO of the London-based startup. When you look at something, your visual cortex doesn't read the image from one side to the other or scan it from top to bottom. Instead, it rapidly picks out many points of interest. Cortexica's algorithms mimic that scattershot process by creating a fingerprint of a target image's points of interest, and then matching it against databases of stored images that have been created by retailers or advertisers. People can then take snapshots of items using their mobile devices and be provided via the cloud information associated with any matches. The beauty of this is a company's own brand or product becomes the focus of search. People can satisfy their curiosity by scanning the actual image they see for more information, potentially replacing links to websites and QR codes, those crossword puzzle-like images often seen in magazine ads. The people behind Cortexica's technology have used GPUs to accelerate their on-the-fly image recognition since before the company's founding in 2009. Like the brain, GPUs handle many tasks simultaneously. With more powerful GPUs increasingly built into mobile devices, images can be processed and information can be delivered even more quickly. Given this greater processing power, one area Cortexica is looking to develop is video, where a person could scan an entire room and get information about potentially any of the objects present. McCready says some novel applications of Cortexica's technology have been suggested over the years – from a detergent company seeking to build a stainfinder to naturalists desiring a tree and plant identifier. Another suggestion was to apply the technology to identifying fish. Who knows? The next time you pull up Charlie at the end of your fishing line, you just might ask him to say "cheese." Download and watch the Cortexica presentation at the Emerging Companies Summit last May on the GTC On-Demand website. |
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