NVIDIA beefs up and offers Tesla supercomputing

Tech News

By Stevie Smith Jun 21, 2007, 13:05 GMT

Generally considered to be somewhat of a graphic processing unit (GPU) powerhouse in personal desktop and notebook computer gaming circles, California-based NVIDIA Corporation has this week boldly revealed that it is to make the sizeable step up into the top-tier world of supercomputing with its Tesla technology.Specifically, NVIDIA is looking to impact the evolutionary progression of notable high-tech industries such as the geosciences, molecular biology, and even medical diagnostics with Tesla. Citing that research institutions in these fields, and others, "face a daunting challenge" in relationship to the ever-growing need for "vast computational resources," NVIDIA claims that its new class of processors can make a difference."Today's science is no longer confined to the laboratory; scientists employ computer simulations before a single physical experiment is performed. This fundamental transition to computational methods is forging a new path for discoveries in science and engineering," commented Jen-Hsun Huang, president and CEO of NVIDIA. "By dramatically reducing computation times, in some cases from weeks to hours, NVIDIA Tesla represents the single most significant disruption the high-performance computing industry has seen since Cray 1's introduction of vector processing."Assigned to the NVIDIA Tesla brand, the GPU technology giant will roll out its new processors via "a family of GPU computing products that will place the power previously available only from supercomputers in the hands of every scientist and engineer," duly transforming current workstations into "personal supercomputers," NVIDIA claims."NVIDIA Tesla will give us a 100-fold increase in some of our programs," enthused John Stone of the University of Illinois’ Urbana-Campaign, "and this is on desktop machines where previously we would have had to run these calculations on a cluster." Indeed, that seemingly warm welcome for NVIDIA Tesla is being echoed throughout related industry channels, with Steve Briggs, VP of systems integration at Headwave Inc., offering that Tesla "is going to make discovery of huge oil reserves possible through faster and more accurate interpretation of geophysical data." The application of Tesla has already improved Houston-based Headwave’s seismic processes by 66x-to-100x throughout its 3D visualisations.And, in terms of the potential already achieved and yet to be tapped by NVIDIA’s technology, Ryan Schneider, chief technology officer at Acceleware said: "Tesla has opened up completely new worlds for computational electromagnetics." Candian innovations software company Acceleware has thus far achieved 45x improvement in its mobile phone antenna simulations.Family features related to the Tesla GPU computing solutions include the following:* NVIDIA Tesla GPU Computing Processor, a dedicated computing board that scales to multiple Tesla GPUs inside a single PC or workstation. The Tesla GPU features 128 parallel processors, and delivers up to 518 gigaflops of parallel computation. The GPU Computing processor can be used in existing systems partnered with high-performance CPUs. * NVIDIA Tesla Deskside Supercomputer, a scalable computing system that includes two NVIDIA Tesla GPUs and attaches to a PC or workstation through an industry-standard PCI-Express connection. With multiple deskside systems, a standard PC or workstation is transformed into a personal supercomputer, delivering up to 8 teraflops of compute power to the desktop.* NVIDIA Tesla GPU Computing Server, a 1U server housing up to eight NVIDIA Tesla GPUs, containing more than 1000 parallel processors that add teraflops of parallel processing to clusters. The Tesla GPU Server is the first server system of its kind to bring GPU computing to the datacenter.

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