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CUDA

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CUDA ("Compute Unified Device Architecture"), is a GPGPU technology that allows a programmer to use the C programming language to code algorithms for execution on the GPU. CUDA has been developed by NVIDIA and to use this architecture requires an NVIDIA GPU and special stream processing drivers. CUDA only works with the new GeForce 8 Series, featuring G8X GPUs; NVIDIA guarantees that programs developed for the GeForce 8 series will also work without modification on all future NVIDIA video cards. CUDA gives developers unfettered access to the native instruction set and memory of the massively parallel computational elements in CUDA GPUs. Using CUDA, NVIDIA GeForce-based GPUs effectively become powerful, programmable open architectures like today’s CPUs (Central Processing Units). By opening up the architecture, CUDA provides developers both with the low-level, deterministic, and for repeatable access to hardware that is necessary API to develop essential high-level programming tools such as compilers, debuggers, math libraries, and application platforms.

The initial CUDA SDK was been made public 15th February 2007.[1]

NVIDIA 8-Series GeForce-based GPU

The 8-Series (G8X) GeForce-based GPU from NVIDIA is the first series of GPU to support the CUDA SDK. The 8-Series (G8X) GPUs features hardware support for 32-bit (single precision) floating point vector processors, using the CUDA SDK as API. (CUDA supports the C "double" data type, However on G8X series GPUs these types will get demoted to 32-bit floats.). Due to the highly parallel nature of vector processors, GPU assisted hardware stream processing can have a huge impact in specific data processing applications. It is anticipated in the computer gaming industry that graphics cards may be used in future game physics calculations (physical effects like debris, smoke, fire, fluids).

NVIDIA PureVideo Technology

NVIDIA PureVideo Technology is a hardware video decoding/encoding platform NVIDIA introduced with its GeForce 6 Series (codenamed NV40) of GPUs. PureVideo's video decoder automatically offloads supported video formats/codecs to the GPU to lower CPU usage. Unlike AMD/ATI's competing AVIVO decoder, NVIDIA do charge for the PureVideo software.

Future products

Compared, for example, to traditional floating point accelerators such as the 64-bit CSX600 boards from Clearspeed that is used in today's supercomputers, the current GPUs from NVIDIA (and AMD/ATI) are only running on 32-bit, providing only single-precision data capability - instead of double-precision (64-bit) capability of supercomputers[2]. NVIDIA stated in the CUDA Release Notes Version 0.8 file that NVIDIA GPUs supporting (64-bit) Double Precision Floating Point arithmetic in hardware will become available in late 2007.[3]

See also

References

  1. ^ http://news.developer.nvidia.com/2007/02/cuda_for_gpu_co.html
  2. ^ http://www.tgdaily.com/2007/02/16/nvidia_cuda/
  3. ^ http://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/0_8/NVIDIA_CUDA_SDK_releasenotes_readme_win32_linux.zip


 

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