NVIDIA Promotes CUDA GPU Development Platform

By Doug Barney

NVIDIA Corp. (nvidia.com) of Santa Clara, CA, is hoping to inspire, inform, and offer its developers a place to hang out with its new CUDAZone, a website for hardcore GPU developers.

CUDA is a toolkit for C programmers seeking to exploit GPUs, especially NVIDIA’s new Tesla line, which the company claims turns an ordinary PC into a desktop supercomputer. CUDA includes a C compiler and source code examples that handle many common functions. CUDA works with both Linux and Microsoft Windows.

NVIDIA also has a new rev of its toolkit, CUDA 1.1, which is supported by 64-bit versions of Windows and includes new source code examples.

The company claims CUDA is catching on, and points to the fact that some 20 colleges and universities are currently teaching courses in parallel computing development that include CUDA content. These colleges aren’t exactly slouches;  they include Stanford, Johns Hopkins, and Purdue.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_home.html