July 31, 2008 — NVIDIA Corporation, the worldwide leader in visual computing technologies, and the University of Utah today announced that the university has been recognized as a CUDA Center of Excellence, a milestone that marks the beginning of a significant partnership between the two organizations.
NVIDIA® CUDATM technology is an award-winning C-compiler and software development kit (SDK) for developing computing applications on GPUs. Its inclusion in the University of Utah’s curriculum is a clear indicator of the ground-swell that parallel computing using a many-core architecture is having on the high-performance computing industry. The University of Utah is also the second school to be recognized as a CUDA Center of Excellence along with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Over 50 other schools and universities now include CUDA technology as part of their Computer Science curriculum or in their research.
Distinguished members of the University of Utah’s faculty and alumni have been behind a remarkable fraction of the graphics innovations made in the last 40 years, as well as pioneering companies such as Adobe, Evans & Sutherland, Pixar and Silicon Graphics. Together, NVIDIA and the University of Utah will continue this industry-changing work and deliver technologies that harness the processing power of the GPU (graphics processing units) and the award-winning CUDA programming environment.
“Often before a great discovery there is the creation of a new tool or a tool that is used in a different way than before,” said Chris Johnson, director of the Scientific Computing and Imaging (SCI) Institute at the University of Utah. “GPUs and the algorithms and software that they use are today’s tools and with them we are entering a golden age, where scientific computing is going to truly change the way we do science and medicine.”
As a CUDA Center of Excellence, the University of Utah will be using CUDA technology extensively across three faculties:
- Scientific Computing and Imaging (SCI) Institute
- The SCI Institute has established itself as an internationally recognized leader in visualization, scientific computing, and image analysis. The overarching research objective of the SCI Institute is to create new scientific computing techniques, tools, and systems that enable solutions to important problems in biomedicine, science, and engineering. For more information: http://www.sci.utah.edu/
- The School of Computing (until 2000 the Department of Computer Science)
- The School of Computing has a long history of distinguished faculty and alumni who have made substantial contributions to research and industry. For more information: www.cs.utah.edu/school/history. The CUDA Center will play a key role in the School’s new Digital Media Initiative linking Computing with Fine Art and Film and funded by the USTAR Initiative
- Center for the Simulation of Accidental Fires and Explosions (CSAFE)
- As one of the Department of Energy’s five Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASC) centers, Utah runs detailed simulations of high energy devices and hydro-carbon fires, designed to increase the safety of dangerous material transportation and storage.
“The synergy of graphics combined with computational horsepower provided by NVIDIA GPUs and the CUDA programming environment provides incredible opportunities in science, industry and commerce,” stated Dr. Steven Parker, adjunct professor of computer science at the University of Utah and principal research scientist at NVIDIA.
“The worlds of scientific computing and computer graphics owe a great deal to the University of Utah and those who have passed through its halls,” said David Kirk, chief scientist at NVIDIA. “CUDA technology has the potential to truly transform industries, as we have already seen in fields such as medicine, geophysics and finance. With a school of Utah’s caliber incorporating it into their curriculum and across many of its research facilities, I am personally very excited to see what advances can be made.”
The CUDA Center of Excellence at the University of Utah will be using GPU technology to make significant advances in a number of scientific applications, including seismic data processing and visualization, MRI and diffusion tensor image reconstruction, cardiac electrical wave propagation simulation, combustion and fluid dynamics simulation, and several projects in large-scale scientific visualization.
About University of Utah
With a rich 151-year history, the University of Utah’s mission of teaching, research and service lives through its people and purposes. From its beautiful campus in the foothills of the Wasatch Mountains in Salt Lake City, the university reaches out to its diverse student body from all 29 Utah counties, all 50 states and 102 countries with top-rated academic departments, competitive athletics, wide-ranging cultural offerings, and innovative medical programs. In 2005 the University established the office of Technology Venture Development to accelerate the entrepreneurial spirit at the University. Since then, 61 companies have been launched from University technologies.
About NVIDIA
NVIDIA (Nasdaq: NVDA) is the world leader in visual computing technologies and the inventor of the GPU, a high-performance processor which generates breathtaking, interactive graphics on workstations, personal computers, game consoles, and mobile devices. NVIDIA serves the entertainment and consumer market with its GeForce® products, the professional design and visualization market with its Quadro® products, and the high-performance computing market with its TeslaTM products. NVIDIA is headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and has offices throughout Asia, Europe, and the Americas. NVIDIA’s inaugural NVISION 08 conference will be held August 25-27, 2008 in San Jose, California. For more information, visit http://www.nvidia.com/ and http://www.nvision08.com/.
Certain statements in this press release including, but not limited to, statements as to: the CUDA Center of Excellence Program; uses, benefits and impact of NVIDIA’s donation and CUDA software; and future increases in computational performance are forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause results to be materially different than expectations. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include: our reliance on third parties to manufacture, assemble and test our products; design, manufacturing or software defects; development of faster or more efficient GPU or CPU technology; unexpected loss of performance of our products or technologies when integrated into systems; the impact of technological development and competition; customer adoption of competitors’ products as well as other factors detailed from time to time in the reports NVIDIA files with the Securities and Exchange Commission including its Form 10-Q for the period ended April 27, 2008. Copies of reports filed with the SEC are posted on our website and are available from NVIDIA without charge. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and speak only as of the date hereof, and, except as required by law, NVIDIA disclaims any obligation to update these forward-looking statements to reflect future events or circumstances.