[HiPEAC-announce] HiPEAC Web seminar: “NVIDIA CUDA Software and GPU Parallel Computing Architecture”

[Nacho Navarro]

On April 16th, the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), in collaboration
with the Facultat d'Informàtica de Barcelona (UPC), is pleased to invite you to
the following distinguished lecture:

Title:   “NVIDIA CUDA Software and GPU Parallel Computing Architecture”

Speaker:      David Kirk, Ph.D.
               NVIDIA Chief Scientist

Date: Wednesday 16th April 2008
Location: Sala d’actes, Facultat d’Informàtica (Edifici B6), Campus Nord,
UPC, Jordi Girona Barcelona, Spain
Duration: 15.00 - 16.45

If you are going to attend, please confirm your attendance to Renata Giménez
(renata.gimenez at bsc.es) before 10th April 2008. If you would like to have a
personal meeting with David Kirk or to get access to realtime video streaming,
contact Nacho Navarro (nacho at ac.upc.edu).

Abstract:
A new technology is emerging which has the potential to revolutionize science
and industry. It is already being used by world-leading research groups and
companies to massively speed up their research and productivity. And it's
based on a chip which was developed to play computer games.

In the past, graphics processors were special purpose hardwired application
accelerators, suitable only for conventional rasterization-style graphics
applications. Modern GPUs are now fully programmable, massively parallel
floating point processors. NVIDIA, the company which invented the GPU, is
unlocking this technology's potential to create a new generation of
affordable, accessible supercomputers, putting an unprecedented level of
computational power in the hands of scientists and programmers.
This talk will describe NVIDIA’s massively multithreaded computing architecture
and CUDA software for GPU computing. The architecture is a scalable, highly
parallel architecture that delivers high throughput for data-intensive
processing. Although not truly general-purpose processors, GPUs can now be
used for a wide variety of compute-intensive applications beyond graphics.

Biography:
David Kirk has been NVIDIA's Chief Scientist since January 1997. His
contribution includes leading NVIDIA graphics technology development
for today’s most popular consumer entertainment platforms. In 2006,
Dr. Kirk was elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) for his
role in bringing high-performance graphics to personal computers. Election
to the NAE is among the highest professional distinctions that may be
awarded to an engineer. Additionally, in 2002, Dr. Kirk received the SIGGRAPH
Computer Graphics Achievement Award. From 1993 to 1996, Dr. Kirk was Chief
Scientist, Head of Technology for Crystal Dynamics, a video game manufacturing
company. From 1989 to 1991, Dr. Kirk was an engineer for the Apollo Systems
Division of Hewlett-Packard Company. Dr. Kirk is the inventor of 50 patents
and patent applications relating to graphics design and has published more
than 50 articles on graphics technology. Dr. Kirk holds B.S. and M.S.
degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from the California
Institute of Technology.