Five new graphics technologies at Nvidia
The conference offers a vision of the future with high speed interconnect and multiple GPUs in a wide range of embedded platforms from aerospace and defense through to vision systems. Like Imagination Technologies, it is seeing ray tracing maturing and is using its chips to push ray tracing into the data center. If you want a supercomputer of your own, then the latest graphics card will provide 8TFLOPS for a mere $3000.
1. A new high speed GPU interconnect for exascale computing
Nvidia and IBM have developed a new high-speed interconnect, called NVLink, that Nvidia plans to use in into its future GPUs. This will provide data rates five to 12 times faster than today and pave the way for a new generation of exascale supercomputers that are 50-100 times faster than today’s most powerful systems.
NVLink technology is being used in the Pascal GPU architecture expected to be introduced in 2016 and it will also be used in future versions of IBM’s POWER CPUs.
With NVLink technology tightly coupling IBM POWER CPUs with Tesla GPUs, the POWER data center ecosystem will be able to fully leverage GPU acceleration for a diverse set of applications, such as high performance computing, data analytics and machine learning.
Faster data movement coupled with Unified Memory will simplify GPU accelerator programming, allowing the programmer to treat the CPU and GPU memories as one block of memory. The programmer can operate on the data without worrying about whether it resides in the CPU’s or GPU’s memory.
2. Supercomputer graphics in aerospace and defense…
GE Intelligent Platforms is to develop and manufacture rugged high performance embedded computing (HPEC) and graphics systems using Nvidia’s Tegra K1 mobile processor. GE will also be Nvidia’s preferred provider of the new technology to serve applications in harsh environments, most notably to customers in the military/aerospace market.
The Tegra K1 has 192 fully programmable GPU computing cores – capable of executing CUDA algorithms – in addition to four ARM Cortex-A15 CPU cores with a fifth battery-saver core, to deliver record levels of performance and battery life for a 10W power envelope. The reductions in heat dissipation and weight are key for highly SWaP (size, weight and power) constrained environments that increasingly characterize military/aerospace deployments such as man-wearable and portable systems.
“We are working with customers for whom GPU technology is an ideal fit for their sophisticated but SWaP-constrained applications – but who have been precluded from using it because of its power consumption and heat dissipation,” said Simon Collins, Product Manager, GE Intelligent Platforms. “Tegra K1 changes all that, and will allow those customers to implement the optimum solution. Tegra K1 allows GE to uniquely address a much broader spectrum of potential applications.”
“The Tegra K1 also enhances GE’s HPEC capability,” said Collins. “Previously, our HPEC offering ranged in power consumption from around 2,000 watts at the high end to 100 watts at the entry level. In future, we will be able to offer HPEC solutions that consume as little as 10 watts, allowing CUDA algorithms to be easily ported across an even broader range of platforms.”
3. … and embedded systems
Computer vision, image processing and real-time data processing applications can get supercomputer performance with the launch of a developer platform based on the world’s first mobile supercomputer for embedded systems.
The Jetson TK1 Developer Kit provides developers with the tools to create systems and applications that can enable robots to seamlessly navigate, physicians to perform mobile ultrasound scans, drones to avoid moving objects and cars to detect pedestrians.
With 326 gigaflops performance, the Jetson TK1 Developer Kit includes a full C/C++ toolkit based on Nvidia’s CUDA architecture, making it easier to program than FPGAs, custom ASICs and DSP processors. “Jetson TK1 fast tracks embedded computing into a future where machines interact and adapt to their environments in real time,” said Ian Buck, vice president of Accelerated Computing atNvidia.
“This platform enables developers to fully harness computer vision in handheld devices, bringing supercomputing capabilities to low-power devices.”
The Jetson TK1 Developer Kit comes with the full support of the CUDA 6.0 developer tool suite, including debuggers and profilers to develop massively parallel applications. CUDA 6 also brings to the ARM platform Nvidia’s accelerated libraries for FFTs, linear algebra, sparse matrix, plus image and video processing. It can be preordered starting today for $192, from Avionic Design, SECO and Zotac in Europe.
4. Ray tracing to replace physical prototypes
Nvidia has launched a GPU rendering appliance that dramatically accelerates ray tracing, enabling professional designers to interact with computer models that can replace physical prototypes.
The Iray Visual Computing Appliance (VCA) combines hardware and software to greatly accelerate the work of the Iray photorealistic renderer integrated into leading design tools like Dassault Systèmes’ CATIA and Autodesk’s 3ds Max. Because the appliance is scalable, multiple units can be linked, speeding up by hundreds of times or more the simulation of light bouncing off surfaces in the real world. As a result, car designs and other complex systems can be viewed seamlessly at high visual fidelity from all angles.
“Iray VCA lets designers do what they’ve always wanted to – interact with their ideas as if they were already real,” said Jeff Brown, vice president and general manager of Professional Visualisation and Design at Nvidia.
“It removes the time-consuming step of building prototypes or rendering out movies, enabling designs to be explored, tweaked and confirmed in real time. Months, even years – and enormous cost – can be saved in bringing products to market.”
Iray VCA uses eight of Nvidia’s most powerful GPUs, each with 12GB of graphics memory, which together deliver 23,040 cores. It has both 10GigE and InfiniBand connections so that rendering clusters of multiple Iray VCAs can be easily built up over time. The Iray cluster-management software dynamically allocates Iray VCAs to meet the workload demands and can be located in an IT center and serve their rendering power on demand, while requiring little or no technical support.
The $50,000 Iray VCA systems will be available starting in summer through a global VAR network of certified system integrators.
5. A graphics card to turns your PC into a supercomputer for $3000
Nvidia’s latest graphics card provides double precision processing through two Kepler GPUS and 12GB of dedicated frame buffer memory for next-generation 5K and multi-monitor systems. The two K100 chips provide a total of 5,760 processing cores that are tuned to run at the same speed with dynamic power balancing so neither is the performance bottleneck for the 8TFLOPS of processing power.
“If you’re in desperate need of a supercomputer that you can fit under your desk, we have just the card for you,” said Jen-Hsun Huang, CEO of Nvidia.
Related stories:
Nvidia’s road map drives graphics, ARM into enterprise
Intel, Nvidia ink cross-licensing deal
Nvidia to attack CPU market with ARM
Spain, Nvidia plan ARM-based supercomputer
If you enjoyed this article, you will like the following ones: don't miss them by subscribing to :
