Home » Archives for May 2009
CUDA and GPGPU are all the rage these days, with another press release every few days from some company touting the 10x performance boost you can get with a high-end video card. People talk about DX10 and Tesla like it’s the only option for CUDA. Many people forget that CUDA and GPGPU have been around for a few years now, with CUDA available on all NVidia Hardware since the GeForce 8 series. How well do these applications work on non-cutting-edge hardware?
That’s all well and good, but proof of CUDA’s incendiary capabilities has largely been proven on high-end GPUs. I’m on a tight budget. Friends are getting mowed down around me by lay-offs and wage-cuts like bubonic plague victims. You bet, I’d love to drop ten or twelve Benjamins on a 3-way graphics overhaul, but the reality is that, like many of you, I’ve only got one or two C-notes to spare. On a good day. So the question all of us who can’t afford the graphics equivalent of a five-star menage-a-troi should be asking is, “Does CUDA mean anything to me when all I can afford is a budget-friendly card for my existing system?”
via CUDA-Enabled Apps: Measuing Mainstream GPU Performance : Help For the Rest of Us – Review Tom’s Hardware.
Hardware benchmark, cuda
A new whitepaper from ZyLab called “Text Analysis: The Next Step in Search Technology” will be in the upcoming edition of the KMWorld Magazine. Talking about the challenges of unstructured information and textual analysis, it has one other interesting section:
Information Visualization
Text analysis is often mentioned in the same sentence as information visualization, in large part because visualization is one of the viable technical tools for information analysis after unstructured information has been structured.
ZyLab also has many other whitepapers, case studies, and information available about text mining and analytics available at their website.
via ZyLAB Whitepaper “Text Analysis: The Next Step in Search Technology” to Appear in June Edition of KMWorld Magazine.
Science infovis, whitepaper, zylab
Gaming has long-been the driving force behind computer video capabilities, but for the last few years it has somewhat stalled. Graphics Cards get bigger and faster, but the games utilize less and less of the new features to widen their audience. Games like World of Warcraft, probably the most successful PC game in existence run easily on hardware from 3 years ago. So what’s driving the next generation of Video Hardware? Rob Enderle believe it’s Online Video.
However while desktop requirements stalled Internet performance requirements started to spike. Visual high-definition content on the Web was driving that spike. iTunes YouTube More about YouTube Hulu and most recently OnLive started showcasing ways to do some amazing things with Internet services. While the others are interesting OnLive is an eye opener. Here s a gaming service that promises you can play any game via the Internet and it demonstrates how well it works with one of the most performance-intensive games on the planet “Crysis.”
via Technology News: Tech Buzz: The Coming Visual Computing Revolution.
Hardware onlive, video
A new RFI (Request for Information) has come of the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Lab, looking for information on virtual reality hardware and software for training and operations.
Department of Energy Pacific Northwest National Laboratory – Battelle (DOE Contractor) PNNL Contracts Sources sought for information regarding Virtual Reality and other visualization tools INTRODUCTION: The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), is seeking information from companies, educational institutions, research and development laboratories (public and private), or other sources about commercially available systems, government available or near-commercial technologies that may be used for the development of next generation, information immersive operator environments for industry.
Focused mainly on off-the-shelf solutions, it’s a pretty wide net looking for usability standards, human factors, interoperability, maintainability, expandability, standards compliance, certifications, and more. Read the RFI Here.
via STLB VIRTUAL REALITY AND OTHER VISUALIZATION TOOLS.
Hardware, Science government, virtual reality
NVidia is living on the edge by submitting the first OpenCL Driver for certification by the Kronos OpenCL Working group.
NVIDIA was the first to provide pre-release drivers to its OpenCL Early Access Program participants in April 2009. NVIDIA remains the only vendor today with software and hardware available for developers to program with OpenCL as well as other GPU Computing environments including DirectX Compute, C with CUDA extensions and other languages.
via NVIDIA submits OpenCL driver for certification | insideHPC.com.
Hardware nvidia, opencl
Dan Brown & Ron Howard’s “Angels & Demons” opened this weekend, (Not a bad movie, if you haven’t seen it yet) and one of the focuses of the movie is the creation of “Antimatter” from the CERN Large Hadron Collider. At the beginning of the movie there’s an impressive sequence where the LHC is activated, and it turns out most of that scene was created by folks at MPC.
One of MPC’s larger focuses was the ‘Birth of Antimatter’ sequence set in the CERN facility in Switzerland. The 40 second shot describes the creation and storage of antimatter by travelling through the inner workings of CERN’s Large Hadron Collider and Atlas Detector. (…) The middle section of the sequence was entirely a CG creation. The interior of the facility including the outer parts of the Atlas, were built based on photographs taken by Stammers, using image modelling and camera projection techniques. To re-create the X-Ray look of the interior of the Atlas detector, MPC was provided with a complex CAD model from CERN, and Kevin Hahn adapted this so he could develop the look in Renderman. Sections of internal pipes for which MPC had no access to they used reference photos sourced from the internet to construct CG sections to join the multiple environments. Particle collisions and antimatter FX were provided fx animators Matthieu Chardonnet and Xavier Lestourneaud and all layers were composited by Scott Taylor.
via MPC completes 170 shots for Angels & Demons | The Briefing Room.
Graphics movie, mpc, vfx
Microsoft has integrated their PhotoSynth software into Virtual Earth, allowing users to flip between overhead satellite imagery and photographic stitches.
“The integration of Microsoft Photosynth into Virtual Earth marks an important step in enabling businesses to use Photosynth in a relevant, customer-friendly way,” said Jeff Kelisky, general manager, Mapping and Local Search at Microsoft. “With the integrated capabilities of Photosynth and recently added Silverlight API, our Virtual Earth partners have great tools for creating, sharing, viewing and embedding synths across multiple platforms, and building engaging experiences.”
via Microsoft Photosynth Integrates Into Virtual Earth, Marking Commercial Availability of the 3-D Photo Technology: NASA and VisitBrighton put new Photosynth release to work in Virtual Earth and outer space..
Science microsoft, photosynth, virtualearth
New rumors are surfacing about NVidia’s GT300, seemingly in opposition to a recent Inquirer article.
According to our sources, nVidia got the silicon a while ago, meaning that the chip taped out between January and March. The silicon is A1, but neither of our sources wanted to confirm is this the final silicon or will nVidia be forced to tape out A2 silicon to get production-grade yields. We heard that both ATI and nVidia have issues with TSMC’s 40nm, and both companies are testing with the alternative company. If 40nm production yields don’t satisfy, expect 32nm bulk silicon parts coming out of a certain Foundry with Global intentions sooner than later.
via nVidia G(T)300 already taped out, A1 silicon in Santa Clara – Bright Side Of News*.
Hardware nvidia
Chaos Software has just announced it’s new V-Ray RT for 3dsMax, which adds advanced rendering to the interactive preview windows of 3dsMax, without GPU acceleration (CPU only).
V-Ray RT is an ActiveShade renderer in 3ds Max, separate from the production V-Ray renderer. V-Ray RT does not introduce new plugins other than the interactive renderer itself. Instead, the existing 3ds Max and V-Ray materials, textures, lights, cameras etc. are used.
It will be available for purchase June 1st for $599, but a special promotion has it available for $299.
via CGSociety – V-Ray RT.
Graphics 3dsmax, chaos, software, vray
VizWorld.com 
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