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NVidia’s Nsight GPU Debugging tool has been in beta for a few months, but no longer as NVidia today has announced it entering the mainstream as a production tool for CUDA debugging.  Right now you can head on over to the NSight page and get NSight 1.0 for free for all your CUDA, C/C++, and .NET programming needs within Visual Studio.

Visual Studio developers can now use Parallel Nsight to debug CUDA C/C++, or DirectCompute applications on the GPU using the same familiar tools and techniques as on the CPU. Parallel Nsight also provides the analysis tools that give developers the information required to achieve the highest levels of GPGPU application performance.

In addition, they’ve taken the surprising step of splitting the tool into a Standard (free) and Professional (paid) version, with some extra new features.  If you fork out for the Pro version, you get:

• The System Analyzer, a tool for timeline inspection and performance analysis
• The Ability to set Data Breakpoints, in addition to Code Breakpoints
• OpenCL Support
• Premium Support

The Professional version isn’t quite ready for release yet, so you can go over right now and get a time-limited trial (30 days) of the Release Candidate to try it out.

Both versions come with tools for graphics debugging and HLSL debugging, enabling such impressive features as pausing your graphic and selecting an individual pixel and digging through all of the various shaders that affected the final result.  Perhaps the most powerful, and my favorite, feature is the flexibility in the debugging hardware environment.  Of course, you can run everything on one machine if you like, but it can go far beyond that.

With a bit of configuration work, you can build a workstation with 2 Quadro cards, and exploit the SLI MultiOS support to run your debugger in the host OS, and monitor an application running on the second GPU in the virtualized environment.  This will be great for those tricky ‘system locker’ problems.

But if you really want to go ‘extreme’, say you have an entire visualization cluster you need to debug or large arrays of QuadroPlex systems, you can use the new Networking feature.  Connect over an ordinary TCP/IP link to the client machine and debug, analyze, and inspect your code from the comfort of your own desk.

All together NVidia has drawn a new line in the sand, defining the new standard for GPU/GPGPU debugging technology, and made NSight a must-have product for Visual Studio developers.  The Analyzer tool will be great for those people trying to eek out the last few cycles of performance in their code, and the remote debugging features will be a welcome addition for anyone trying to debug on large-scale GPU clusters or graphics cards arrays (NextIO, QuadroPlex, Tesla, etc).

Read the full announcement after the break, and go check NVidia’s Site for the downloads!

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Hardware, Science cuda, nsight, nvidia, visual studio

All of you iPhone/iPod Touch owners attending SIGGRAPH need to head on over to the App Store and check out the new free SIGGRAPH app.  One quick download can give you a complete list of courses, papers, and events, along with Maps of the Conference Center, Maps of Los Angeles, and maps of the Exhibition Floor.

You can view the schedule by day, and bookmark items of interest for easy recall. Each one comes with a map, description, and more.  It’s a great app and one that I’m sure to use often while I’m roaming the event.

However, be sure to check out the Exhibition Floor map.  Is it just me, or is it disappointly small in comparison to prior years?

Graphics iphone, siggraph

The new Bentley, the 200,000 £  Mulsanne, will be Bentley’s first foray into fully digital modeling and design as the car was entirely modeled in Dassault Systemes PLM software before a single bolt was ordered.  It was done as part of an initiative to reduce physical revisions which take a lot of time and money to fabricate, only to find minor glitches requiring extensive rework.  Working in the digital space had other advantages such as working better with a distributed team (it’s alot easier to email model files than ship physical parts), as well as providing extensive product lifecycle management functions.

Ian Swann, who was in charge of the virtual build, said it changed the way people worked, not least because it prompted Bentley to spend €27m on new kit and to revise its factory layout so that there was less physical distance between the different teams. This physical proximity has improved communication between the teams.

“We had a lot of review meetings,” he said. “At first the production guys were sceptical, but when they saw that it was going to make their lives easier, they jumped in.”

Watch the video below showing the Dassault model of one of the headlight assemblies.

via Bentley unveils first fully 3D car – 05/07/2010 – Computer Weekly.

Science automotive, cad, dassault

The new SeaWorld commercial shows the work of Fusion CI and NTropic as the fourth wall is torn down in a swirl of turbulent fluid physics created with Fusion’s Krakatoa Particle Physics product.

The challenges in the SeaWorld spot’s production were intense. Shares Mark Stasiuk, Fusion’s Co-Founder and VFX Supervisor, “We had the huge task of doing a significant number of elaborate fluid elements over a commercial production timeframe, and making them look good at HD quality. When creating CG fluids that are moving non-turbulently, you have a lot more leeway with short timeframes because the level of fluid detail is relatively low. This isn’t the case for turbulent, volumetrically rendered fluid like ink in water or smoke. For these cases, it requires detail to sell the scale and level of turbulence – it’s literally the detail in the fluid that makes it realistic.

via CGSociety – SeaWorld.

Graphics commercial, fusioncis, krakatoa, ntropic

One of the most expected video games is, without question, Starcraft II, and Focus made an incredible infographic about the economy around the franchise. Back to planet Earth, Home Owners Insurance takes us to the World’s most dangerous places, and Kiplinger compares the two superpowers, China and America. Also about the U.S., Credit Loan brings an interesting piece about Innovation through Immigration, and we close with a breakdown of U.S. Average Closing Costs by State, from Lending Tree.

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Graphics, Science design, infographic, Visual Loop, visualizations

If you’re looking to snag a nice 3D Display, then definitely add the new ASUS VG236H to the list, which brings a nice 23-inch 3D LCD experience for a penny under $500, NVidia 3d Vision Kit included.  But that’s not all:

• YPbPr and HDMI , as well as dual-link DVI
• ASUS Splendid Video Intelligence Technology
• ASUS Trace Free II Technology gives 120Hz refresh with 2ms response
• 400nits ultra-brightness

And much more.  Read the full press release over at Gizmodo.

ASUS’ 23-inch VG236H 3D monitor gets reviewed: pricey, but a real looker — Engadget.

Hardware 3d, asus, monitor

SolidSmack has an article from Bruce Buck, an employee of Metso Texas Shredder, who uses an impressive workflow of several tools in creation of models and media materials.  In the article he discusses how they use CAD tools for the actual design (SolidWorks, NX, and AutoCAD), and TeamCenter for asset control, and then KeyShot, HyperShot, and BunkSpeed Shot for their high-end marketing renderings.

We also try to leverage our CAD data to help marketing and sales. In this particular project, the deadline for submitting marketing materials for an industry magazine was the first week in July. I didn’t have much time so I took what was completed by then and started painting the model up in HyperShot. However, just for kicks, I had also just gotten a brand spanking new 6-core, 64-bit system from SolidBox that had SolidWorks and KeyShot installed, and decided to paint the model up on that system in parallel since time was a-wastin’. To my amazement, the shiny new SolidBox got the first render done in 1hr 24min. My old dual-core workstation, with the same output settings, took 8hrs 46min. Over 6 times faster. Since I had to do a second pass with just the internals showing, and since the deadline to submit to the ad agency was the next morning, I ditched the old machine and finished the project up in KeyShot.

It’s an impressive suite of tools and I’m sure a bit of a headache of a workflow, but he shows how the variety of tools actually give him a lot of power and flexibility.

via Behind the Design: Making Machines that Eat Cars (NX, SolidWorks, AutoCAD, Teamcenter, Keyshot and Shot) >> SolidSmack.com.

Graphics workflow

The Visualization Sciences Group (VSG) has just announced availability of the OpenInventor 8.1 C++ and .NET applications for Windows and Linux.  This means new versions of VolumeViz, MeshViz, and ScaleViz with several optimizations and new features.  A few interesting ones:

• VolumeViz8.1 and OpenInventor now support ‘progressive display quality’. The advanced rendering effects are progressively applied during interaction, refining image quality on the fly, without sacrificing interactivity
• Real-Time Shadows in Volume Viz
• Support for multi-GPU systems in ScaleViz, like the NVidia QuadroPlex, via the CompleX Engine

And much more.  You can read the full ‘What’s New?” PDF (Google Viewer) for all the details.

OpenInventor8.1.

Science meshviz, openinventor, scaleviz, software, volumeviz, vsg

Analyst group Jon Peddie Research has just published a forecast for the computer graphics industry (one week before SIGGRAPH, even, what a coincidence) where they track the recent ‘bounce back’ from the last year’s recession.  They predict that the recent slowdown, combined with aging equipment, improved algorithms, and an insatiable thirst for faster better graphics will help to drive the industry to new record-breaking heights.

Today, software programs for making movies and computer games, designing products, and creating simulations are exploiting the features of today’s CG hardware. We’re seeing the results in amazing realism and real time capabilities for the next generation of films and designs, and the trend is accelerating.

The demand for programmers, artists, scientists, and designers has picked up again and firms are actively looking for people who can use and exploit these new programs and their associated hardware accelerators. The economic recession has caused a slow down but it’s going to look like a small bump in the road by 2013.

I do like that he ackowledges how Scientific visualization as an industry has largely stagnated in recent years, but is primed for a resurgence with new hardware and capabilities.  In my work, I’ve personally seen this as GPU’s are an easier sell to HPC users as they can dual-purpose them now as Visualization Accelerators and Compute Accelerators, and software-emulated rendering systems like Mesa are beginning to break down at extreme scales.  GPUs right now may be more of a panacea than a cure, but they do a great job alleviating the pain of rendering modern simulation results and look to be scaling such that better algorithms (like Ray Tracing) can benefit greatly from the acceleration as well.

via Jon Peddie Research Says the CG market will exceed $150 billion in 2013 – Comments – Press Releases.

Science jpr

The Pixel Farm has just announced a new camera tracking and match moving software package (currently nameless) that works on OSX, Windows, and Linux  with more features than I’ve seen in any of their competition in a while.  Full metadata management, customization, Python scripting, rolling shutter correction, image distortion, and a new node-based flowgraph interface make this one product to check out.

“The tracking market is long overdue for an overhaul, and this is a game-changing advance from The Pixel Farm. I think they’ve just re-invented 3D tracking,” said Victor Wolansky, VFX Artist, E3post, and 3D Tracking Professor at fxphd. “New products emanating from these developments will be a ‘must-have’ for anyone involved in the visual effects business.”

Stop by their booth (#313) at SIGGRAPH for a Demo, and see the new application they’ll be announcing at SIGGRAPH.  Full release after the break.

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Graphics pixelfarm, siggraph, software