[PR] Universities and Research Institutions Around the World Embrace Parallel Computing using GPUs

More than 400 Institutions Now Using CUDA to Address Challenges in Biology, Computer Science, Medicine, Meteorology, Pharmaceuticals, Physics

SINGAPORE — May 13, 2011 — NVIDIA today announced the addition of 35 new CUDA Research Centres and CUDA Teaching Centres in 14 countries, further advancing the growth of parallel computing across the globe.

More than 400 universities are now teaching parallel programming using GPUs (graphics processing units) based on NVIDIA® CUDA® architecture, empowering the tens-of-thousands of students graduating each year with the knowledge and expertise to leverage the immense parallel processing power of GPUs. The 35 new centres supplement the wide number of institutions already using GPUs to address today’s most challenging computing issues, and drive the next wave of scientific discovery across multiple fields.

CUDA Research Centres are recognised institutions that embrace and utilise GPU computing across multiple research fields. They are at the forefront of some of the world’s most innovative and important scientific research. Examples of CUDA-related work taking place at the new centres include:

• University of Pennsylvania/Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia – GPU acceleration of data analysis in pharmacokinetics (what the body does to new drugs) and pharmacodynamics (what the drugs do the body) to enable rapid determination of the effectiveness and safety of new drugs, greatly reducing the time and cost of drug development.
• Pacific Northwest National Laboratory – As part of the Extreme Scale Initiative, GPUacceleration of STOMP (http://stomp.pnnl.gov), a subsurface transport simulator, which can help improve public safety by predicting flow of contaminants into underground waterways, and GPU acceleration of NWChem (http://www.nwchem.org), a computational chemistry tool to address key questions about processes such as photosynthesis, protein functions and combustion.
• Technische Universität Dresden (Germany) – NVIDIA CUDA architecture-enabled Particlein-Cell (PIC) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particle-in-cell) algorithm greatly increases the scope and accuracy of plasma simulation to foster cancer treatment using laser-driven ion beams and create new radiation sources for materials research.

Other new CUDA Research Centres include:

• ETH Zurich (Switzerland)
• Lobachevsky State University of Nizhni Novgorod (Russia)
• Technische Universitat Braunschweig (Germany)
• Technische Universitat Darmstadt (Germany)
• Universidade Federal Fluminense (Brazil)
• University of Arkansas
• University of Pittsburgh
• University of Sheffield (U.K.)
• Virginia Tech

CUDA Teaching Centres have integrated GPU computing techniques into their mainstream computer
programming curriculum. New ones include:

• Brunel University (U.K.)
• Carnegie Mellon University Silicon Valley
• Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers (France)
• Facultad de Ingenieria, Universidad de la Republica (Uruguay)
• Florida State University
• Grinnell College
• Kazimierz Wielki University (Poland)
• MS Ramaiah Institute of Technology (India)
• New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology
• Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Norway)
• Purdue University
• Universidad de Malaga (Spain)
• Universidade Anhembi Morumbi (Brazil)
• Universidade Federal de Sao Paulo (Brazil)
• Universita di Catania (Italy)
• University of Akron
• University of Alabama
• University of Arizona
• University of Arkansas
• University of Moratuwa (Sri Lanka)
• University of Rochester
• University of Wisconsin – Madison
• Wake Forest University

The CUDA Research Centre Programme fosters collaboration at institutions that are expanding the frontier of parallel computing. Among the benefits are exclusive events with key researchers and academics, a designated NVIDIA technical liaison, and access to specialised online and in-person training sessions.

The CUDA Teaching Centre Programme is the first programme of its kind to be developed and offered to universities and colleges by a hardware vendor. Among the programme’s benefits is the donation of teaching kits, including textbooks, software licenses and NVIDIA CUDA architecture enabled GPUs for teaching lab computers, as well as academic discounts for additional hardware, if required.

For more information on NVIDIA research activities and these programmes, please visit the NVResearch site.