Apple to Support Nvidia's CUDA at WWDC?

[matthutch]

I just read this on CNet (might be old news to most by now but hey why not ) and thought it was pretty cool.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-99...l?tag=nefd.top

This would be awesome if they could leverage GPU power for Quicktime encodes/transcodes. I wonder if Tyler from Visual Hub would be able to use it to speed up Visual Hub's encoding even more

EDIT: Sorry if this is in the wrong section as well, Mods please move if I fubar'd it

[Cromulent]

Originally Posted by matthutch

I just read this on CNet (might be old news to most by now but hey why not ) and thought it was pretty cool.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-99...l?tag=nefd.top

This would be awesome if they could leverage GPU power for Quicktime encodes/transcodes. I wonder if Tyler from Visual Hub would be able to use it to speed up Visual Hub's encoding even more

EDIT: Sorry if this is in the wrong section as well, Mods please move if I fubar'd it

Yes, it is available in Mac OS X. Not sure what the point of the post is though?

CUDA is a pretty impressive technology if you are doing lots of maths heavy programming but because it is pretty limited (only Nvidia hardware for a start with more than 128MBs of graphics RAM) it's use is limited to a small section of the Mac community.

[matthutch]

Originally Posted by Cromulent

Yes, it is available in Mac OS X. Not sure what the point of the post is though?

Was more to see what other people thought about it. From what you have said it seems like it is already implemented? Do you know any applications that are actively using it?

Originally Posted by Cromulent

CUDA is a pretty impressive technology if you are doing lots of maths heavy programming but because it is pretty limited (only Nvidia hardware for a start with more than 128MBs of graphics RAM) it's use is limited to a small section of the Mac community.

This is more where I was wanting to get into, given the increasing performance of hardware more people would be opened up to these sort of areas so it would be interesting to see how current developers envisage their ability to leverage the technology today. Seeing that even the X3100 in the current MacBook's can utilize 144Mb of RAM quite a few machines would be able to use it, if only a little bit (I'm not to clued in on the details of the memory requirements beyond what you've mentioned I admit), for a little bump in encoding speed.

Apologies if this doesn't make much sense either, working early on a Saturday morning has its draw backs

[Cromulent]

Originally Posted by matthutch

Seeing that even the X3100 in the current MacBook's can utilize 144Mb of RAM quite a few machines would be able to use it

Unfortunately the X3100 is not an Nvidia graphics card and thus would not work with CUDA.

I've been thinking about looking into CUDA for a financial program that I need to write at some point which will need to do some analysis on a large amount of data very quickly. As others have mentioned video would also benefit a lot from the technology. But CUDA is a very specialised technology which can only benefit mathematical and scientific applications at the end of the day.

[fuziwuzi]

Originally Posted by Cromulent

Unfortunately the X3100 is not an Nvidia graphics card and thus would not work with CUDA.

I've been thinking about looking into CUDA for a financial program that I need to write at some point which will need to do some analysis on a large amount of data very quickly. As others have mentioned video would also benefit a lot from the technology. But CUDA is a very specialised technology which can only benefit mathematical and scientific applications at the end of the day.

here is a medical application of the CUDA. seriously, i am very excited about this technology. i am so shocked that it's taken this long for someone(nvidia) to figure out that people would use video card for more than games.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnIvodB2RzU

[TonyHoyle]

Originally Posted by fuziwuzi

here is a medical application of the CUDA. seriously, i am very excited about this technology. i am so shocked that it's taken this long for someone(nvidia) to figure out that people would use video card for more than games.

Folding@Home have been doing this on ATI cores since late 2006. They got a 30x speed increase out of it.

[matthutch]

Originally Posted by Cromulent

Unfortunately the X3100 is not an Nvidia graphics card and thus would not work with CUDA.

Yeah I didn't realise that CUDA required nVidia cards to work at the time of my post unfortunately . I've been reading up on it throughout the course of the day, it seems like it could be really cool if developers can leverage its potential in the right way.

[MacRumors]

CNet interviewed Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang and found that Apple may have an interest in Nvidia's CUDA technology:

CUDA is a programming technology that allows software developers to take advantage of the unique parallel processing characteristics of graphics processors such as Nvidia's GeForce 8600M, found in the MacBook Pro.

According to Huang, "Apple knows a lot about CUDA" and may announce support for the technology at next week's' Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC).

During a demo for CNet, Nvidia engineers demonstrated how a CUDA-enabled version of a program could dramatically speed up converting video from one format to another. Transcoding video can be useful to convert existing video to be played on another device (such as the iPhone).


Article Link

[ubestbsteppin]

So is this something that could be included in a leopard update?

[eXan]

Only 8600?

[arn]

Originally Posted by eXan

Only 8600?

Here's a full list of supported GPUs.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_learn_products.html

arn

[Peace]

Ah.So there could be a firmware update for the MacPro 8800 video card.
Man. Cuda combined with the 8-cores would make video a breeze.

[chickenninja]

i hope cuda is a cute name like google or yahoo, and not an acronym like msn. accronyms are too wide spread, they mean totally different things to different people and they create barriers in coversation. "TLPD" tension line propelling device, better named "rope thrower" or "roper". its not just accronyms its the fact we overcomplicate our titles and names to the point that they need abbreviation. and begging letters are not the answer because they mean different things in different fields. Ex: SC=star-craft, safety-commisioner, social-consensus, spinal-calapse. we need to ween ourselfs off of accronyms and get back to inventing new words when they are warrented. ex: cell-phone, much better than MCD (mobile-communication-device) or is that one for mini-compact-disk.
some may say that an accronym like spd can be used frequently and quickly in a conversation that is about spd. to this i say use the word "it" for what its for.

[ert3]

Maybe this is a feature of Snow Leopard

[SPUY767]

Hopefully, Apple will get in good with nVidia and get early, low-yield parts like they do from Intel. That would be sweet. Apple makes Intel look good, and they could probably make nVidia look good with a resonable partnership.