CUDA : 2.0 beta version and a contest Posted on 30/04/2008 at 05:40 by Damien
A few days ago, Nvidia made available its 2.0 beta version of CUDA, the software interface which enables using GeForce 8/9 (Quadro/Tesla variations) GPUs as massively parallel calculation units. This beta version is available for Linux (as well as for Windows XP and Vista) which is something new as there was no previous support for this OS.
Nvidia does not specify the innovations of the new version; however, even if the manual does not broach the subject, we can assume that it prepares for the arrival of a new GPU which in addition to a significant performance gain, should add several innovations in terms of calculation such as double (64bit) floating point support.
Otherwise, Nvidia France is organizing a contest, The CUDA Challenge , for adventurous (European) developers to create an application or plug-in which uses one or several GPUs with CUDA in an interesting way. If you have a GeForce 8/9 and do not know what to do with yourself in the beginning of summer, you have until July 18th to submit your project and potentially win a complete work station.
A few days ago, Nvidia made available its