ORNL to Use NVIDIA Fermi Architecture for Supercomputer

SANTA CLARA, CA, Oct 2, 2009 - Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) announced plans today for a new supercomputer that will use NVIDIA’s next generation CUDA GPU architecture, codenamed “Fermi”. Used to pursue research in areas such as energy and climate change, ORNL’s supercomputer is expected to be 10-times more powerful than today’s fastest supercomputer.

Jeff Nichols, ORNL associate lab director for Computing and Computational Sciences, joined NVIDIA co-founder and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang on stage during his keynote at NVIDIA’s GPU Technology Conference. He told the audience of 1,400 researchers and developers that “Fermi” would enable substantial scientific breakthroughs that would be impossible without the new technology.

“This would be the first co-processing architecture that Oak Ridge has deployed for open science, and we are extremely excited about the opportunities it creates to solve huge scientific challenges,” Nichols said. “With the help of NVIDIA technology, Oak Ridge proposes to create a computing platform that will deliver exascale computing within ten years.”

ORNL also announced it will be creating the Hybrid Multicore Consortium. The goals of this consortium are to work with the developers of major scientific codes to prepare those applications to run on the next generation of supercomputers built using GPUs.

“The first two generations of the CUDA GPU architecture enabled NVIDIA to make real in-roads into the scientific computing space, delivering dramatic performance increases across a broad spectrum of applications,” said Bill Dally, chief scientist at NVIDIA. “The ‘Fermi’ architecture is a true engine of science and with the support of national research facilities such as ORNL, the possibilities are endless.”

For more information on “Fermi”, NVIDIA’s next generation CUDA compute and graphics architecture, please visit: www.nvidia.com/fermi and for more information on ORNL, please visit www.ornl.gov

About NVIDIA

NVIDIA (Nasdaq: NVDA) awakened the world to the power of computer graphics when it invented the graphics processing unit (GPU) in 1999. Since then, it has consistently set new standards in visual computing with breathtaking, interactive graphics available on devices ranging from portable media players to notebooks to workstations. NVIDIA’s expertise in programmable GPUs has led to breakthroughs in parallel processing which make supercomputing inexpensive and widely accessible. Fortune magazine has ranked NVIDIA #1 in innovation in the semiconductor industry for two years in a row. For more information, see www.nvidia.com.

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See Also

NVIDIA website

Computer Hardware - Graphics Cards - by TenLinks.com

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Additional News

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Oct 12 - MSC Picks NVIDIA Tesla CUDA Architecture for Simulation
Oct 2 - NVIDIA Unveils 'Fermi' CUDA GPU Architecture
Oct 2 - NVIDIA Unveils Nexus for Parallel Computing
Oct 2 - ORNL to Use NVIDIA Fermi Architecture for Supercomputer
Aug 04 - NVIDIA Launches Interactive Ray Tracing Engine
Jul 15 - NVIDIA Offers Optimized Quadro Drivers for AutoCAD 2010
May 12 - NVIDIA CUDA Toolkit 2.2 Released
May 7 - NVIDIA Tesla GPUs Available in Dell Workstations
Apr 21 - NVIDIA Quadro FX 4800 GPU Supports Mac
Apr 3 - NVIDIA Names Harvard University 'CUDA Center Of Excellence'
Mar 31 - NVIDIA Introduces Quadro Pro GPU Product Line
Mar 31 - NVIDIA SLI Multi-OS Available for Graphics Workstation
Mar 3 - NVIDIA Releases GeForce Graphics Drivers for Windows 7 Beta
Feb 27 - NVIDIA Names Bob Sherbin to Head Corporate Communications
Jan 29 - Stanford's Bill Dally Joins NVIDIA as VP Research
Jan 14 - NVIDIA Expects Q4 Revenue Down 40-50%
Dec 3 - NVIDIA Releases Quadro FX 4800 Graphics Card for MCAD
Nov 11 - NVIDIA Unveils Quadro Plex 2200 S4 VCS 3D Accelerator
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Aug 15 - NVIDIA Offers Free OpenGL 3.0 Beta Drivers for 3D Graphics
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Source: Material used in press releases is often supplied by external sources and used as is.