NVIDIA Tesla GPU Computing Processor Ushers In the Era of Personal Supercomputing

Sometime’s Moore’s Law is simply ignored. This is a discontinuous leap of performance for some vertical computationally-intensive markets and brings the cost/gigaflop down dramatically.

A dedicated, high performance GPU computing solution, Tesla GPU computing processor, deskside supercomputer, and GPU Computing server brings supercomputing power to any workstation or server and to standard, CPU-based server clusters.
“NVIDIA Tesla™ is going to make discovery of huge oil reserves possible through faster and more accurate interpretation of geophysical data.” —Steve Briggs, Headwave, Inc.

“NVIDIA Tesla will give us a 100-fold increase in some of our programs, and this is on desktop machines where previously we would have had to run these calculations on a cluster.” —John Stone, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

“NVIDIA Tesla has opened up completely new worlds for computational electromagnetics.” —Ryan Schneider, Acceleware

“Today’s science is no longer confined to the laboratory; scientists employ computer simulations before a single physical experiment is performed. This fundamental transition to computational methods is forging a new path for discoveries in science and engineering,” said Jen-Hsun Huang, president and CEO of NVIDIA. “By dramatically reducing computation times, in some cases from weeks to hours, NVIDIA Tesla represents the single most significant disruption the high-performance computing industry has seen since Cray 1’s introduction of vector processing.”

Suggested Reading:

PC Hardware Buyer’s Guide: Choosing the Perfect Components

ZDNet reports on Google’s social networking APIs
» Google’s OpenSocial: What it means | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com

Google’s open social networking platform play is the buzz of the blogosphere tonight. see Techmeme. Indeed, it is called OpenSocial in that the set of APIs allows developers to create applications that work on any social network that joins Google’s open party. So far, besides Google’s Orkut social net, LinkedIn, hi5, XING, Friendster, Plaxo and Ning see Marc Andreessen’s post have joined the party.

Thanks to Google I already have (almost) unlimited email storage, and my calendar and contacts are linked together pretty tightly, and my Google groups enable me to effectively manage group communications. I look forward to see how these social networking APIs are used by creative developers to bring tighter integration among the people and resources in my life.

Cupertino, CA — The following scene took place at lunchtime in a crowded Cupertino sushi bar.

Mighty Mouse: Waiter! Who’s that at my seat?

Waiter: Hey Mouse! That’s the new guy in town, that’s iPhone, with multi-touch.

Mighty Mouse: I’ve had that seat since 1983 when Steve hooked me up with Lisa.

Waiter: I know. You had a great ride. You were the King.

Mighty Mouse: WTF! I AM the King! I’m calling Steve right now!

Waiter: He has a new number, Mouse, he’s got an iPhone now.

Mighty Mouse: iPhone! Who cares about some friggin’ iPhone! I’m on hundreds of platforms — Windows, Linux, Ubuntu, every major operating system uses a mouse and pointer. Everyone rides the mouse train. I’m wireless, I’m Mighty. I lost my big ball, but I have a new one now — see here on top?

Waiter: That’s great, Mouse. It’s really cute. But the new guy, he doesn’t need a sidekick — no Arrow — he stands on his own.

Mighty Mouse: No Arrow! WTF! How do people know where they are pointing?

Waiter: That’s just it, Mouse, they just point and touch right on the iPhone screen. The Finger needs no arrow. Hey, you were the first direct manipulation user interface, the “people’s interface”, but The Finger’s got some tricks up his sleeve. You’re sliding on the desk, telling Arrow to do her stuff, but The Finger is already up there on the screen hiding behind each pixel, waiting to be flicked, tapped, and pinched. The Finger is just an infant right now, but he’s got papers, 200 patents in fact. The Finger redefines “direct manipulation.”

Mighty Mouse: Who are you kidding? You call that a screen? It’s tiny! Whose going to surf the web on that thing?

Waiter: Mouse, I hate to break it to you, but more iPhones will be sold today than all the Lisa’s ever made. At this pace, iPhone sales will top all Mac sales in 528 days. My sources tell me there’s a deal in the works for The Finger on the big screen too. Multi-touch is the real star today.

Mighty Mouse: No! This can’t be! You mean…ma…ma…mmaa…Mac?

Waiter: Oh yes, OS X “Leopard” is already running inside the iPhone. In October, the new machines may be running with multi-touch, and maybe even no Mouse in the box! Isn’t that Steve’s way? Look what he did to Mr. Floppy.

Mighty Mouse: No! I don’t believe this. This isn’t happening!

(Mighty Mouse sobs uncontrollably)

Waiter: I’ve got a nice quiet table in the back. It’ll be OK, I’ll get you some saki — on the house.

(Waiter takes the sobbing Mouse by the hand and walks him, to a dark corner of the restaurant where he joins a forlorn Flashing Green Cursor, aka “DOS prompt”.)

This column inspired by the talented John Gruber, whose UI anthropomorphications make me laugh out loud.
Photo courtesy, Incase Designs

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The iPhone’s multi-touch user interface heralds the day when the mouse, as we know it, follows the fate of the floppy disk. Here’s a video review by my old Yale colleague, David Pogue.

Jeff Han’s multi-touch demonstration at TED illustrates that natural interaction and direct manipulation are possible and desirable on workstations. Direct touch interfaces are a natural evolution of Doug Engelbart’s mouse/pointer GUI invented in 1968 and popularized by Macintosh in 1984.

multi-touch

Amazing overview of how technology permits the interlinking of minds.
How does this change who we are, and how does it change our civilization?

Where 2.0: Google Launches Streetside View with Tech from ImmersiveMedia

Virtual reality took another step forward when Google showed off their “Streetside View” at the Where 2.0 conference. Using a slick Flash interface you can access a ground-view perspective of a mapped area. If we apply the Law of Accelerating Returns, the resolution of these images and the density of mapping will increase one thousandfold in a decade. Imagine dropping into an immersive video projection of a Paris boulevard cafe to have your next team meeting. It’s closer than you think.

No one can tell you about Street View, you have to see it for yourself.