Speaker:  David Kirk, Ph.D. ,  NVIDIA Chief Scientist

Date: Wednesday 16th April 2008
Location: Sala d’actes, Facultat d’Informàtica, Campus Nord, UPC (Edifici B6), Campus Nord, UPC, Jordi Girona 3, Barcelona 08034, Spain
Duration: 15.00 - 16.45 CEST

If you are going to attend, please confirm your attendance to Renata Giménez by email (renata.gimenez@bsc.es) before 10th April 2008. 
If you would to get access to realtime video streaming, contact Nacho Navarro (streaming@gso.ac.upc.edu). 

Abstract: 

A new technology is emerging which has the potential to revolutionise science and industry. It is already being used by world-leading research groups and companies to massively speed up their research and productivity. And it's based on a chip which was developed to play computer games.

In the past, graphics processors were special purpose hardwired application accelerators, suitable only for conventional rasterization-style graphics applications. Modern GPUs are now fully programmable, massively parallel floating point processors. NVIDIA, the company which invented the GPU, is unlocking this technology's potential to create a new generation of affordable, accessible supercomputers, putting an unprecedented level of computational power in the hands of scientists and programmers.

This talk will describe NVIDIA’s massively multithreaded computing architecture and CUDA software for GPU computing. The architecture is a scalable, highly parallel architecture that delivers high throughput for data-intensive processing. Although not truly general-purpose processors, GPUs can now be used for a wide variety of compute-intensive applications beyond graphics.

Biography:

David Kirk has been NVIDIA's Chief Scientist since January 1997. His contribution includes leading NVIDIA graphics technology development for today’s most popular consumer entertainment platforms. In 2006, Dr. Kirk was elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) for his role in bringing high-performance graphics to personal computers.  Election to the NAE is among the highest professional distinctions that may be awarded to an engineer. Additionally, in 2002, Dr. Kirk received the SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award. From 1993 to 1996, Dr. Kirk was Chief Scientist, Head of Technology for Crystal Dynamics, a video game manufacturing company. From 1989 to 1991, Dr. Kirk was an engineer for the Apollo Systems Division of Hewlett-Packard Company. Dr. Kirk is the inventor of 50 patents and patent applications relating to graphics design and has published more than 50 articles on graphics technology. Dr. Kirk holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from the California Institute of Technology.