Mawson Centre Lecture Theatre MC1-02
University of South Australia
Mawson Lakes

CUDA is a parallel computing architecture and programming environment from NVIDIA that enables dramatic increases in computing performance by harnessing the power of the GPU (graphics processing unit).
 
Computing is evolving from "central processing" on the CPU to "co-processing" on the CPU and GPU. To enable this new computing paradigm, NVIDIA invented the CUDA parallel computing architecture. With over 100 million CUDA-enabled GPUs sold to date, software developers, scientists and researchers are finding broad-ranging uses for CUDA, including image and video processing, computational biology and chemistry, fluid dynamics simulation, CT image reconstruction, seismic analysis, financial computing, ray tracing, and much more.
 
The latest CUDA-enabled GPU architecture from NVIDIA, code-named "Fermi", is now available in the form of the Tesla 20 series GPU computing solutions, which support many “must have” features for technical and enterprise computing. These include ECC memory for uncompromised accuracy and scalability, support for C++ and 8x the double precision performance compared to Tesla 10-series GPU computing products.   NVIDIA Tesla GPUs are being used in 100s of clusters and data centers around the world, including the Nebulae cluster, currently the 2nd fastest supercomputer in the world.
 
In this workshop you will learn about CUDA, the Fermi architecture, and Tesla GPU Computing products. You will learn about the basics of programming GPUs using CUDA C and C++, the variety of available computational libraries for CUDA, tools for profiling and debugging CUDA applications, and approaches for optimizing CUDA parallel applications.  You will also learn about CUDA-enabled desktop, workstation, and cluster computing solutions provided by Xenon Systems.

This event is FREE, and afternoon tea will be provided.

Workshop Agenda

1:00 Paul Coddington – Introduction to eResearch SA and update on its GPU and HPC facilities
1:10 Mark Harris - Introduction to NVIDIA CUDA, Tesla, and the Fermi Architecture
1:45 Dragan Dimitrovici - CUDA-enabled Hardware Options from Xenon Systems
2:05 CUDA Parallel Programming Model and C for CUDA
2:30 Tea break
2:45 Live CUDA Programming Demo
3:15 CUDA Debugging and Profiling Tools
3:45 Optimizing Performance on NVIDIA GPUs
4:30 Update on CUDA for Fermi and Q&A
4.50 CLOSE

About the Speakers

Mark Harris

Mark Harris is a Senior Developer Technology Engineer at NVIDIA, where he works with developers around the world on software for high-performance computing and computer graphics. His research interests include parallel computing, general-purpose computation on GPUs,physically based simulation, real-time rendering, and gastronomy. Mark earned his Ph.D.in computer science from the University of NorthCarolina at Chapel Hill in 2003 and his B.S. from the University of Notre Dame in 1998. Mark founded and maintains GPGPU.org, a web site dedicated to general-purpose computation on GPUs. Mark has recently moved to Australia after living in the United Kingdom for five years.

Dragan Dimitrovici

Dragan Dimitrovici is the Founder and driving force of the XENON Technology Group. He founded the company in 1996 at the age of 21, when he recognised the opportunity to sell locally assembled computer hardware. The XENON Technology Group (XTG) which consists of of XENON systems, Mediaproxy and XDT develops mission critical solutions for new & emerging markets within the Defence, Scientific Research, Broadcast, film & Education industry. Its solutions are tailored to individual customer requirements. Each year XTG invest heavily in research and partners with world class Vendors including NVIDIA, Supermicro,Mellanox, ScaleMP, Adaptec, Accelereyes (Jacket for Matlab) & Microsoft. Dragan studied Information Management at Melbourne University and is a certified Intel Server Integration Specialist. In 2006, Dragan was an Ernst & Young, Entrepreneur of the year finalist.

Paul Coddington

Dr Paul Coddington is the deputy director of eResearch SA (eRSA), and is responsible for eRSA's high-performance computing facilities and services. He has undergraduate degrees in physics and mathematics from the University of Western Australia, and a PhD in computational physics from the University of Southampton, where he programmed some of the earliest parallel computers. He subsequently worked at Caltech, Syracuse University and the University of Adelaide on a variety of research and development projects focusing on the application of high-performance and distributed computing and the Web to a variety of scientific problems, including the development of online scientific data repositories.