NVIDIA Bestows CUDA Center of Excellence Title on Stanford University

Today NVIDIA let it be known that they've named Stanford University a CUDA Center of Excellence for their work in parallel computing research using NVIDIA GPUs and NVIDIA CUDA technology. NVIDIA's CUDA is their parallel computing architecture which, it should be noted, enables radical increases in computing performance, all with the harnessed power of graphics processors. Stanford is one of more than 450 universities and institutions that teach the CUDA programming model within their curriculum and is now one of only 11 institutions already in the CUDA Centers of Excellence program.

Currently Stanford is offering several full courses, short courses, and partner-sponsored courses that cover CUDA architecture and parallel computing. Under this new title of a CUDA Center of Excellence, Stanford will utilize grands provided by NVIDIA and GPU computing equipment in a number of research and academic programs. A few of the courses included in this update are:

· Development of mesh-based solvers for partial differential equations; crucial for simulation of physical phenomena, such as fluid-flow and mechanics

· Seismic velocity estimation by waveform inversion

· Probability estimation and uncertainty quantification for large-scale engineering systems: hypersonic vehicles, wind turbines, batteries, green buildings, and financial markets

Margot Gerritsen, director, Institute for Computational & Mathematical Engineering, and associate professor, Department of Energy Resources Engineering, at Stanford University has been rather energized by this new announcement and had the following to say on the subject:

"It's vitally important that our faculty be at the forefront of computing technology so that we can continue developing state-of-the-art computational algorithms that drive innovation in the sciences and engineering," said Gerritsen. "This award allows us to broadly expand parallel computing education and research programs to large numbers of researchers and students from a wide variety of disciplines."

NVIDIA is known for their collaborative nature, case in point: We've got a NIVIDIA Tegra 2 dual-core processor Tabletpalooza giveaway going on this month that YOU can get in on right now!

AND just incase you were wondering, the rest of the groups included in the CUDA Centers of Excellence program include: Georgia Tech, Harvard University, Institute of Process Engineering at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, National Taiwan University, Tokyo Tech, Tsinghua University (China), University of Cambridge, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Maryland, University of Tennessee, and University of Utah.