Hasta La Gadget!

This week the folks at NVIDIA have been revealing bits and pieces of their GPU roadmap with Tegra and GeForce GPU action left and right, moving forward with their newest mobile superhero code-named SoC “Parker.” This SoC comes after the still code-named “Logan” and will, if the naming scheme holds true, be Tegra 6 down the road. Along with this reveal came word of a code-named system called “Kayla” – a processing beast that, when it’s ready for action, will be extra-tiny and extra-powerful beyond anything we’re capable of today.

Parker is the newest in a line of code-named Tegra processors, coming after Wayne (Tegra 4) and Logan (Tegra 5, more than likely), and bringing on the innovations of past generations and/or outdoing them with the following firsts:

• First with Denver CPU.
• First 64 bit ARM processor coupled with NVIDIA’s next-gen Maxwell GPU.
• First to use FinFET transistors.

According to NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, this is only the beginning. Huang noted that “In five years time, we’ll increase Tegra by 100 times, though Moore’s Law would suggest an eight-fold increase.” With Logan we’ll see the first mobile processor on the planet to work with CUDA. This processor will also bring Kepler GPU power and OpenGL 4.3 – and it’ll be in production by early 2014.

Parker, on the other hand, is still in the pipeline. While we may see it out by 2015, we can’t be sure until NVIDIA gives the real word.

Then there’s Kayla. With NVIDIA’s Kayla, we’ve got what’s been described by Huang as “Logan’s girlfriend.” This device is around the size of a tablet PC at the moment, and is beastly enough already to run real-time ray tracing. As Huang said, “this is showing the kind of demos we used to do on massive GPUs.”

Inside Kayla you’ll find CUDA 5, Linux, and PhysX processing. All of this runs on a rather tiny ARM-toting computer – and it’s coming sooner than later. Have a peek at the timeline below for more Tegra and GeForce GTX action from NVIDIA as GTC 2013 continues – hit up our tag portal for more action as well, we’ll be here the whole conference long!

And don’t forget to check our massive Tegra hub for more mobile processing action than you can handle – more big blasts coming up quick!

NVIDIA Tegra “Parker” blasts forth aside mini ARM computer “Kayla” is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

This week at NVIDIA’s GPU Technology Conference, CEO Jen-Hsun Huang spoke about the ever-growing GPU-utilizing universe, in both the mobile and desktop computer global environments. According to Huang, there will be more than 400 sessions at GTC. “This is the Mecca for scientific discovery”, said Huang of GTC 2013, “Nothing’s more important than the research being done on GPU computers.”

Huang ran through massive amounts of GPU-friendly happenings and upcoming events, including bits and pieces like the following:

• A 50 Gigapixel Camera being developed at the U of Arizona.
• GPU-accelerated diamond cutting.
• CUDA utilization for dating site matching compatibility.
• Oak Ridge’s Titan Supercomputing using 40 million CUDA processors together for 10 petaflops of power.
• Swiss Supercomputing Center starting construction on Europe’s fastest GPU Supercomputing Center Piz Dant – made for weather forecasting purposes.

According to Huang, GPU supercomputing is taking hold at an undeniably quick rate.

“If we’re not at the tipping point for GPU Computing, we’re racing at it. There’s a huge spike in GPU-based computers being built for real work – about 20 percent of total Top500 horsepower is GPU. Included in this is the world’s most powerful supercomputer, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Titan supercomputer.” – Huang

Read more about Titan in our most recent update on the machine and know this – SlashGear’s experience with the GeForce GTX home-ready GPU is coming up quick, too – stay tuned! Of course you’ll also want to stick out the full conference with us here on SlashGear as we cover the entirety of the show, front to back. Have a look at our GTC 2013 tag for more information and stay tuned for more amazing rendering beastliness!

NVIDIA CEO races toward GPU Computing “tipping point” at GTC 2013 is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Jen-Hsun Huang stepped on stage this week at GTC 2013 with words on the GPU, the graphics processing engine that NVIDIA uses to push the envelope in many, many more ways than one. Five features were announced as coming on through the conference: breakthroughs in computer graphics, updates on development, a roadmap update for NVIDIA, an update on remote graphics, and a brand new product announcement. While we’re expecting this conference to hold quite a bit of news on computing outside the mobile world with Tegra, there’s certainly going to be some amazing Android-based excellence coming on too.

Wave Works

Beginning this show with TITAN – the GeForce GTX GPU we’re about to have hands-on time with in the very near future here on SlashGear – some interactive ocean experimentation was shown. Straight away we saw a ship shown on a large screen, real-time water being pushed up against the craft as heavy waves came up and crashed against it. With 20,000 sensors in-place (virtually), this demonstration showed how with NVIDIA GPU power, we’ll be able to test the ability of ships in the future to withstand a beat-down.

If we didn’t know better, we’d have to guess that this demonstration of the ship was real – this demonstration was called Wave Works, and was a Beaufort-Scale Real-Time Ocean rendering. Absolutely gorgeous.

Face Works

Also included was a show of what the company calls Kepler Dawn. This lovely fairy was the work of many, many years of work on the creation of a very real human form. Attempting to escape the so-called “Uncanny Valley”, Huang let us know that they were close, but weren’t quite there yet with this first show. The “Uncanny Valley” is a place where realistic animations get creepy – incase you didn’t know – this happening between an obviously animated creature and a real human being.

A new technology called Face Works was introduced, letting a system that before NVIDIA got to it was 32GB to be pushed into 400 MB. Here we’ve seen NVIDIA’s Titan GPU turning an animated face look real. For those of you that aren’t able to see this face move in real-time yet, hear this: it’s impossibly realistic. If Star Wars is going to feature Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, and Mark Hammil, they’ll use Face Works to make it work.

Stick out the full conference with us here on SlashGear as we cover the entirety of the show, front to back. Have a look at our GTC 2013 tag portal for more information and stay tuned for more amazing rendering beastliness!

NVIDIA’s GTC kicks off with stunning real-time rendering is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

It’s that time of year again for all those diehard gaming and graphics fans. The annual GPU Technology Conference has just kicked off live in San Jose in the heart of Silicon Valley. There’s plenty going on again this year, especially with NVIDIA‘s new GTX Titan graphics card taking front and center. Read on for more details on what to expect.

Obviously this will be all about developers, gaming, and high performance graphics, but we’re also expecting some exciting news on the NVIDIA GPU front (aka TITAN) as well as some details on their impressive mobile chipset recently announced, the NVIDIA Tegra 4 and Tegra 4i.

From Ray Tracing to Crysis 3 gaming and graphics will obviously be the star of the show here. From emerging technology, emerging companies and much more we’ll be here live with all the details.

The official GTC Keynote is about to begin here shortly this morning with NVIDIA’s own Jen-Hsun Huang taking the stage as usual to share some details. We’re expecting the focus to be on content, developers, partners, and a few nice announcements about the products mentioned above. Stay tuned for all the details live from SlashGear! Don’t forget to check out our Tegra Portal for more NVIDIA news.

GTC 2013: We’re Here! is written by Cory Gunther & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Crystal dynamic’s reboot of Tomb Raider has become a big hit in the gaming industry, receiving top marks and rave reviews from game sites all around the web. The game has been praised for its stunning graphics, simple game play, riveting story, and convincing protagonist. While the game is already great, NVIDIA has found a way to make the game even more so. It has released the GeForce 314.21 drivers that will dramatically improve your Tomb Raider gameplay.

NVIDIA had planned on releasing its GeForce GTX Driver support for Tomb Raider during Day 1 of the game’s launch, however the company didn’t receive the game on time to do so. It’s better late than never, and NVIDIA graphics card owners are still grateful that NVIDIA followed through with its support. The company promises that its new 314.21 drivers will improve game performance by about 45%-60%.

The company measured the performance boost on an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 at both the 1920×1080 and 2560×1600 resolutions. Many users have also stated that they’ve seen dramatic boosts in performances in their games. One user stated that his GTX 580 SLI received a 49% boost in performance, with frame rates in the game jumping from 50.3FPS to 74.9FPS on the Ultimate preset.

NVIDIA does really well in updating its drivers. Just a couple of weeks ago, the company launched its 314.14 beta drivers that’s optimized for a variety of games including StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm, SimCity, Hawken PhysX, and Resident Evil 6 (which will launch on the PC March 22nd). With its 314.21 updated drivers, the best GPU company is able to improve on one of the best games this year so far.

[via NVIDIA]

Tomb Raider gains NVIDIA GeForce GTX Driver support is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.