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This week the folks at NVIDIA are making it clear that the K20 family of Tesla GPU architecture is ready for action, and riding in on the wave of power comes the Titan – K20 accelerated and named world’s fastest supercomputer just this morning. The Titan supercomputer works with a beastly 18,688 NVIDIA Tesla K20X GPU accelerator units and makes it clear that this family is more than ready to knock the cap off the processing roof in more ways than one. In addition to being the fastest GPU in the world the K20X model working with the Titan has been revealed as the new #1 entry on the Green500 list for energy efficiency.

It’s a big day for NVIDIA with the Tesla K20 architecture being reintroduced in its final form powered by CUDA – also known as “the world’s most pervasive parallel programming model.” NVIDIA backs this claim up with 8,000 institutions with CUDA developers, 1,500,000 CUDA downloads, and a massive 395,000,000 GPUs shipped with CUDA built in. With 629 university courses being taught on CUDA across 62 countries, it’s safe to say that it’s here for some time to come.

The K20 family also makes with the undeniably next-level powerful performance on scientific applications – this being exactly why the Titan supercomputer uses the architecture for the massive bulk of its processes. The 2011 Gordon Bell Winner for computational simulation was 3.1 Petaflops (3.08 Petaflops on K Computer) with NVIDIA’s new effort bringing on 10+ Petaflops here in 2012.

Both the Tesla K20 and the Tesla K20X work with a single GK110 Kepler GPU with your favorite features – Dynamic Parallelism and Hyper-Q! These units have more than one teraflop peak double precision performance and deliver 10 times the performance of a single CPU – this claim by NVIDIA being based on the following: “Ws-lsMs performance comparison between single E5-2687W @ 3.10GHz vs single Tesla K20X. Tesla K20X > 650 gigaflops.”

There’s also a Tesla K10 model out there, you should know, with memory size of 8GB per board and just SMX inside instead of the addition of Dynamic Parallelism and Hyper-Q, which the K20 and K20X have. The K10 (again, having been on the market now for some time,) has a peak double precision floating point performance of 0.19 teraflops and is made for servers only – it’s peak single precision floating point performance, on the other hand, is 4.58 teraflops. The K20 rings in 1.17 teraflops and 3.52 teraflops for double and single precision floating point performance respectively. The K20X nabs 1.31 teraflops and 3.95 teraflops.

The K20 has 5GB memory size per board while the K20X has 6GB, and both devices have just the one GK110 GPU while the K10 has two GK104 units inside. The K20 units are made for massive beastly tasks like financial computing, computational chemistry and physics, and satellite imaging. The K10 on the other hand is made for seismic, image, signal processing, and video analytics.

The NVIDIA Tesla K20 family of GPU accelerators is ready for action this week – shipping today and available for order from your favorite computer store. NVIDIA is working with Appro, ASUS, Cray, Eurotech, Fujitsu, HP, IBM, Quanta Computer, SGI, Supermicro, T-Platforms, Tyan, and NVIDIA reseller partners as well – you’ll have no shortage of choices on your hands. Grab a K20 as fast as you can!

NVIDIA Tesla K20 family reintroduced as world’s most powerful GPU is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Cray’s Jaguar (or XK7) supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory has been loaded up with the first shipping NVIDIA Telsa K20 GPUs and renamed Titan. Loaded with 18,688 of the Kepler-based K20s, Titan’s peak performance is more than 20 petaflops. Sure, the machine has an equal number of 16-core AMD Opteron 6274 processors as it does GPUs, but the Tesla hardware packs 90 percent of the entire processing punch. Titan is roughly ten times faster and five times more energy efficient than it was before the name change, yet it fits into the same 200 cabinets as its predecessor. Now that it’s complete, the rig will analyze data and create simulations for scientific projects ranging from topics including climate change to nuclear energy. The hardware behind Titan isn’t meant to power your gaming sessions, but the NVIDIA says lessons learned from supercomputer GPU development trickle back down to consumer-grade cards. For the full lowdown on the beefed-up supercomputer, hit the jump for a pair of press releases.

Continue reading Cray’s Jaguar supercomputer upgraded with NVIDIA Tesla GPUs, renamed Titan

Filed under: Science, NVIDIA

Cray’s Jaguar supercomputer upgraded with NVIDIA Tesla GPUs, renamed Titan originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 29 Oct 2012 03:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Today, Tesla opened six Supercharger stations in launch of the Supercharger network. The stations seem to be located in such a way that EV owners can travel between LA, San Francisco, Vegas, and Lake Tahoe. Says the tweet from @TeslaMotors: “Charge for free in Model S on your next road trip btwn SF and LA, Tahoe & Vegas.”

The six Supercharger stations are located in Folsom, Harris Ranch, Gilroy, Barstow, Tejon Ranch, and Los Angeles. Tesla Motors plans to eventually have these stations scattered throughout the US in such a way that EV owners can travel anywhere without concerns about staying charged up. According to the official website, the network will expand to 100 stations in 2015.

So, how long does it take? With a name like Supercharger, one imagines a relatively fast speed, which seems to be an oxymoron when it comes to juicing up via electricity. According to TeslaMotors.com, a 30 minute charge will yield 150 miles of range. This is in comparison to 31 miles when charging via a high-power wall connector, and 16 minutes via a 240 outlet. Not as fast as pumping a tank of gas, but certainly cheaper.

How does it work? According to the Supercharger website, “it’s like an adrenaline shot for your battery.” The cable from a Supercharger connects to the plug in your car much the same way a gas hose is used to fill a tank. The charger delivers 4.5x more electricity than Twin Chargers. The Tesla Model S car starts at $49,900.

[via aolautos]

Tesla unveils six Supercharger stations in California is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

On Wednesday, Tesla was approved for a $10 million grant from the California Energy Commission, which will be used to buy components for the electric Model X SUV, and further expansion of the manufacturing capacity for its Fremont factory. For its part in this, Tesla will have to pony up $50 million to match the grant. The Model X SUV was unveiled back in February, when it amassed over $40 million in sales.

Tesla is being hailed as an innovator responsible for creating 1,500 jobs in California, and for creating green zero-emission cars. Said Ryan McCarthy of the California Air Resources Board, “Tesla has the unique distinction of being the only automaker to actually ask us to increase our targets under zero emission rules.” He went on to state that the Gen 3 from Tesla could end up being a groundbreaking vehicle in the world of electric vehicles, referring to another electric car in the works.

Tesla stated that the $10 million grant will be used in part to hiring of 700 more workers in 2014, when production for the Model X starts. The company’s vice president added that while Tesla is most commonly portrayed as “producing an electric sports car,” its actual goal is simply the aggressive promotion of electric automobiles. California commissioner Carla Peterman said that the addition of the Model X SUV, which is the crossover version of the Model X sedan, will increase eventual mass adoption of electric vehicles.

The Model X SUV is fully electric, and is the third prototype that has been revealed in recent times. As you can see from its picture, this SUV has the signature “Falcon Wings” doors, which open upwards instead of outward. It has two trunks instead of one, due to the lack of a large combustion engine, providing ample storage room when compared to standard SUVs. The Model X has all-wheel drive, and can achieve a 0-60 speed in 4.4 seconds.

[via Forbes]

Tesla receives $10 million state grant to build Model X SUV is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

We already know from our own experience that the Tesla Model S is a driver’s car, with acceleration and handling you wouldn’t expect from a big and quiet luxury sedan. There’s still nothing like a drag race to help settle the matter. Automobile has pitted the upscale EV against one of its more conspicuous rivals, BMW’s M5, with performance results that might surprise those who would expect a 500HP, twin-turbo V8 to regularly come out on top. While we won’t spoil the full results of the showdown video after the break, let’s just say that even the M5’s relatively wide torque band can only do so much when the Model S’ electric motor is always at its peak. BMW’s car may be better overall for those who want to travel long distances outside of certain routes, or to enjoy a burly exhaust note — but there has to be a certain thrill for Tesla drivers who know they can hang with the speed kings while helping the environment.

Continue reading Tesla Model S squares off against BMW M5 in drag race, gives EVs extra street cred (video)

Filed under: Transportation

Tesla Model S squares off against BMW M5 in drag race, gives EVs extra street cred (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 10 Oct 2012 10:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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