Nvidia GPU Technology Conference, Final Day 3

New Tools for CUDA including Nexus within Visual Studio

The GTC featured one entire segment of the conference devoted to programming and developing for the GPU.  This editor has not touched any programming whatsoever since the early 1980s and was amazed to see the new tools.  CUDA is not going away.  It is Nvidia’s proprietary GPU programming language that is the equivalent of x86 instructions for the CPU, but for the GPU.  However, most researchers do not want to learn a new language and would much prefer to program and debug in their own domain language.  Nvidia has released tools to do this with full support for Fortran, C++, C, OpenCL, DirectCompute, Java, and Python, and to top it off, Nexus, the world’s first fully integrated computing application development environment within Microsoft Studio.

This editor attended a couple of programming hand-on demonstrations. Here is a summary chart of the tools that are currently available and what is coming soon.

We then saw a demonstration of how to actually do some debugging.

These tools are intuitive and are just what is needed, and the instructor went step-by step on how to effectively do this.

We also got a preview of what’s coming:

Nexus is an amazing tool that has just debuted that allows the programmer to look at and debug the GPU in the same manner as the CPU.  These are tools that they are already familiar with but now targeted for the GPU.  The will increase the efficiency of the people who work with GPU programming.

Again, everything was laid out step-by-step although I was way too slow to follow along properly.

Finally, off to the Virtual Studio Lab where I got completely lost attempting to follow along.  However, I do realize that the premier application that Microsoft has created for its purpose is now completely GPU-friendly with Nexus.  Again, Nvidia targets the inceased productivity of the programmers by giving them access to tools that will allow them to produce better applications much the same as they work with developers in their the Way it is meant to be Played Program.  I expect they will get the same results with this new program and they will grow a community that comes to depend on Nvidia to make their work more productive.  It is brilliant planning ahead that is applied and adapted for a new industry.  We can see that Nvidia intends to be the industry leader in the GPU high performance computing future as they are pioneers now.

However, I did get hands on with two 30 inch monitors and realized what an important innovation Nvidia has made that will be appreciated by developers and programmers the world over.  They will do better work and create better applications because Nvidia provides assistance for them.

We see an impressive commitment by Nvidia to their ecosystem of developers and programmers with these great tools.  As a practical result, in the months to come we can expect to see better and better applications come out of this.  This is industry shaping and transformation in action, at its near-beginning.