Nvidia’s GTC 2012
Thursday
Our day started early as usual with a continental breakfast in the press lounge then we hurried off to our first Thursday session presented by Fusion-io Storage at 9AM. The beginning of the session was aimed primarily at the people in the movie industy as it was pointed out that the upcoming ‘The Hobbit” is not only filmed in 5K resolution, it was filmed at 48 fps instead of the usual 24, plus it is in 3D! All of this requires a lot of fast storage capacity at about 6GB/s.
Clearly current storage including use of SSDs has latency and other issues which tend to throttle an otherwise fast GPU-based system. Fusion-io Storage uses PCIe attached flash-based memory for image compositing, editing, video playback, 3D content creation and other data intensive tasks to save massive amounts of time. Here is an example using a small PC and two of these devices to concurrently present a dozen movies.
At the Fusion-io Storage oxygen bar ABT caught up with the presenter and got to look at the little machine powering this wonder.
It is based on a pair of add-in PCIe flash-based Fusion-io Storage solutions that were just released for $2495 each which are running in dual-SLI configuration. Last year, the prototypes cost $17,000 which means that this technology may be coming to a gaming PC later this year at a much more reasonable price. 
Fusion-io Storage is meant to completely eliminate the bottleneck in memory.
Here is the comparison with flash and the evolution of their device.
Fusion-io Storage has been around for years and they even partnered up with Samsung back in 2007. They have some pretty mature products for industry and some of them will be heading for the mainstream soon.
After that session, we barely had time to make it to SeeReal’s presentation. They are doing interesting research on sub-hologram processing – while still intensive and depending on the GPU for computing – is still far less intensive than traditional hologram generation. You would need a Supercomputer to generate the same result with traditional methods that SeeReal can manage with a single GPU
SeeReal’s method uses off the shelf graphics hardware and this pipeline
SeeReal shows their pipeline
They even covered transparancy in holgrams and all of this is because of GPU-processing
SeeReal revealed their new holographic prototype
And the outlook is good.
Next up was the Last Keynote was “Not your Grandfather’s Moon Landing”.
http://www.gputechconf.com/gtcnew/on-demand-gtc.php
“Part-time scientists” consist of about 100 engineers, researchers and scientists including former members of the Apollo mission, gathered as a group to meet Google’s challenge to send a robot to the moon. Not your grandfather’s mission to the moon means that we can no longer depend on the dangerous task of sending humans into space to navigate and to land for us. It must all be done remotely and this requires extreme computing capabilities under the most demanding conditions and tightest of quarters.
Google’s incentive of a $30M grand prize requires the winner to send a robot to the moon with a “precise and soft landing” and that the robot must navigate and send HD data back from the moon. An additional prize of 5 million dollars is awarder if the team can drive the robot 500 meters in these harshest of conditions on the moon’s surface while collecting and transmitting data. Soft landing means having a lander and a robot survive a 10′ drop on the surface in a predetermined landing place.
These Scientists are using a former Russian made ICBM to deliver the lander and robot. Bandwith becomes a factor with HD video and so does minituirization and extreme hardening of the hardware to protect it from the extremes of space. And Asimov is the name of the GPU-driven Lunar Rover.
The team picked the landing site of the Apollo 17 as it was a good choice for the original landing. The remains of the original Apollo Rover is there and it is just off of the moon’s equator, an excellent place to use solar panels. Temperatures on the moon can be plus or minus 160C degrees but at the Apollo site it is slightly less harsh, plus or minus 125C. For 1 lunar day (14-1/2 earth days) the temperatures are a constant +125C. For the hardware just to survive, it must use passive cooling with heatpipes for all of the electronics including the minature stereo 3D HD cameras.
The lander in orbit needs to use the GPU for simulations since exact initial values cannot be correctly and accurately determined in advance, including calculating millions of non-differential equations. This must be done in real time where dynamic adjustments cannot be done by humans as the Apollo astronauts were able to do – but all of the calculations must be done on the GPU as the CPU is simply too slow.
R0 is the team’s mini test vehicle which is driven by using an Android tablet, and it was actually given away to a lucky attendee at the GTC. There is a 3 second delay on the moon and the team has to practice driving and steering this representation of the Asimov on earth. The extra $5 million prize for going 500 meters is quite an incentive.
Since the team’s moon rover is in incredibly harsh conditions in +125C conditions, it must drive itself without stopping all the while it has to avoid obsticles. It thus becomes the first real-time autonomous moon rover running on GPUs. Consider that the Mars rover actually had to pause for 60 second to calculate where to go next – that pause would be fatal to Asimov; it needs to keep moving and only GPU calculations in real time iare the only practical way to proceed.
This keynote session was an impressive demonstration of the need for super-fast massively parallel computing only the GPU can provide. Without it, this project simply could not get off the ground.
More GPU Computing Sessions
We weren’t finished. After lunch and a meeting with Fusion-io Storage and the last networking/exhibit of the event, we were off to find out about mixing Graphics and Compute with multi-GPU. This session was hosted by Nvidia.
GPU programming was stressed and helpful examples given. And if one GPU is not enough to program with, multi-GPU can be used to speed processing up.
It was another programming session that was rated “Beginner” but we found the information rather technical and by the reaction of the audience, very useful for programmers.
GPGPU GAMES
Our final session at the GTC was an interesting one dealing with techniques for designing GPGPU games. Traditionally, games process most of their tasks using the CPU and only using the video card for graphics.
The GPU is responsible for the game logic including the game physics and enemy NPC behavior.
For GPGPU games, the game logic is divided up.
The goal is to detail all of the game logic on the GPU.
Here is a specific example of AI.
The Neighborhood Gathering is a novel way to gather neighbors of in-game entities.
A sorting mechanism has to be implemented,
Some novel techniques to integrate AI Behavior with Physics.
Using this framework, they can implement far more entities in real time than either using either the CPU or the GPU.
They had a simple game to demonstrate.
And it turned out to be quite impressive.
There were many questions from the audience about applying these techniques to programming games and especially if they would work with complex games. The speakers were surrounded after the session and the questions went on for some time as we headed back to our hotel room to pack.
We will finish off with a look at some more of the networking sessions. At 6 PM, the GTC was over.
Networking/exhibits
In the pole position is Fusion-io Storage and their very popular oxygen bar.
Nvidia had a large section.
Gaming was featured and MainGear supplied the PCs.
Here is the Tesla S Sedan with a 17″ display provided by Nvidia.
All of Nvidia’s major partners in GPU computing was represented including ASUS ..
… and IBM.
Microway …
. . . and Sharp . . . 
. . . And SuperMicro . . .
PNY was featuring their professional and consumer graphics including their new SSD line-up. ABT will be posting PNY news and perhaps evaluating their hardware now.
Everywhere we see networking. Appetizers were served and beer was available.
Raytrix and their 3D Light Field Video was highlighted.
But something is missing in the above photo. We have beautiful technology but it is cold. In contrast, look at the next picture.
We are reminded that the GTC is all about people. Helpful people. People with a passion for GPU computing and desire to share and learn. The GPU cannot yet replace face-to-face human contact.
Ubitus is a cloud-gaming service similar to Gaikai that is popular in the Far East. Their challenge is to break into the West and to deal with our comparatively sub-standard broadband.
Even Zoobee uses the GPU for their greeting cards which synthesize human voice. All of the above is possible because of a brand new GPU computing industry that began in 2009 with Nvidia’s Fermi. And now we see the incredible efficiency, promise and progress that Kepler brings to GPU compute and to gaming.
The final statistics on the GTC showed that 2,800 people from 48 countries attendeed which is double the attendence of the 2009 GTC. Of course no one could see all 340 sessions. There were 200 volunteers which made it possible. Our thanks to Nvidia for inviting ABT to the 2012 GTC.
LoL, what was that Zoobe thing – in that little picture on the 3rd page – for that hardcore nerd to insert something into this “alien” enclosure?
http://www.zoobe.com/