2008/9/10 Jon Forrest <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > What I'm going to try to do is to be able to show > the faculty and grad students around here how > easy it is to get a significant performance improvement > by using CUDA as compared to using their normal > i386 or x86_64 processors.
So I agree with you about nvidia & CUDA -- there's a huge programming toolset and lots of example code for the CUDA environment, so in terms of getting your feet wet, and getting up and running quickly, that's almost certainly the way to go, even if OpenCL is going to come in and take over down the road. Any of the GeForce cards listed at http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_learn_products.html will do; they'll be single precision, but for testing purposes in many situations that'll be fine. They have different specs, but for the purposes of learning some CUDA, just get the beefiest one you can find for under $(line at which you start to need permission) from your favourite reseller. For many PDE-solving type applications, getting factors of 10x over the CPU is fairly straightforward, and then you really have to start thinking -- but the payoffs for some problems can be well worth it. If you haven't found it already, gpgpu and the forumns there can be useful sources of info. Jonathan -- Jonathan Dursi [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
