UIUC named first CUDA center of excellence

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NVIDIA announced today that UIUC has been named the first CUDA Center of Excellence.

nVidia logoIn addition to the appointment, NVIDIA has donated $500,000 to UIUC for the development of parallel computing facilities and the continuation of its research programs.

What’s it all about?

“The CUDA Center of Excellence program rewards schools that truly embrace the concept of parallel processing as the future of computing,” said Dr. David Kirk, chief scientist at NVIDIA. “Schools receiving this accreditation integrate the CUDA software environment into their curriculum to help their students harness the capabilities of these new parallel processing architectures. As one of the country’s leading schools in this field, I am personally delighted to appoint UIUC as our first CUDA Center of Excellence.”

The Theoretical and Computational Biophysics Group at UIUC has some experience using NVIDIA’s magic gear to speed up NAMD/VMD. How can you get some of this Center of Excellence goodness for your own university?

Universities wishing to become CUDA Centers of Excellence must teach a CUDA class and use CUDA technology in their research, usually across several labs. In return, NVIDIA supports the school through funding and equipment donations, including help to set up a GPU computing cluster. The appointment of UIUC follows on from the donation last year of 32 QuadroPlex model 4 systems, containing 64 GPUs for a 16-node CUDA technology cluster. The cluster, that has an $800K value, is administered by NCSA (www.ks.uiuc.edu).