Last week (during SC09) the Coordinated Science Laboratory of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign announced the GPU Computing Collaboration Network to foster collaboration among users of GPUs
Members of this network will communicate with each other within and across communities using an interactive website — gpucomputing.net. This network will serve a broad array of user-driven communities across the wide range of areas in which GPU computing is beneficial: from medical imaging and financial modeling to fluid dynamics and video processing. The need for such networked communities arises from the dramatic growth of GPU computing worldwide. GPU computing refers to the use of GPUs (graphics processing units) for scientific and engineering applications and research in a heterogeneous computing environment.
The website will be structured by application domains, enabling users to access colleagues, findings, data, forums, and news items in their own fields of research, with ready access to other communities and application domains. Community resources, on the other hand, will be completely integrated, thus encouraging interdisciplinary collaborations.
Anyone can view content, but membership is required for participation. According to the release anyone with a .edu email address gets an automatic in; everyone else has to be referred by an existing member. I know a little bit about building an online community, and that membership bit is a great way to ensure that things slow to a crawl. Unless they really, really only want university members, that’s a bonehead decision.
