CUDA coding contest

News from NVIDIA this week about the first ever CUDA coding contest; this first contest is to write an GPU optimized MP3 LAME encoder:

nVidia logoNVIDIA Corporation today announced the launch of the inaugural CUDA Coding Contest, designed to seek out the most talented CUDA programmers in the world. Live today on CUDA Zone (www.nvidia.com/cuda), the competition challenges C programmers to optimize an MP3 encoder to run as fast as possible on a CUDA-enabled GPU.

Contestants wishing to put their coding skills to the test will be provided with a partially GPU-optimized version of an MP3 LAME encoder. They will then need to modify that code to gain further performance increases using the massively parallel architecture of the GPU. The encoder has to be created in the CUDA programming environment and must achieve a speed up in run-time.

The prize? $5,000. Great idea.