Today Nvidia announced that it’s launching multiple GPU Technology Conferences in Asia and other regions, while moving its North American flagship event from October 2011 to May 2012. The move reflects growing interest in momentum in GPU computing as an engine for scientific discovery.
With more than 2,000 attendees from more than 40 countries, GTC 2010 was the second-largest supercomputing event of the year. Building on this success, NVIDIA is adding multiple regional GTC events across the globe, including events in the following locations:
- Singapore – May 12, 2011
- Taipei – May 19, 2011
- Tel Aviv – May 30, 2011
- Tokyo – July 22, 2011
- Beijing – December 15-16, 2011
I think there’s a couple of things at work here. First, a plethora of regional GPU user group meetings have been popping up on Meetup.com. In places like Taipei, a Nvidia spokesperson told me that as many as 500 people have already expressed interest in a local GPU conference. With the way Visas work these days, there’s no way for many of these people to attend a conference in the States.
Secondly, I think Nvidia saw the amount of GPU-related content coming to the SC11 Conference in November and decided to make that it’s Fall conference. In this light, moving GTC to Spring makes perfect sense. It will also give the busy folks at Los Alamos some breathing room between shows as they prepare for LANL Accelerated HPC Symposium, which runs in conjunction with GTC.
A Tip of the Hat goes to Nvidia on this one. It’s quite amazing that a conference heading into its third year is now the second largest HPC symposium. By moving to Springtime, the GTC won’t look or feel like its competing with SC for attention, hearts, and minds.
It looks like the sponsors agree, as Adobe, AMAX, Appro, Bull, CAPS, Dell, GE Intelligent Platforms, HP, Lenovo, Los Alamos National Labs, Microsoft, NextIO, PNY, Supermicro, Synnex, and SGI have all signed on for GTC 2012.
