Tokyo Tech Builds First Tesla GPU Based Heterogeneous Cluster to Reach Top 500

AUSTIN (Map) - AUSTIN, Texas, Nov. 17 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- SC08 -- The Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech) today announced a collaboration with NVIDIA to use NVIDIA(R) Tesla(TM) GPUs to boost the computational horsepower of its TSUBAME supercomputer. Through the addition of 170 Tesla S1070 1U systems, the TSUBAME supercomputer now delivers nearly 170 TFLOPS of theoretical peak performance, as well as 77.48 TFLOPS of measured Linpack performance, placing it, again, amongst the top ranks in the world's Top 500 Supercomputers.

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"Tokyo Tech is constantly investigating future computing platforms and it had become clear to us that to make the next major leap in performance, TSUBAME had to adopt GPU computing technologies," said Satoshi Matsuoka, division director of the Global Scientific Information and Computing Center at Tokyo Tech. "In testing our key applications, the Tesla GPUs delivered speed-ups that we had never seen before, sometimes even orders of magnitude -- a tremendous competitive boost for our scientists and engineers in reducing their time to solution."

Speaking to the ease of implementation, Matsuoka continued, "The entire upgrade was carried out in 1 week, and the TSUBAME supercomputer remained live throughout. This is an unprecedented feat in top-level supercomputing."

"We are honored to partner with Tokyo Tech -- world famous for their supercomputing expertise and success," said Andy Keane, general manager of the GPU Computing business at NVIDIA. "NVIDIA Tesla breaking into the Top 500 marks a milestone in supercomputing history. The massively parallel GPU is now essential for supercomputing centers worldwide."

The first to achieve Top 500 ranking with an NVIDIA Tesla based GPU cluster, Tokyo Tech, is one of hundreds of distinguished universities and supercomputing centers that have adopted GPU based solutions for research. Other leading centers include the National Center of Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois, Rice University, University of Heidelberg, University of Maryland, Max Planck Institute and University of North Carolina.

The Tesla S1070 1U GPU system is based on the NVIDIA CUDA(TM) parallel architecture. This architecture is accessible through an industry standard C language programming environment that allows developers and researchers to tap into the parallel architecture of the GPU more quickly and easily than any other solution shipping today.

For more information on NVIDIA Tesla S1070, please visit: http://www.nvidia.com/object/tesla_s1070

About NVIDIA

NVIDIA (Nasdaq: NVDA) is the world leader in visual computing technologies and the inventor of the GPU, a high-performance processor which generates breathtaking, interactive graphics on workstations, personal computers, game consoles, and mobile devices. NVIDIA serves the entertainment and consumer market with its GeForce(R) graphics products, the professional design and visualization market with its Quadro(R) graphics products, and the high- performance computing market with its Tesla(TM) computing solutions products. NVIDIA is headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif. and has offices throughout Asia, Europe, and the Americas. For more information, visit http://www.nvidia.com.

Certain statements in this press release including, but not limited to, statements as to: the benefits of NVIDIA Tesla S1070 1U GPUs on the TSUBAME supercomputer; the benefits of NVIDIA's CUDA architecture; and the essentialness of the massively parallel GPU for supercomputing worldwide; are forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause results to be materially different than expectations. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include: development of more efficient or faster technology; adoption of the CPU for parallel processing; design, manufacturing or software defects; the impact of technological development and competition; changes in consumer preferences and demands; customer adoption of different standards or our competitor's products; changes in industry standards and interfaces; unexpected loss of performance of our products or technologies when integrated into systems as well as other factors detailed from time to time in the reports NVIDIA files with the Securities and Exchange Commission including its Form 10-Q for the fiscal period ended July 27, 2008. Copies of reports filed with the SEC are posted on our website and are available from NVIDIA without charge. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and speak only as of the date hereof, and, except as required by law, NVIDIA disclaims any obligation to update these forward-looking statements to reflect future events or circumstances.

(C) 2008 NVIDIA Corporation. All rights reserved. NVIDIA, the NVIDIA logo, Tesla, GeForce and Quadro are trademarks or registered trademarks of NVIDIA Corporation in the U.S. and other countries. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.