CUDA-Powered Anti-Virus Scanning Is in Development

For a while now, NVIDIA, the Santa Clara, California-based designer of graphics processing units, has been expressing its intentions of enabling a wider range of applications to take advantage of the massively parallel architecture of its line of GPUs. At this time, CUDA is one of NVIDIA's main priorities, as this is a programming language that enables developers to optimize their applications for use on GPUs, specifically NVIDIA's own GPUs. However, although there are an increasing number of applications that have been optimized for CUDA GPUs, the company is working on something that will put CUDA on the map, bringing GPU-optimized applications on the computer systems of most users.

According to a recent post on Fudzilla, NVIDIA's general manager of CUDA, Sanford Russell, has confirmed that the chip maker is currently working on a project that will enable the process of scanning for viruses to be optimized for use on the GPU, potentially providing a considerable speed-up over traditional CPU-based scanning solutions. The project itself will not only benefit the end-user but NVIDIA as well, which will be able to market the virus scanning capabilities of its GPUs, in addition to their graphics capabilities.

The global market for anti-virus, anti-spyware and other malware products is something to consider, which NVIDIA probably does. The chip maker would have to convince a couple of leading anti-virus developers of the benefits that are presented by the CUDA programming language and the performance capabilities of its own GPUs. This will be a great opportunity for the company, which could sell more GPUs, thanks to their CUDA properties.

With the announcement made about NVIDIA's next-generation Fermi, the Santa Clara, California-based manufacturer has once again expressed its intentions of enabling the GPU as a more central component of future computer systems, offloading the CPU from some of the applications, and potentially making the system more responsive. Unfortunately, NVIDIA is yet to announce any future partners for said project.