14 DAY TRIAL // CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture), a development kit used to create derivative works for academic, commercial, or personal purposes, has been updated to version 2.0. Available for free download here, the main use of CUDA is Standard C programming language enabled on a GPU.
From Apple's Downloads page:
NVIDIA CUDA 2.0
About NVIDIA CUDA
The world's only C language environment that enables programmers and developers to write software to solve complex computational problems in a fraction of the time by tapping into the many-core parallel processing power of GPUs.
With millions of CUDA-capable GPUs already deployed, thousands of software programmers are already using the free CUDA software tools to accelerate applications - from video and audio encoding to oil and gas exploration, product design, medical imaging, and scientific research.
The GPU devotes more transistors to data processing
As some of you tech-savvy blokes may know, the GPU is specialized for compute-intensive, highly parallel computation. In simpler words, the GPU is the Holy Graal of graphics rendering. The GPU's design allows more transistors to be devoted to data processing rather than data caching and flow control. The CUDA Developer SDK provides examples with source code to help you get started with CUDA.
So, here's what Nvidia's CUDA is capable of (highlights):
- Standard C programming language enabled on a GPU - Unified hardware and software solution for parallel computing on CUDA-enabled NVIDIA GPUs - CUDA-enabled GPUs support the Parallel Data Cache and Thread Execution Manager - Standard numerical libraries for FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) and BLAS (Basic Linear Algebra Subroutines) - Dedicated CUDA driver for computing - Optimized direct upload and download path from the CPU to CUDA-enabled GPU - CUDA driver interoperates with OpenGL and DirectX graphics drivers - Support for Linux 32/64-bit and Windows XP 32/64-bit operating systems.
CUDA system requirements call for Mac OS X 10.5.2 or later. You can download the toolkit, as well as the SDK using this link.