NVIDIA Announces CUDA Challenge for GPU Computing Developers

Santa Clara, California-based NVIDIA is wasting no time in trying to gain more momentum for its line of high-performance graphics processing units and the CUDA technology. The combination of the two solutions is meant to increase the performance of applications that typically rely on CPU performance. On that note, the graphics chip maker has announced recently that it will be working with TopCoder, a competitive software development community, on the CUDA Superhero challenge. This event is designed as a series of contests for computer programmers who will take advantage of the parallel processing power of the NVIDIA CUDA architecture to solve some of the biggest computing challenges.

“PC architecture has evolved from central processing on just the CPU to co-processing on the CPU and the GPU,” said Sanford Russell, general manager of the CUDA group at NVIDIA. “By tapping into the TopCoder community, we can educate over 200,000 programmers on the advantages parallel programming offers and fan the flames of the GPU Computing revolution.”

According to NVIDIA, the first contest will begin on September 14 and will end on September 25. It is open to all eligible developers, who will be given the chance at the US$5,000 worth of prizes, which will be awarded to five contest winners. The company has mentioned that the contest winners will be announced at the NVIDIA GPU Technology Conference, held in San Jose, California, from September 30 to October 2, 2009.

“We have the world's largest competitive software development community representing more than 200 countries, and they are eager to display their talents in one of the fastest growing programming areas in the industry,” said Rob Hughes, president and chief operating officer at TopCoder. “We anticipate that the CUDA Superhero Challenge will generate many creative approaches to solving computing challenges and will result in game-changing innovations.”