NVIDIA Updates : CUDA 2.1 Download Available for free

The U.S. firm NVIDIA has put online for developers, version 2.1 beta of CUDA SDK allowing generic calculation by the GPU. Through CUDA technology, the application can directly access the computing power deployed by the processor to the graphics card. This new version brings improvements mainly in terms of interoperability and fixes several bugs.

The development kit supports Tesla graphics processors in Windows Vista and comes on the development tool Visual Studio 2008 for Windows XP and Vista. Communication with the programming interfaces of Direct 3D 9 and Direct 3D 10 has been optimized. Note also improved compatibility with the OpenGL graphics library and management of programming on the fly (Just-In-Time).

Several recent Linux distributions are also supported to Fedora 9, SUSE Linux 11 and Ubuntu 8.04, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.7 and 5.2.

CUDA: a boon for scientists.

The Californian company reported that NVIDIA Atlantic CUDA technology is now used for scientific computing, especially in the open platform computing networks BOINC, which invites users to make available some of their processor to participate in Project type SETI @ home or FightAIDS @ Home (which includes Team Tournament).

Dr. David Anderson, founder of BOINC and scientific laboratory space science at the University of Berkeley explains: "NVIDIA CUDA makes its processing power for scientific research. The researchers did not have such a tool or could not afford before. "

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Thus was born the project GPUGRID, a version of BOINC client specially designed for PCs with Nvidia GeForce graphics card. This processing power is mainly used to carry heavy calculations such as molecular dynamics, the prediction of protein structure, climate modeling and weather, medical imaging and many others.

CUDA: from the general public ... too!

For the general public, CUDA technology also has opportunities to accelerate as it allows certain treatments used repetitive especially in video software. Thus the publisher CyberLink announced last September that its editing software PowerDirector would be compatible with CUDA to accelerate the processing of videos in high definition. Nero is expected in the year 2009 to update its applications MoveIt Nero and Nero 9 to take advantage of CUDA technology in operations while TMPGExpress transcoding, encoding software Pegasys also operates CUDA to accelerate computing time filters. Also note that the software Badaboom Media Converter, using CUDA to convert video files, just go to version 1.1, with the key to many new functional.


The CUDA SDK 2.1 can be downloaded here. Version 3.0, currently in development expected in 2009.

The latest version today is CUDA 5.5. You can update the same to get more better output. I got this update directly through a driver updater tool. I am using DriverMax here. It is a simple tool through which you get updated drivers automatically. There is no need to keep on manually searching for new things. It is fast and simple to use. I am using this on Windows 8 where it manage all my drivers on its own. There are no free tools like this. You will have to buy this software. It is beneficial to have fresh drivers as it keeps your system better in performance.

My issues lies with driver crash. I had downloaded the latest update and tried to run the setup. But it instantly crashed. Later on I removed the old driver from the system and installed a new one which really worked and there is no issue at all. Driver crash is one of the most common thing that appear when you are trying to upgrade or install a new one. It is always better to first wipe out the older one and then install new. If we go ahead with overwriting new setup on the existing one there can be errors. Using a good uninstaller software also makes the cleaning job easy.