MATLAB 2010b supports NVIDIA CUDA-capable GPUs

From MATLAB 2010b, GPU support is available in Parallel Computing Toolbox. Using MATLAB for GPU computing lets you take advantage of GPUs without low-level C or Fortran programming.

MATLAB CUDA support provides the base for GPU-accelerated MATLAB operations and lets integrate existing CUDA kernels into MATLAB applications. However, as a restriction, MATLAB only supports GPUs with CUDA compute capability version 1.3 or higher, such as Tesla 10-series and 20-series GPUs. This limitation is not from a light decision; it is actually due to the double precision support and the IEEE-compliant maths implementation of the CUDA capability version 1.3. Please see this thread for more discussion.

MATLAB GPU computing capabilities include:

• Data manipulation on NVIDIA GPUs
• GPU-accelerated MATLAB operations
• Integration of CUDA kernels into MATLAB applications without low-level C or Fortran programming
• Use of multiple GPUs on the desktop (via the toolbox) and a computer cluster (via MATLAB Distributed Computing Server)

Useful references

Introduction to MATLAB GPU Computing (Video)

MATLAB GPU Computing (Documentation)

Parallel Nsight 1.5 RC with Visual Studio 2010 support

I'm excited to see that the Parallel Nsight 1.5 Release Candidate build (v1.5.10257) is now available at the Parallel Nsight support site. The version introduces compatibility with Visual Studio 2010. You can debug, analyse, and profile your applications in Visual Studio 2010 instead of 2008.

Unfortunately, you will still need the Microsoft v9.0 compilers installed in order to compile your CUDA C/C++ code when using Visual Studio 2010. These compilers ship with Visual Studio 2008, and older versions of the Microsoft Windows SDK.

New Features in Parallel Nsight 1.5 RC:

All:
* Support for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 in all Parallel Nsight components
* Requires the 260.61 driver (available from the support site)
* Bug fixes and stability improvements

CUDA C/C++ Debugger:
* Support for the CUDA 3.2 RC toolkit
* Support for debugging GPUs using the Tesla Compute Cluster (TCC) driver
* Support for >4GB GPUs, such as the Quadro 6000
* CUDA Memory Checker supports Fermi-based GPUs.

Direct3D Shader Debugger:
* Debugging shaders compiled with the DEBUG flag is now supported.

Direct3D Graphics Inspector:
* Support for GeForce GTX 460 GPUs
* Graphics debug sessions start much faster.
* New Direct3D 11 DXGI texture formats are now supported for visualization.
* Textures used in the current draw call's pixel shader are now viewable directly on the HUD.

Analyzer:
* Support for GeForce GTX 460 GPUs
* NVIDIA Tools Extension (NVTX) events have been improved with color and payload.
* NVIDIA Tools Extension (NVTX) API calls for naming threads, CUDA contexts and other resources
* GPU-side draw call workloads from OpenGL and Direct3D are now traced.

The full release notes can be found at Parallel Nsight support site.

OpenFOAM 1.7.1 is released

It is nice to read the piece of news that OpenCFD just released OpenFOAM version 1.7.1. The version optimises correctly using gcc-4.5.0 and has been verified to run on OpenSuSE-11.3.

Another good aspect is the debian packages prepared for this version, created for Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. Briefly, to install OpenFOAM in Ubuntu, execute the commands

# add the openfoam source into the source list
:/$ sudo echo "deb http://www.openfoam.com/download/ubuntu lucid main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list
# refresh the package list
:/$ sudo apt-get update
# Install OpenFOAM
:/$ sudo apt-get install openfoam171
# Install Paraview
:/$ sudo apt-get install paraviewopenfoam380

Please refer to this page for more information on the installation onto Ubuntu.