Nvidia launches GPGPU investment scheme
Nvidia's GP-GPU investment scheme offers up to $5 million to start-up companies looking to develop general purpose computing solutions on Nvidia hardware.
As reported over on ExtremeTech, Nvidia's GPU Ventures Program aims to provide support – financial and otherwise – to companies looking to create products and services based around general purpose GPU computing – the company's CUDA solution, in other words.
Nvidia has stated that the programme aims to “evaluate companies that leverage the GPU for both consumer and professional applications in all areas such as video and image enhancement, scientific discovery, financial analysis, and 3D interfaces.” Each qualifying start-up will receive between $500,000 and $5 million to invest in development, marketing, and product distribution.
Although the GPU Ventures Program is new, Nvidia's interest in general purpose computing on the GPU isn't: since introducing CUDA back in 2007, the company has invested money in Acceleware, Elemental Technologies, Keyhole Corporation, Mental Images, MotionDSP, and Right Hemisphere – all of whom use Nvidia's hardware to accelerate their software. The new programme simply offers an easier way for start-ups to bring themselves to Nvidia's attention.
Jeff Herbst, Nvidia's vice president of business development, called the programme “a huge opportunity for young ambitious companies basing their businesses around the GPU,” and revealed that the company hopes such start-ups will “fuel the continued growth of the GPU platform.” Pledging to offer “financial, marketing, and other support to help start-up companies realise their full potential” Herbst called for “interested entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and others to reach out to us with their ideas.”
With more and more companies looking to offload processing on to the increasingly powerful GPUs currently on the market, it looks like Nvidia is doing everything it can to ensure that its products are chosen as the de facto GP-GPU standard.
Can you think of an idea for GP-GPU computing that could get you a share of Nvidia's investment capital, or should graphics manufacturers leave the general purpose stuff to the CPU? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
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Discuss in the forums ReplyNot a bad thing though. Badaboom for example is awesome for video encoding. Let's see what else is coming.
Don't know if they've updated Badaboom but I tried the program about 2 months back and the lowest bitrate was like 500kbps, which to me is just a waste of space. I'm assuming most people are encoding to play the videos on their portable media device with a screen of like 320x240, which only need like 200kbps. Hell, my encodes for my PSP at 480x272 only needs 250kbps and still get a good picture quality.
but without opening up their platform, it's never going to take off.
Just bought a 4870 1gb :P
Besides NVIDIA has a good working solution for GPGPU that you can use now.
I don't see anything from OpenCL yet. It's just a spec atm.
what i find slightly dubious however, is that what you submit to nvidia is basically going to be non-confidential, so unless you have patents etc guarding your ideas, what's to stop them from taking an idea and running with it, especially if they have more resources than you? "Trust" isn't a very good safety line