SANTA CLARA, Calif., 13 Nov. 2006. Nvidia Corporation has unveiled Nvidia CUDA technology, a new architecture for computing on Nvidia graphics processing units (GPUs), and the industry's first C-compiler development environment for the GPU.

GPU computing with CUDA is a new approach to computing where hundreds of on-chip processor cores simultaneously communicate and cooperate to solve complex computing problems up to 100 times faster than traditional approaches.

This architecture is complemented by another first -- the Nvidia C-compiler for the GPU. This development environment provides developers the tools they need to solve new problems in computation-intensive applications such as data analysis, technical computing, and data visualization.

Available on the new GeForce 8800 graphics card and future Nvidia Quadro solutions, computing with CUDA transcends the limitations of traditional GPU stream computing by enabling GPU processor cores to communicate, synchronize, and share data.

CUDA-enabled GPUs offer Parallel Data Cache, which allows 128, 1.35GHz processor cores in newest generation Nvidia GPUs to cooperate with each other while performing intricate computations.

Developers access these new features through a separate computing driver that communicates with DirectX and OpenGL, and the new NVIDIA C compiler for the GPU, which is said to obsolete streaming languages for GPU computing.

The CUDA Software Developers Kit (SDK) is currently available to developers and researchers through the NVIDIA registered developer program. For more details on developing with CUDA, visit the NVIDIA Web site at www.developer.nvidia.com.