NVIDIA opens GPU R&D center in Malaysia with Mimos

• One-stop center first in South-East Asia to champion GPU technologies
• Activities include collaborative university research projects; workshops; programming contests; road shows

NVIDIA has launched what it called South-East Asia’s first GPU (graphics processing unit) research and development (R&D) and Compute-Solution Center in Malaysia, working with HP and Mimos.
 
The center, which is located on the Mimos campus, will serve as a one-stop shop to promote, share and teach GPU technologies and solutions to customers and those interested in general purpose GPU (GPGPU), as well as to perform collaborative work on GPU-related topics.
 
In addition to featuring leading GPU-enabled applications such as SolidWorks, Autodesk 3ds Max, ANSYS, Abaqus and Adobe CS6, the center will promote the dynamic growth of GPU computing in Malaysia, the three parties said in a statement.
 
Local activities include collaborative university research projects; creating CUDA teaching centers at universities; GPGPU workshops; CUDA programming contests; technology road shows; and hosting government and industry visits. CUDA is NVIDIA's parallel computing architecture.
 
It will also cater to GPU-related activities, such as developing GPU accelerator libraries,
R&D in GPGPU-enabled applications and generic algorithms, and GPGPU application benchmark and testing.
 
Powered by an HP Converged Infrastructure architecture featuring HP ProLiant Servers, HP Networking switches and HP 3PAR Storage, the GPU R&D and Compute Solution Center will facilitate the adaptation of many-core, parallel and GPU techniques in scientific, financial and big data processing., the three companies said.
 
“The creation of this center reflects the increasing use of GPU computing in demanding general-purpose scientific, engineering and computational finance applications,” said Francis Yu, vice president of APAC Sales and Marketing at NVIDIA.
 
“Together, NVIDIA, HP and MIMOS are championing the development of GPU computing, and bringing its benefits to organizations in Malaysia and around the region.”
 
Mimos president and CEO Datuk Abdul Wahab Abdullah said, “Mimos values industry partnerships that promote the cross-fertilization of ideas … in turn, this helps accelerate our research results and encourages adoption locally and globally.”
 
Mimos currently uses the center for research and development in big data processing in the areas of text processing, financial computation, and data scrambling. These libraries are in turn given to Mimos technology recipients and end customers.
 
NVIDIA invented the GPU in 1999, and its processors today are used in cellphones, tablets and auto infotainment systems; and applications such as PC games, 3D graphics and visual effects in movies, and high performance computing.