NVIDIA Launches Tesla Supercomputer

Tesla Supercomputer uses up to 960 parallel processing cores


When talking about supercomputers, the images that come to mind are those of massive computer systems with hundreds or thousands of individual CPUs taking up huge rooms and requiring millions to build and operate. Those mental images are correct for most supercomputers.

NVIDIA is looking to change the way people thing about supercomputing with the introduction of its new Tesla Personal Supercomputer. NVIDIA claims that its GPU-based Tesla Supercomputer is capable of delivering the computing power of a cluster at 1/100th of the price.

Tesla Supercomputers can be purchased for under $10,000 and offer 250 times the processing power of normal desktop workstations. Despite the massive processing power offered by the Tesla system it is housed in a standard desktop form factor system.

Microsoft Technical Fellow, Burton smith said in a statement, "We’ve all heard ‘desktop supercomputer’ claims in the past, but this time it’s for real. NVIDIA and its partners will be delivering outstanding performance and broad applicability to the mainstream marketplace. Heterogeneous computing, where GPUs work in tandem with CPUs, is what makes such a breakthrough possible."

The Tesla Supercomputer is based on NVIDIA's CUDA architecture allowing the system to be programmed in the C language. Up to 960 parallel processing cores can be placed inside the system. NVIDIA claims that Tesla Supercomputers are in use in major research environments like MIT, Cambridge and others.

Antonio Julio from Dell said in a statement, "Dell has led the workstation category for almost a decade and GPU computing represents a massive leap forward in performance that will bring supercomputer power to the masses,” said Antonio Julio, director, Dell Product Group. “The Dell Precision R5400 and T7400 will allow the scientific community to harness the capabilities of the NVIDIA Tesla C1060 GPU with up to two teraflops of computational power.”

NVIDIA announced its Tesla Personal Supercomputer days after the DOE announced its Jaguar supercomputer had reached record setting levels of performance.