The NVIDIA Blog |
- The Revolution Will Not Be Televised – We’ll Stream It From the Cloud
- Gaggle of GPU Startups Take Stage at Wednesday’s Emerging Companies Summit
- Touch the Cloud: How XenDesktop and GRID vGPU Are Taking Graphics Beyond the Cubicle
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Posted: 13 Mar 2015 04:00 PM PDT
The tipping point for me came about four years ago. In a garage.
I made $3,000 in a garage sale, selling off my 10-x-5 foot wall of CDs for $2-3 apiece. At that point, I knew I was all-in to the digital music revolution. My entire music collection, over 16,000 songs, now fit in the palm of my hand.  So when I shifted to NVIDIA's GRID game-streaming service, I realized I've done this before. iTunes – and, later, streaming services like Spotify – allowed me to explore more music and take my music anywhere. They made me a better music fan. Now GRID game streaming lets me revisit old favorites, and play seminal titles I never had the chance to play. And it's making me a better gamer. While I've worked at NVIDIA for 15 years, I'm not always on the bleeding edge of technology adoption. My move to digital music reflects that. I've had too many eight-tracks, too many albums, too many cassettes. I grew up before artists released singles on the internet, when listeners consumed albums as a whole. I loved holding the music in my hand and reading through the liner notes for guest appearances, thanks and odd facts. I moved fast to my new downfall: too many iTunes cards. My far-flung taste in music, popular and obscure, exacerbated my habit. Willie Nelson resides on my MP3 player along with Ice Cube. Little-known Middle Class Rut hangs out next to mainstream sensation Bruno Marz. You can dance to Midnight Star, spin to Dead or Alive, boogie to KC and the Sunshine Band, mosh to In Flames or slam to Onyx with just a spin of the dial. I'd buy a $50 prepaid card at lunch and blow through it before I had finished my salad. My next epiphany came on a press tour in New York. I discovered that when TechnoBuffalo's Todd Hassleton finished a TV segment for Fox Business, he'd roam Manhattan in a suit and tie with Country & Western piped in to his ear buds. I emailed him a list of Texas country artists who thrived in my hometown of Austin, well off the commercialized beaten path of Nashville's Music Row. Artists like Charlie Robison, Chris Knight and Walt Wilkins, whom I loved. Instantly he replied that they were on his Spotify list and ready for his weekend road trip. I had dabbled in music streaming before. I'd listen to Pandora to discover new artists. But Todd changed all that with his email. I had just been reassigned to NVIDIA GRID, our game-streaming service. So I was curious. Right around Christmas I jumped into Spotify and it was a revelation.  It's opened up a whole new world for me. I can grab whole albums and discover new stuff without breaking the bank. But the sharing has me the most excited. I set up a playlist of Texas country artists and shared it with Todd. My son mentioned Cage the Elephant so I used my phone to add them to my collection. My brother-in-law shared a playlist of the Latin Freestyle acts that my wife listened to in high school, like Lisa Lisa & The Cult Jam and Shannon. I previewed the Tejano concert of Jay "The Voice" Perez that we would be attending for my sister-in-law's birthday. Gaming is experiencing a cloud revolution just like music did. And, for me, cloud gaming has taken a similar trajectory. Laptop Magazine's Sherri Smith loves Darksiders 2, so I played it on SHIELD. My son replayed Brutal Legend and Psychonauts and loved them both, again. Last week, we offered up Brothers: a Tale of Two Sons, an indie title TotalBiscuit had named Game of the Year. I played it because my colleague Sebastien told me it was great. We recently had four straight weeks of great streaming content releases for NVIDIA SHIELD when Saints Row VI joined Saints Row III. Alan Wake dropped on Feb. 24 and Metro Last Light Redux hit GRID on March 3. These are all top-rated games that I missed the first time around. Now I can take them for a spin on SHIELD for free. Then I'll continue my Dead Island saga with Dead Island Riptide so I'll be caught up when Dead Island 2 hits. Netflix and Spotify have revolutionized how we enjoy movies and music. NVIDIA GRID streaming promises to bring the same convenience and variety to gaming that only a cloud service can offer. Getting access to some can transform an occasional gamer into something more. NVIDIA SHIELD customers can experience this revelation for themselves now on NVIDIA GRID. The post The Revolution Will Not Be Televised – We'll Stream It From the Cloud appeared first on The Official NVIDIA Blog.    |
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Posted: 13 Mar 2015 01:24 PM PDT
Seventeen hot startups in the fields of robotics, artificial intelligence, big data analytics and other fast-growing fields will take the stage Wednesday to compete for $650,000 in prizes at NVIDIA's seventh annual Emerging Companies Summit (ECS).
The one-day event – which takes place during our GPU Technology Conference, in Silicon Valley – features startups that are using GPUs to disrupt fields like deep learning and pharmaceutical development. Five will appear onstage in the morning. And another dozen will compete in the afternoon for a $100,000 check, presented on the spot. A further 40 will be on display in the expo hall. Check out this short video for more details. Past ECS participants include companies like Oculus, which Facebook bought last year for $2 billion; Sportvision, which overlays the first down line on NFL broadcasts; and Natural Motion, which Zynga acquired last year for $527 million. The event takes place March 18th, at the San Jose Convention Center. A limited number of seats are available. Go here to register. The post Gaggle of GPU Startups Take Stage at Wednesday's Emerging Companies Summit appeared first on The Official NVIDIA Blog.   |
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Posted: 13 Mar 2015 01:10 PM PDT
The times are changing for users of graphics-intensive engineering and design applications.
 Virtualization software is transforming the way they work, perhaps as much as the transition from drafting boards, pencils and slide rules not so long ago. Prior to the last few years, graphics-intense applications were individually installed on local physical devices with dedicated hardware and support. It made sense, since those people using CAD, CAM, BIM, 2D and 3D apps required dedicated, high-performance processors to render their graphic designs, 3D models and video. Today, the power of virtualization extends beyond the simple task or office worker. With NVIDIA GRID vGPU technology, even the most demanding architectural, engineering, construction and design workers can host their graphics apps in a secure data center, work on any device and have a rich, workstation-like experience. By adding NVIDIA GRID K1 or K2 vGPU cards into their Citrix XenDesktop VDI environments, enterprises can "slice and share" the power of the GPU across multiple users simultaneously. The benefits—centralization of hardware, image management and more secure data—are felt by every type of employee And now with cloud offerings like Citrix CloudPlatform 4.5, the versatility and "anywhere-ness" gets even richer. People can use a personal device—such as an iPad, Chromebook, Surface, smartphone or even an NVIDIA SHIELD tablet—to manipulate 3D models and designs out in the field using their fingertips. Let's play the role of some typical users. Who Am I?  I'm a petroleum engineer working, often in the field, for a major oil and gas company. I used to carry endless rolls of geological maps and data that were often out of date. Or I lugged bulky hardware from site to site. Now, I can grab my tablet or phone and hop on the corporate helicopter to a new natural gas hotspot. I can connect seamlessly over low-bandwidth connections and access the same desktop with the same 3D apps I use inside my office. I can collaborate with my crew over 3D mapping software, nimbly expanding and shrinking my maps by touch. Meanwhile, the data stays safe in the corporate vault, the data center. I'm a hosting service provider offering subscription-based hosted desktops and apps from the cloud. My customers don't need to own the hardware or software or maintain anything. I do all the infrastructure install and maintenance work for them. Unfortunately, I could never get the big architectural or construction firms to use my SaaS/DaaS offerings because they required dedicated onsite hardware. Now, I can easily add NVIDIA GRID K1 or K2 card-equipped servers to my offerings and light up vGPU for even the most graphically demanding architects. My customers love it because it preserves security and flexibility for their employees. An architect can visit a jobsite and make modifications or check the resource planning system and designs from any device, on any network. I'm a structural engineer based in the northeastern United States—which is experiencing the harshest winter on record. Many buildings are in jeopardy of failing due to the weight of snow on their roofs. I used to sit with my team in our cubicles, crunching numbers based on assumptions. Then we'd bring our data to onsite visits, only to find that the conditions were different than we thought. Now we use Citrix XenDesktop with GRID vGPU to work mobile and smarter. We can grab any device from the cabinet and jump in a truck to head on premise. We can assess snow amounts with a drone, input the actual measurements into a hosted desktop and get real-time, accurate models. Not Just Designers Anymore These are sophisticated use cases. But even the graphical needs of everyday applications like Windows 10, Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint are growing. Increasingly, organizations will look to the flexibility, security and scalability of virtual graphics to deliver a local experience in a hosted model. Will you enable your employees to work with the most demanding of apps, from anywhere, on any device and touch the cloud? Come to the Citrix booth at the GPU Technology Conference and experience some of these use cases for yourself. Or, pay a visit to the Citrix stand inside the NVIDIA booth to see some stunning demonstrations. The post Touch the Cloud: How XenDesktop and GRID vGPU Are Taking Graphics Beyond the Cubicle appeared first on The Official NVIDIA Blog.   |