The NVIDIA Blog |  |
- Green Inside and Out: What Being in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index Means to Us
- How Four Major Universities Use NVIDIA GRID to Stay Best in Class
- 3 Ways SHIELD Gives You More Options Than Other Living Room Devices (Including Apple’s)
| Green Inside and Out: What Being in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index Means to Us Posted: 10 Sep 2015 10:19 AM PDT Our corporate colors aren't the only green thing about NVIDIA. We're green on the inside, too—from building energy-efficient products to reducing our carbon footprint. But we don't stop there. We're working hard to be not just a tech leader, but a leader in sustainability. And we're striving across a range of areas—from the societal benefits of our technology to employee volunteerism in the community. The Dow Jones Sustainability Index, the most prestigious list of its kind, assesses companies on broad criteria such as these. We're honored to be named to the index today, and be recognized as one of North America's best performing companies in sustainability. It's the second year in a row we've placed in the top fifth of the region's 600 largest companies. So what factors helped us make the index? The social impact of our technology — our GPUs are powering innovations in work ranging from HIV research to earthquake forecasting. A great workplace — we aim to attract and retain a diverse workforce and invest in making engineering an attractive career path for young people from all backgrounds. We were voted one of Glassdoor's "Best Places to Work" for 2015. And our CFO, Colette Kress, was named last year to the National Diversity Council's "Top 50 Most Powerful Women in Tech." Giving and volunteerism — the NVIDIA Foundation, which steers our global philanthropic programs, is led by employees. Ninety-four percent of our offices participated in a charitable activity last year, and our Compute the Cure effort has donated nearly $2 million to cancer research since 2011. Green citizen — the parallel processing power of our GPUs enables the world's fastest, most energy-efficient supercomputers. We work with our suppliers to improve their social and environmental performance, and have been ranked on the Newsweek Green Rankings for the past six years. Each year, we improve performance on the Carbon Disclosure Project—most recently scoring 92 out of 100. And we're always striving for better. By 2020, we've pledged to reduce our global greenhouse gas emissions 15 percent per employee. Our commitment to diversity is an ongoing effort, and we're dedicated to finding innovative solutions to the world's toughest problems far into the future. The Dow Jones Sustainability Index is just the latest benchmark in the continued efforts of NVIDIANs worldwide to work together and innovate in a socially responsible way. You can learn more about all of our sustainability efforts in our latest Sustainability Report. The post Green Inside and Out: What Being in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index Means to Us appeared first on The Official NVIDIA Blog.    |
| How Four Major Universities Use NVIDIA GRID to Stay Best in Class Posted: 10 Sep 2015 09:00 AM PDT When millions of students head back to college this week, they'll be bringing along more technology than ever — and greater expectations for how they'll use it. Engineering students, who once used workstations in labs, want to drive sophisticated programs from their dorm room. Art students, who once used powerful studio computers, want to use Photoshop on their tablets. At the University of Southern California, the typical student arrives with an average of three mobile devices. It's much the same at other big schools, like Duke University, the Georgia Institute of Technology, and the University of Massachusetts. With the recent release of NVIDIA GRID 2.0, any connected device becomes a powerful workstation. Housed in data centers, GRID technology virtualizes graphics — that is, it runs powerful applications that reside in the cloud rather than on the device itself. This unleashes a wide range of benefits — that go beyond server rooms. The changes GRID enables make higher education more attainable. GRID allows more flexible use of classroom and lab facilities. It enables an expanded curriculum. And it helps simplify IT management. The latest version of our GRID technology, NVIDIA GRID 2.0, clears the way for more universities to virtualize their curriculum. It supports double the application performance and user density. It supports blade and rack server environments. And it works with both Windows and Linux.  The bring-your-own-device program at the UMass gives students the flexibility to access applications and data from any location on any device. BYOD support was the immediate goal, powered by an application and desktop virtualization project. For Steve Athanas and the IT team at the University of Massachusetts, NVIDIA GRID-supported virtualization has helped relieve the demand on IT resources. "With GRID in the data center, we don't need to worry about the rush for the fall semester," said Athanas. "Having all our applications run on virtual desktops eliminates the need for us to manually load workstations with the latest OS and applications." Over the long term, they also hope to attract a broader, more diverse student body by making education more accessible. One single mom at UMass credits the new technology infrastructure for allowing her to take more classes, and complete her degree, because of the new flexibility offered by the university. USC had many reasons to integrate GRID into its data center to virtualize its engineering workflows. The university faced the costly proposition of needing to build more labs to accommodate its expanding curriculum. It needed to keep up with the demands of scheduling existing classrooms. And it needed to keep every computer up to date with proper application licenses, patches, maintenance and upgrades. Duke University in Durham, N.C., is using NVIDIA GRID to address the explosive growth within medical imaging. It's giving clinicians, students and scientists everywhere access to data that was once available only to an elite few. The data sharing GRID makes possible helps Duke students and researchers understand the most complex illnesses. GRID Helps BYOD Pass the Graphics Test Historically, poor performance with graphics-intensive 2D and 3D applications has been an obstacle to the deployment of virtual environments. At the Georgia Institute of Technology’s College of Engineering in Atlanta Georgia, classes in aerospace, bio-medical, civil and mechanical engineering all make use of 3D software such as ArcGIS, CATIA, Creo, Siemens NX and SOLIDWORKS. These applications all need much greater graphics processing power. With GRID in the data center, the engineering school has increased performance across the board. Students are no longer tied to individual PCs. They can more flexibly work around their schedules and engage more fully with the curriculum. Instructors planning future courses can test and select applications far more quickly than before. And deploying those applications to students is fast and easy. Michael Goay, at USC's Viterbi School of Engineering, sums up the university experience with GRID: "GRID allows us to get even more out of our investment by increasing user density while maintaining 100 percent application compatibility and full workstation performance. This allows us to greatly expand our ability to serve more applications, classes and students while opening the door for new online or on-campus classes to use 3D applications." The post How Four Major Universities Use NVIDIA GRID to Stay Best in Class appeared first on The Official NVIDIA Blog.   |
| 3 Ways SHIELD Gives You More Options Than Other Living Room Devices (Including Apple’s) Posted: 10 Sep 2015 06:00 AM PDT Great games. Great entertainment apps. Voice commands. If you're thinking about buying a next-gen smart TV console after hearing about the new Apple TV, we have good news: You've got options. We introduced our own next-gen smart TV console — NVIDIA SHIELD Android TV — back in May. And it offers extraordinary capabilities.  SHIELD offers 3x more performance, plus more features and more ways to game. It's still the only smart TV console that can stream 4K content. And — thanks to its support for Chromecast — it connects your mobile devices directly to your living room display. Let's break this down … The Best Choice for GamersSHIELD gives you more ways to game than anything else on the market. Consider:
The Only Choice for 4KOwn a 4K television? Thinking of making the upgrade? You're not alone. By 2018, consumers will own more than 100 million ultra-high definition 4K TVs. And SHIELD remains the only media streamer that supports 4K content. There's plenty of content already available — from both Netflix and YouTube — and plenty more coming. The Logical Choice for ChromecastIf you've got an Android phone or tablet, SHIELD's the best way to bring Android to the living room. With Chromecast built into SHIELD, you can put your entertainment and apps from your Android or iOS phone directly on your TV at a snappy 1080p 60Hz. And Android gives developers access to powerful capabilities. For example, SHIELD uses Google Voice with cross-app search. That lets you quickly access content using the SHIELD remote and SHIELD controller. Simply use Google Voice to give commands, like "Launch Netflix." Just like on your Android phone. So, when you're looking at your options, just tick through them. SHIELD supports 4K displays. It brings more games — from more places — to your living room. And it connects to Android, the biggest app ecosystem out there. There are now more than 800 apps for SHIELD, including Netflix 4K, MLB.TV, CBS Sports, FOX Sports, Hulu Plus and Sling TV. It's good to have options, and SHIELD gives you more of them than any other smart TV console.
The post 3 Ways SHIELD Gives You More Options Than Other Living Room Devices (Including Apple's) appeared first on The Official NVIDIA Blog.   |
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