NVIDIA Launches CUDA Coding Challenge in India

CUDA is NVIDIA's parallel computing platform and programming model that enables dramatic increases in computing performance by harnessing the power of the GPU. By giving burgeoning programmers the opportunity to test and hone their CUDA programming skills, NVIDIA hopes to prepare scores of new developers to help tackle tomorrow's most difficult computational challenges by harnessing the power of GPU-accelerated computing. The challenge is open to all students pursuing higher education in engineering and science. Registrations for interested students will begin immediately on NVIDIA India website, and the contest will commence from Aug. 1. Winning teams will be awarded cash prizes of Rs.1, 00, 000 in total. Today, NVIDIA also launched a new website in collaboration with IIT Bombay CUDA Centre of Excellence http://www.sc.iitb.ac.in/~ccoe/. It was created to provide comprehensive information about CUDA research, training, events and job-related opportunities to students, faculty and the India industry at large.

"India's higher education system is the third largest in the world behind the United States and China," said Vishal Dhupar, managing director of South Asia, NVIDIA. "Our work force is also regarded as amongst the world's most intellectual and innovative. Many leading Indian universities are already teaching parallel programming using GPUs, empowering tens-of-thousands of students graduating each year. With these new initiatives, we hope to create more awareness and generate further innovation around CUDA."

The CUDA Coding Challenge requires students to either work alone, or in pairs to develop applications on CUDA-enabled GPUs. NVIDIA will provide the preliminary algorithms, allowing students to optimize the given code on CUDAC/C++/Fortran to create new, innovative applications that will be judged on basis of innovation, performance and quality. "Software developers and researchers around the world are finding broad-ranging uses for GPU computing with CUDA," said Sumit Gupta, General Manager of Accelerated Computing, NVIDIA. "These new initiatives will give leaders of tomorrow a chance to use innovation and creativity to build solutions that will positively impact science and society as a whole."

P.S.V. Nataraj, professor at the Systems and Control Engineering Group, IIT Bombay said: "We have been working closely with NVIDIA for many years now. In fact, IIT Bombay was named the first CUDA Center of Excellence in India last year. We are now taking this collaboration to a new level, starting a new chapter for GPU and CUDA related initiatives in India."