WINNIPEG, MB – The University of Winnipeg is the first in Western Canada to be selected as a NVIDIA® CUDA® Teaching Center. This honour demonstrates that The University of Winnipeg has established itself as a state-of-the-art institution for training highly qualified people in parallel computing on NVIDIA graphics processing units (GPUs).
CUDA is the world’s most pervasive parallel computing platform and programming model, enabling dramatic increases in computing performance by harnessing the power of GPUs. CUDA Teaching Centers are recognized institutions that have integrated parallel computing techniques into their mainstream computer programming curriculum. The University of Winnipeg joins 215 other CUDA educational institutions that provide broad access to the latest parallel computing training courses and resources to students worldwide.
UWinnipeg professors Dr. Christopher Henry, (Applied Computer Science) and Dr. Chris Bidinosti (Physics) played a major role in obtaining this esteemed designation.
Dr. Christopher Henry
“Heterogeneous computing, consisting of programs simultaneously executed on CPUs and NVIDIA CUDA-enabled GPU accelerators, is a significant and growing area of importance in high-performance scientific computing curriculum across many disciplines,” expressed Henry, UWinnipeg Professor, Applied Computer Science. “GPUs are ubiquitous in our computing devices due to consumers’ desire for rich computer graphics. Acquiring this designation positions UWinnipeg as a unique centre for students, fellow researchers, and local industry for training to harness these GPUs for high-performance computing.”
“I had the privilege of visiting the GPU-based Tsubame supercomputer at the Tokyo Institute of Technology last fall”, said Bidinosti. “It is very exciting to be able to bring this new technology to our students at UWinnipeg.”
The NVIDIA® CUDA® Teaching Center Program is designed to support and encourage teaching establishments to include GPU computing using CUDA C/C++ as part of their course offerings. As a CUDA Teaching Center, UWinnipeg will have access to NVIDIA GPU hardware and NVIDIA parallel programming experts and resources, including educational webinars and an array of teaching materials.
Participation in this program provides additional exposure via NVIDIA’s marketing and general web presence, and opens up future opportunities for further NVIDIA sponsored programs, such as the CUDA Center of Excellence and CUDA Research Center Programs.
