GPU acceleration press

From: Jim Phillips (jim_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Fri May 25 2007 - 14:00:42 CDT

Hi all,

Over the next few weeks you may be seeing some news stores like
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2136264,00.asp that discuss the
new NVIDIA CUDA technology and say things like:

"NAMD molecular dynamics:: Computational biology, which is seeing 705
Gflops of computing power using three GPUs, running in a 700-watt test
box. The program claims a 100X improvement over their previous solution."

This is misleading. These results are actually from the VMD cionize
ion-placement plugin, which is our leading GPU success story. We did our
best to craft an accurate and carefully worded press release with NVIDIA,
but the press and PR folks have a hard time distinguishing NAMD and VMD,
so everything gets lumped under NAMD. We are working on a GPU-accelerated
NAMD, but we are not seeing a 100x improvement. Sorry for any confusion.

-Jim

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