VariCAD 2014-1.0 Released

LIBEREC, Czech Republic, Dec 15 - VariCAD announces the release of VariCAD 2014-1.0. The new features and enhancements included in this new version are following:

Support of multi-threading

Multi-threading (parallel processing of data) is implemented in preparation of 3D display (faster in file open or after rebuilding solids), in creation of 2D drawings from 3D, in volume, mass and moment of inertia calculations and in STEP files input. If enough of memory is detected, this features are used automatically. On the other side, you can turn them off optionally, or select number of used threads. For computers with multiple core processors and enough of memory, multi-threading increases speed significantly.

Faster 3D graphic

For OpenGL rendering, you can set 3 different methods. Until now, the slowest and less demanding was used as default. From now on, the fastest method is selected, if enough memory is detected. The fastest method increases time of 3D redrawing approx 3x. You can change OpenGL settings from command 'cfg'.

Faster 2D graphic

Redrawing of 2D is up to 3x faster, especially if you work with a lot of non-continuous lines. This improvement is more obvious under Windows. Also, this improvement is valuable especially for slow and old computers.

Changes in printing

For printing into virtual printers, like pdf, you can use true-type fonts. If a print batch is defined, you can change a printer for this batch. If it is supported by printer drivers or by system, you can redefine path of virtual print output. Also, as a new feature, you can print 3D images directly from 3D mode.

Improvements in mass, volume and moment of inertia calculations

Now, these calculations are changed. In most situations, volume is calculated numerically, but more accurately. Mass and volume calculations use multiple threads, so the time of calculation is shorter. You can define various mass densities for selected solids. If mass is calculated, the result can be assigned to solid attributes permanently. By other words, you can conveniently define mass for all objects at one step and work with them in BOM. Also, center of gravity is stored until the end of VariCAD session and can be used for location input.

Minor changes in geometrical constraints

You can define a constraint fixing object directly at selected axis.

Also there are further improvements in STEP input, minor changes in DWG/DXF input, inor changes in 3D kernel. 

To update current version of VariCAD or to evaluate a free 30-day trial version, click here.

About VariCAD

Founded in 1994, VariCAD has long-time experience in developing CAD systems. Since its inception, the company has focused on solutions tailored to meet the needs of mechanical engineers. Today, our team provides software and services to customers from over 70 countries around the world. Our employees share VariCAD's commitment to helping mechanical engineers design easier and faster. The software VariCAD is a powerful, yet inexpensive 3D/2D CAD system for mechanical engineering. For more information, visit www.varicad.com.

NVIDIA Releases Tesla K40 GPU Accelerator

DENVER, CO, Nov 20 - SC13 - NVIDIA unveiled the NVIDIA Tesla K40 GPU accelerator, the world's highest performance accelerator ever built, delivering extreme performance to a widening range of scientific, engineering, high performance computing (HPC) and enterprise applications.

Providing double the memory and up to 40 percent higher performance than its predecessor, the Tesla K20X GPU accelerator, and 10 times higher performance than today's fastest CPU, the Tesla K40 GPU is the world's first and highest-performance accelerator optimized for big data analytics and large-scale scientific workloads.

Featuring intelligent NVIDIA GPU Boost technology, which converts power headroom into a user-controlled performance boost, the Tesla K40 GPU accelerator enables users to unlock the untapped performance of a broad range of applications.

"GPU accelerators have gone mainstream in the HPC and supercomputing industries, enabling engineers and researchers to consistently drive innovation and scientific discovery," said Sumit Gupta, general manager of Tesla Accelerated Computing products at NVIDIA. "With the breakthrough performance and higher memory capacity of the Tesla K40 GPU, enterprise customers can quickly crunch through massive volumes of data generated by their big data analytics applications."

Ultimate Performance for Science, Big Data

Based on the NVIDIA Kepler compute architecture - the highest performance, most efficient architecture ever built - the Tesla K40 GPU accelerator surpasses all other accelerators on two common measures of computational performance: 4.29 teraflops single-precision and 1.43 teraflops double-precision peak floating point performance.

Key features of the Tesla K40 GPU accelerator include:

• 12GB of ultra-fast GDDR5 memory allows users to process 2X larger datasets, enabling them to rapidly analyze massive volumes of data
• 2,880 CUDA parallel processing cores deliver application acceleration by up to 10X compared to using a CPU alone
• Dynamic Parallelism enables GPU threads to dynamically spawn new threads, enabling users to quickly and easily crunch through adaptive and dynamic data structures
• PCIe Gen-3 interconnect support accelerates data movement by 2X compared to PCIe Gen-2 technology

In a related announcement, the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at The University of Texas at Austin - one of the leading advanced computing centers in the United States - plans to deploy "Maverick," a new interactive, remote visualization and data analysis system powered by NVIDIA Tesla K40 GPU accelerators. Maverick is expected to be fully operational in January 2014.

"The Tesla K40 GPU accelerators will help researchers crunch through massive volumes of big data and gain new insights through large-scale, sophisticated visualizations," said Kelly Gaither, director of Visualization at TACC. "With NVIDIA GPUs, Maverick will provide researchers powerful interactive capabilities to advance their most complex scientific challenges."

The Tesla K40 GPU accelerates the broadest range of scientific, engineering, commercial and enterprise HPC and data center applications. Today, more than 240 software applications take advantage of GPU acceleration. The complete catalog of GPU-accelerated applications is available as a free download.

More information about the Tesla K40 GPU accelerator is available at NVIDIA booth 613 at SC13, Nov. 18-21, and on the NVIDIA high performance computing website. To learn more about CUDA or download the latest version, visit the CUDA website.

Users can also try the Tesla K40 GPU accelerator for free on remotely hosted clusters. For more information, visit the GPU Test Drive website.

Availability

NVIDIA Tesla K40 GPU accelerator is available now and in the coming months from a variety of server manufacturers, including Appro, ASUS, Bull, Cray, Dell, Eurotech, HP, IBM, Inspur, SGI, Sugon, Supermicro and Tyan, as well as from NVIDIA reseller partners.

About NVIDIA

Since 1993, NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) has pioneered the art and science of visual computing. The company's technologies are transforming a world of displays into a world of interactive discovery - for everyone from gamers to scientists, and consumers to enterprise customers. More information at http://nvidianews.nvidia.com and http://blogs.nvidia.com.

NVIDIA Announces CUDA 6 Parallel Computing Platform

SANTA CLARA, CA, Nov 15 - NVIDIA announced NVIDIA CUDA 6, the latest version of pervasive parallel computing platform and programming model.

The CUDA 6 platform makes parallel programming easier than ever, enabling software developers to dramatically decrease the time and effort required to accelerate their scientific, engineering, enterprise and other applications with GPUs.

It offers new performance enhancements that enable developers to instantly accelerate applications up to 8X by simply replacing existing CPU-based libraries. 

New features in CUDA 6 include:

• Unified Memory - Simplifies programming by enabling applications to access CPU and GPU memory without the need to manually copy data from one to the other, and makes it easier to add support for GPU acceleration in a wide range of programming languages.
• Drop-in Libraries - Automatically accelerates applications' BLAS and FFTW calculations by up to 8X by simply replacing the existing CPU libraries with the GPU-accelerated equivalents.
• Multi-GPU Scaling - Re-designed BLAS and FFT GPU libraries automatically scale performance across up to eight GPUs in a single node, delivering over nine teraflops of double precision performance per node, and supporting larger workloads than ever before (up to 512GB). Multi-GPU scaling can also be used with the new BLAS drop-in library.

"By automatically handling data management, Unified Memory enables us to quickly prototype kernels running on the GPU and reduces code complexity, cutting development time by up to 50 percent," said Rob Hoekstra, manager of Scalable Algorithms Department at Sandia National Laboratories. "Having this capability will be very useful as we determine future programming model choices and port more sophisticated, larger codes to GPUs."

"Our technologies have helped major studios, game developers and animators create visually stunning 3D animations and effects," said Paul Doyle, CEO at Fabric Engine, Inc. "They have been urging us to add support for acceleration on NVIDIA GPUs, but memory management proved too difficult a challenge when dealing with the complex use cases in production. With Unified Memory, this is handled automatically, allowing the Fabric compiler to target NVIDIA GPUs and enabling our customers to run their applications up to 10X faster."

In addition to the new features, the CUDA 6 platform offers a full suite of programming tools, GPU-accelerated math libraries, documentation and programming guides.

Availability

Version 6 of the CUDA Toolkit is expected to be available in early 2014. Members of the CUDA-GPU Computing Registered Developer Program will be notified when it is available for download. To join the program, register here.

For more information about the CUDA 6 platform, visit NVIDIA booth 613 at SC13, Nov. 18-21 in Denver, and the NVIDIA CUDA website.

About CUDA

CUDA is a parallel computing platform and programming model developed by NVIDIA. It enables dramatic increases in computing performance by harnessing the power of GPUs. With more than two million downloads, supporting more than 240 leading engineering, scientific and commercial applications, the CUDA programming model is taught in over 700 universities and institutions worldwide and is the most popular way for developers to take advantage of GPU-accelerated computing.

About NVIDIA

Since 1993, NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) has pioneered the art and science of visual computing. The company's technologies are transforming a world of displays into a world of interactive discovery - for everyone from gamers to scientists, and consumers to enterprise customers. For more information, visit http://www.nvidia.com.

MAXON Offers Free CINEBENCH R15 for Windows, Mac

MAXON Computer, leading developer of 3D software solutions for motion graphics, visual effects, 3D painting, animation and rendering, announces the immediate availability of CINEBENCH Release 15. CINEBENCH is a cross-platform testing suite that measures hardware performance and is the de facto standard benchmarking tool for leading companies and trade journals for conducting real-world hardware performance tests. With the new Release 15, systems with up to 256 threads can be tested. CINEBENCH is available for both Windows and OS X and is used by almost all hardware manufacturers and trade journals for comparing CPUs and graphics cards.

CINEBENCH is based on MAXON’s award-winning 3D software, CINEMA 4D, which is used in production studios worldwide for the creation of 3D effects in blockbusters such as Iron Man 3, Oblivion, Life of Pi or Prometheus. Contrary to artificial benchmarks that only perform abstract tests on specific functions, CINEBENCH measures system performance based on actual production processes in CINEMA 4D. The test consists of two modules, that evaluate CPU and graphics card performance separately.

Main processor performance (CPU)

CINEBENCH test procedures include a comprehensive test of the main processor’s performance by rendering a photo-realistic 3D scene. This scene, with approx. 280,000 polygons, uses various algorithms and all available cores. The test result is displayed in points.

Graphics card performance (OpenGL)

This test uses a car chase consisting of complex 3D scenes to ascertain the graphics card’s OpenGL render performance. This scene contains a large amount of geometry (approx. 1 million polygons), high-res textures and numerous effects. The result is displayed in frames per second.

System requirements:

The CPU benchmark requires a minimum of 1 GB RAM and supports processors with a minimum clock frequency of 1 GHz. The OpenGL benchmark supports graphics cards with 512 MB RAM and higher and OpenGL 2.1. CINEBENCH independently ascertains whether or not all required functions are supported by the graphics card to correctly display the scene. For additional technical information, visit CINEBENCH technical page.

CINEBENCH has been comprehensively developed further to take full advantage of the performance of state-of-the-art hardware. CPU and OpenGL test results for CINEBENCH R15 can therefore not be compared to the results of previous versions! The algorithm used to calculate render results was fundamentally re-written and now delivers results in a different and clearly recognizable value range.

Availability

CINEBENCH is available immediately as a free download at the MAXON website.

About MAXON Computer

Headquartered in Germany, MAXON Computer is a developer of industry-leading professional 3D modeling, painting, animation and rendering solutions. Its award-winning CINEMA 4D and BodyPaint 3D software products have been used extensively to help create everything from stunning visual effects in top feature films, TV shows and commercials to cutting-edge game cinematics for AAA games, medical illustration, and architectural and industrial design applications. MAXON has offices in Germany, USA, United Kingdom, France, Japan and Singapore. MAXON products are available directly from MAXON and its worldwide distribution and reseller channel. For more information, visit http://www.maxon.net.

Spiral Graphics Genetica 3.0 Beta Available for Texture Editing

Spiral Graphics announces the release Genetica 3.0 open beta for texture, animation editing. Genetica 3.0 beta is compatible with Windows. To know more and to download the beta version visit Spiral Graphics.

AMD Introduces ATI FirePro Graphics Cards

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), provider of graphics and computer proceessing solutions has introduced its two new ATI FirePro Graphics Accelerators, ATI FirePro V3700 and ATI FirePro V5700!

Both ATI FirePro V3700 and V5700 cards supports Microsoft DirectX 10.1, OpenGL 2.0, PCI Express 2.0 interface, Shader Model 4.1.

For pricing and availability, visit http://www.amd.com/.