The U.S. computer graphics firm Nvidia launches the Tesla personal
computer in the UK which it says offers the power of a supercomputer at
1/100th the price.

Reuters Technology -
Billed as "the world's first supercomputing PC", Nvidia says
its new Tesla PC will give scientists access to the same processing
capabilities as a supercomputing cluster at a fraction of the cost.


Whether it's the astrophysics demo, or the illustration of molecular
dynamics - you can tell just by looking at the screens of these PCs that the
units driving the computers are meant to facilitate ambitious endeavours.
The Tesla PC was first announced at an American supercomputer conference
back in November, but this event in west London marks its launch on European
soil.
Nvidia's chief scientist David Kirk made the trip from California to help
push the message that this product marks a graphic leap for computing.

David Kirk, Chief Scientist, Nvidia saying:
"The real breakthrough of this machine is an enormous amount of
computing in a single box, and it allows researchers in universities to do
super-computer levels of work without access to a room size
supercomputer."

Nvidia is partnering with a number of manufacturers who've agreed to
build the Tesla PC to meet its specifications. And Kirk says size is only part
of the story here.

David Kirk, Chief Scientist, Nvidia saying:
"It used to take millions of dollars, millions of euros or
millions of pounds to build a supercomputer. Of course, many researchers
don't have that kind of funding available to them. We now can provide up to
mulitiple-teraflops of computing power for on the order of 10 thousand dollars
worth of computing."

So it's smaller and much cheaper than most supercomputers - but just
what's the point of a personal supercomputer?

"This is seismic data, here"

Steve Purves is the technical director at FFA, a company that specializes
in developing systems for oil and gas exploration.

Steve Purves, Technical Director, FFA saying:
"What we're doing is we're using these supercomputers, these GPUs
to dramatically accelerate the processing. So people can do more analysis
much faster than previously possible."

Kirk says he hopes that by offering up computational answers more quickly
the Tesla PC will help drive a massive amount of new discoveries.
Matt Cowan, Reuters