The activities will be held in the Aula Tecnológica of the Informatics Department of the UTFSM.

CUDA is NVIDIA’s parallel computing architecture that enables dramatic increases in computing performance by harnessing the power of the graphics processing unit (GPU). CUDA Teaching Centers are recognized institutions that have integrated GPU computing techniques into their mainstream computer programming curriculum.

This distinction is an important milestone in our research and teaching activities on GPU computing, and it has been received at a very exciting time for our institution.

Our already-deployed 8-GPU computing cluster will enjoy a significant upgrade thanks to the donation of a large GPU cluster by professor Tsuyoshi Hamada, from the Nagasaki Advanced Computing Center. Also, as part of the CUDA Teaching Center program, NVIDIA will provide the Informatics Department with donated GPUs to help upgrade a teaching laboratory. With this infrastructure, UTFSM will strengthen its position as the Chilean leading center in GPU computing.

On the teaching track, the Informatics Department has committed to including GPU programming in CUDA as a permanent part of its curriculum. Meanwhile, UTFSM has already hosted other GPU-related training events, the most important having been the PASI school on massive parallelism held last summer. For this school, more than 80 students from all around the world attended a series of lectures given by world-class researchers on High-Performance Computing. In August 2011, CTI-HPC also hosted an intensive 4-week course on CUDA, attended by 30 participants from the university community who were enthusiastic about incorporating CUDA to their own work.

The course will be taught by John Stastny, Bryan Bagnall, and Lucas Keenan (SPAWAR Systems Center, Pacific,  USA).

The second version of the course will consider the revision of some  C++  and OpenCV topics in order to go  further with the use of the specialized software called  http://www.ossim.org/OSSIM/OSSIM_Home.html, which allows to perform satellite image processing.

As in the previous version of the course, at the end of the event, it will be possible to continue the related work in the CTI-HPC, as well as opportunities for collaboration with international projects, carrying undergraduate or graduate thesis.

Due to the successful collaboration with the ONR (Office of Naval Research) the opportunity to work alongside them in the satellite image processing area has arisen. Currently the ONR and CTI-HPC are looking for enthusiastic researchers in developing one of the following topics:

1. Ocean surface analysis. Study of oceanic sea surface (air/sea interations, oil slicks, thermal processes, etc), using dynamic equations, SAR, and MODIS.
2. Vessel classification from hyperspectral and multispectral data. Different approaches of Hyperspectral Image techniques for solving remote sensing image classification. These privide an important feature in material identification, discrimination, detection and classification.
3. Application of HPC in image processing. Implementation of Hyperspectral Image algorithms on HPC architectures (multi-computer clusters, hetereogeneous networks of computers, and specialized hardware architecture such as FPGA and GPU).
4. Ship detection. Development of ship detection algorithms using SAR platform, plays an important role in the field of marine monitoring.

Surely the study of one of these topics could be an excellent opportunity for the development of a thesis project.

The next visit from the ONR experts will be in November 2011 when they will give a background of these topics as well as the use of different tools for image processing.  We will keep you informed about the exact dates and duration of their visit in our News section.
If you are interested in one of these topics, please don’t hesitate to contact us at info@hpc.cl to provide you with more information.

The course will provide a thorough introduction to this topic, covering the implementation of algorithms for general and scientific purposes, as well as discussing the advantages of using GPUs for high-performance computing in the future. After completing the course, it will be possible for attendants who are interested on the subject to take part on related projects on CTI-HPC, and also to apply for academic exchange opportunities. More Information

• Course schedule and material
• Registration period is closed

The Center for Technological Innovation in High Performance Computing (CTI-HPC), supported by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) together with the Computer Science Department at UTFSM, are pleased to invite the whole community to participate in the Satellite Image Processing Course, to be held between July 11th and 29th.

The course will be taught by John Stastny, M.Sc. Electric Engineer (Illinois en Urbana-Champaign University, USA).

The course will consider processing of satellite images general topics, to later go further with the use of specialized software to perform this task, called OSSIM. At the end of the course, it is possible to continue the related work in the CTI-HPC, as well as opportunities for collaboration with international projects, carrying undergraduate or graduate thesis.

• Periodo de inscripción terminado
• Mas información.
• Material Semana 1 (zip file)
• Material General del Curso

Between the past May 23th and 27th, two of our members, Gabriel Zamora and Cristián Maureira attended the First GPGPU School held in Argentina, focusing on Scientific Applications Development, in the Faculty of Mathematical, Astronomical and Physics of the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba.

The school was thought at first instance, focused to advanced students of scientific careers, PhD students, researchers from scientific centers involved in different fields and professionals from the industry using this technology or potential users of High Performance Computing techniques, with interest in GPGPU computing.

The school contained three main areas, a basic course, an advanced course and an application course, besides different conferences in charge of academic and industry guests, talking about mixed work experiences in their lifes.