Nvidia in bid to become key supercomputer player

Nvidia on Wednesday unveiled its next-generation graphics processing unit architecture, dubbed Fermi, and announced a key supercomputing tie-up with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Graphics and visualisation are becoming key to scientific discoveries, and Nvidia could be a major player. Oak Ridge's supercomputer will be used for research in energy and climate change and is expected to be 10 times more powerful than today's fastest supercomputer.

Fermi, announced at Nvidia's GPU Technology developer's conference, is a new architecture designed to deliver computational GPUs. Nvidia chief executive Jen-Hsun Huang aims to make his company more than just a graphics chip player.

See Nvidia: Next big supercomputer player? at ZDNet.com.