Golden Ration

Golden Ratio = 1.618

a/b = (a+b)/a = 1.1618 

CUDA

CUDA™ is a parallel computing platform and programming model invented by NVIDIA. It is a Proprietary technology for GPGPU programming from Nvidia. It enables dramatic increases in computing performance by harnessing the power of the graphics processing unit (GPU).CUDA is  Not just API and tools, but name for the whole architecture.

CUDA or Compute Unified Device Architecture is CUDA is the computing engine in Nvidia graphics processing units (GPUs) that is accessible to software developers through variants of industry standard programming languages. Programmers use 'C for CUDA' (C with Nvidia extensions and certain restrictions), compiled through a PathScale Open64 C compiler, to code algorithms for execution on the GPU. CUDA architecture shares a range of computational interfaces with two competitors the Khronos Group's OpenCL and Microsoft's DirectCompute. Third party wrappers are also available for Python, Perl, Fortran, Java, Ruby, Lua, Haskell, MATLAB, and IDL, and native support exists in Mathematica.(Mathematica is a computational software program used in scientific, engineering, and mathematical fields and other areas of technical computing)

CUDA gives developers access to the virtual instruction set and memory of the parallel computational elements in CUDA GPUs. Using CUDA, the latest Nvidia GPUs become accessible for computation like CPUs. Unlike CPUs however, GPUs have a parallel throughput architecture that emphasizes executing many concurrent threads slowly, rather than executing a single thread very quickly. This approach of solving general purpose problems on GPUs is known as GPGPU.

In the computer game industry, in addition to graphics rendering, GPUs are used in game physics calculations (physical effects like debris, smoke, fire, fluids) examples include PhysX and Bullet. CUDA has also been used to accelerate non-graphical applications in computational biology, cryptography and other fields by an order of magnitude or more. An example of this is the BOINC distributed computing client.CUDA provides both a low level API and a higher level API. The initial CUDA SDK was made public on 15 February 2007, for Microsoft Windows and Linux. Mac OS X support was later added in version 2.0,which supersedes the beta released February 14, 2008.CUDA works with all Nvidia GPUs from the G8x series onwards, including GeForce, Quadro and theTesla line. CUDA is compatible with most standard operating systems. Nvidia states that programs developed for the G8x series will also work without modification on all future Nvidia video cards, due to binary compatibility.





With millions of CUDA-enabled GPUs sold to date, software developers, scientists and researchers are finding broad-ranging uses for GPU computing with CUDA. Here are a few examples:

Identify hidden plaque in arteries:  Heart attacks are the leading cause of death worldwide. Harvard Engineering, Harvard Medical School and Brigham & Women's Hospital have teamed up to use GPUs to simulate blood flow and identify hidden arterial plaque without invasive imaging

GPU-PerfStudio

GPU PerfStudio is a real-time performance analysis tool which has been designed to help tune the graphics performance of your DirectX 9, DirectX 10,DirectX 11 and OpenGL applications. GPU PerfStudio displays real-time API, driver and hardware data which can be visualized using extremely flexible plotting and bar chart mechanisms. The application being profiled maybe executed locally or remotely over the network. GPU PerfStudio allows the developer to override key rendering states in real-time for rapid bottleneck detection. An auto-analysis window can be used for identifying performance issues at various stages of the graphics pipeline. No special drivers or code modifications are needed to use GPU PerfStudio.

GPU PerfStudio  gives developers control with seamless workflow integration. Spend more time writing code and less time debugging. Identify performance and algorithm issues early in the development cycle, and meet your quality and performance goals.

Key Features:

• Integrated Frame Profiler
• Integrated Frame Debugger
• Integrated Shader Debugger with support for DirectX™ HLSL and ASM
• Integrated API Trace with CPU timing information
• Client / Server model
• GPU PerfStudio 2 Client runs locally or remotely over the network
• GPU PerfStudio 2 Server supports 32-bit and 64-bit applications
• Supports DX11, DX10.1, DX10 and OpenGL 4.0 applications
• No special build required for your application
• Customizable Client GUI, define and save your own window layouts
• Drag and drop your application onto the server to start debugging
• No installation required – copy and run anywhere – your settings go with you.

Integrated tools:

GPU PerfStudio  integrates four tools that are key for the contemporary graphics developer;

• Frame Debugger: The Frame Debugger gives you access to the drawcalls within your application and allows you to view their states and resources. It is possible to pause your application on any given frame and analyze the elements that make up the current frame buffer image. The user may scrub through the draw calls to locate the draw call of interest. The Frame Debugger specializes in viewing the active state for any draw call in a frame and has specialized data viewers for image and description based data. Each data viewer is a dockable window that can be placed and resized by the user to make custom layouts that can be saved and reloaded.
• Frame Profiler: The Frame Profiler provides both a simple overview of the current frame profile – along with more in-depth analysis tools. The initial overview allows you to determine if your application is bound by the CPU or GPU. The in-depth analysis provides access to individual counters and allows you to save custom selections for specialized workflow.
• Shader Debugger: The Shader Debugger allows you to debug HLSL and ASM Pixel, Compute, and Vertex Shaders inside your application. It allows you to step through your shaders one line at a time and view the registers, variables, and constant values at each pixel. It is even possible to insert breakpoints in the code so that you can quickly jump to a particular line and start debugging. To aid in understanding the flow control of your shader, a Draw Mask image visualizes which pixels were written by the previous instruction.
• Shader Editing: PerfStudio 2.5 introduces shader editing as a new feature to help the developer author and debug shaders from inside a running applications. The user is able to edit DirectX11 HLSL code in the shader Code Window, re-compile it using the original or modified compiler flags, and insert the new shader into the application being debugged. This can significantly speed up the edit/save/app-restart cycle as multiple edits can applied in one debug session without having to restart the app or the debug tools. Re-insertion of the modified shader into the running application allows the user to immediately see the results of their edits and quickly assess their impact. Coupled with the profiler it is possible to measure the performance impact of an edit by doing before and after edit profiles and comparing the results.
• API Trace: The API Trace allows you to see all the API calls made by your application in a single frame. If your application uses Direct3D markers the API Trace will use them to create a navigation tree to help you explore the trace.

This screen shot shows the Frame Profiler and, Frame Debugger in use at the same time. In this scenario the profiler was used to identify an expensive draw call. The draw call was selected in the blue list on the right hand side causing the Frame Debugger to jump to that draw call. The vertex and index buffer, the texture assets, and depth buffer for this draw call are currently displayed. The pixel shader code can be stepped through where the relationship between the code and assets can be thoroughly explored to identify costly aspects of the shader.

GPU PerfStudio 2.9:

GPU PerfStudio 2.9 is a fully featured Performance Tool with Integrated Frame Debugger, Frame Profiler and Shader Debugger.

• This release focuses on improving stability of the product and fixes critical issues in Frame Capture and the Frame Debugger
• Several issues with Vertex Shader debugging have also been resolved
• The Shader Debugger constants table can now be saved to disk

Time Management Quadrant

Time Management Quadrant

The Time Management Matrix - Proposed by Dr. Stephen R. Covey

Important activities have an outcome that leads to the achievement of your goals, whether these are professional or personal.

Urgent activities demand immediate attention, and are often associated with the achievement of someone else's goals.

Urgent and Important

There are two distinct types of urgent and important activities: Ones that you could not foresee, and others that you've left to the last minute.

You can avoid last-minute activities by planning ahead and avoiding procrastination.

Issues and crises, on the other hand, cannot always be foreseen or avoided. Here, the best approach is to leave some time in your schedule to handle unexpected issues and unplanned important activities. (If a major crisis arises, then you'll need to reschedule other events.)

Urgent and Not Important

Urgent but not important activities are things that stop you achieving your goals, and prevent you from completing your work. Ask yourself whether these tasks can be rescheduled, or whether you can delegate them.

A common source of such interruptions is from other people in your office. Sometimes it's appropriate to say "No" to people politely, or to encourage them to solve the problem themselves Alternatively, try scheduling time when you are available, so that people know that they can interrupt you at these times 

Not Urgent, but Important

These are the activities that help you achieve your personal and professional goals, and complete important work. Make sure that you have plenty of time to do these things properly, so that they do not become urgent. And remember to leave enough time in your schedule to deal with unforeseen problems. This will maximize your chances of keeping on schedule, and help you avoid the stress of work becoming more urgent than necessary.

Not Urgent and Not Important

These activities are just a distraction, and should be avoided if possible. Some can simply be ignored or cancelled. Others are activities that other people may want you to do, but they do not contribute to your own desired outcomes. Again, say "No" politely, if you can.

If people see you are clear about your objectives and boundaries, they will often not ask you to do "not important" activities in the future.

Source: Covey's 7 Habits of highly effective people & Mindtools

Hyper Loop - The Future Transport

Hyperloop

A Hyperloop is a theoretical mode of high-speed transportation sketched out by serial entrepreneur elon Musk. Musk envisions the system as a 'fifth mode' of transportation: an alternative to Boats,aircrafts,automobiles and trains. Musk, who has expressed his intent to develop a prototype hyperloop, stated that it "could revolutionize travel", but the technological and economic feasibility of the idea has not been independently studied.

A hyperloop would be, according to Musk, "an elevated, reduced-pressure tube that contains pressurized capsules driven within the tube by a number of linear electric Motors

Musk and a small group of Telsa and SpaceX engineers released an alpha-level design in August 2013. The alpha design calls for a capsule that would ride on a cushion of air forced through multiple openings on the capsule's bottom. The design proposes "a combination of active and passive means to reduce the negative effects of choked airfolw

According to the initial alpha design, released on August 12, 2013, a hyperloop would enable travel from the Los angles region to the San Francisco Bay Area in 35 minutes, meaning that passengers would traverse the proposed 354-mile (570 km) route at an average speed of just under 598 mph (962 km/h), and a top speed of 760 mph (1,220 km/h). 

If it is in India, It would take approx. three hours to travel from Extreme north to Extreme south( Kanyakumary). Ofcourse non-stop :P Hope this comes true. 

[Source: Wiki]

UEFI

UEFI

The Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) is a specification that defines a software interface between an operating system and platform firmware. UEFI is a more secure replacement for the older BIOS firmware interface, present in all IBM PC-compatible personal computers, which is vulnerable to bootkit malware.

The original EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface) specification was developed by Intel. In 2005, development of the EFI specification ceased in favour of UEFI, which had evolved from EFI 1.10. The UEFI specification is being developed by the industry-wide organization Unified EFI Forum. UEFI is not restricted to any specific processor architecture and can run on top of, or instead of, older BIOS implementations. UEFI is a community effort by many companies in the personal-computer industry to modernize the booting process. UEFI capable systems are already shipping, and many more are in preparation. During the transition to UEFI, most platform firmware will continue to support legacy (BIOS) booting as well, to accommodate legacy-only operating systems.

               The UEFI specification defines a new model for the interface between personal-computer operating systems and platform firmware. The interface consists of data tables that contain platform-related information, plus boot and runtime service calls that are available to the operating system and its loader. Together, these provide a standard environment for booting an operating system and running pre-boot applications. 

Extensible Firmware Interface's position in the software stack

It all has begun when Intel decided to develop 64-bit CPU. They made decision which was very good logically, but unfortunately not as good market-wise: to get rid of all ancient x86 features, drop entire x86 backward portability, and create completely new CPU architecture, named Itanium (IA64). That also meant that old BIOSes won't be running on it, and so opportunity opened for new standard interface between OS and hardware/firmware. This is how first steps took place in the half of 90s, to replace BIOS by new standard, called Extended Firmware Interface (EFI).

Later, AMD created its own 64-bit architecture called AMD64, which unlike Itanium was backward compatible with x86. Intel called it EM64T or IA32e, later Intel 64, Microsoft calls it x64, usually it is called x86-64. Support for this architecture was included in UEFI 2.0 standard. In April 2008, ARM joined Unified EFI Forum, so we expect support these CPUs coming too. latest version of standard is UEFI 2.1, which has few minor changes and features compared to UEFI 2.0. But overall, all versions of standard are very backwards compatible, so software and drivers written for very first version of EFI still run on latest boards.

UEFI Specifications Update

The interface defined by the EFI specification includes data tables that contain platform information, and boot and runtime services that are available to the OS loader and OS. UEFI firmware provides several technical advantages:

·         Ability to boot from large disks (over 2 TiB)

·         Faster boot-up

·         CPU-independent architecture

·         CPU-independent drivers

·         Flexible pre-OS environment, including network capability

·         Modular design

Some existing enhancements to PC BIOS, such as the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) and System Management BIOS (SMBIOS), are also present in EFI, as they do not rely on a 16-bit runtime interface. The Unified EFI Forum is a non-profit collaborative trade organization formed to promote and manage the UEFI standard. As an evolving standard, the UEFI specification is driven by contributions and support from member companies of the UEFI Forum.

The UEFI Forum board of directors include representatives from the following eleven leading companies:

·         AMD ·         American Megatrends Inc. ·         Apple Computer, Inc. ·         Dell ·         Hewlett Packard ·         IBM

·         Insyde ·         Intel ·         Lenovo ·         Microsoft ·         Phoenix Technologies

Disclaimer

Disclaimer
The information and resources of this site are only for the education purpose.Not a replacement of any technical/medical/psychological treatment.I aim to present the most accurate info possible. Some contents of these postings might be copy protected and owned by respective website's owners. Viewers are strongly advised not to reproduce such content without any legal permission/acceptance.

Thanks for your cooperation and understanding.Enjoy Reading.