Nvidia kickstarts GPU investment

 

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By Stuart Turton and Reuters

Posted on 11 Mar 2009 at 10:24

Nvidia will invest up to $5 million in startups that take advantage of the processing power of the GPU.

The company's new GPU Ventures Program is intended to spur development of applications that can take advantage of a GPU's massive parallel computational ability.

To that end, Nvidia will invest anywhere between $500,000 and $5 million in companies working on consumer and professional applications ranging from video and image enhancement to scientific discovery, financial analysis and three-dimensional interfaces.

In exchange, Nvidia will take minority stakes in the companies when appropriate, though the company stresses that the program's main goal is to spur use of Nvidia's graphics processing units and APIs.

"Start-up companies need to be leaner and meaner in this new economic environment," says said Jeff Herbst, Nvidia's vice president of business development.

"The more applications there are in the world that support the GPU, the bigger the total market there's going to be for people like Nvidia."

The company is hoping that by prodding companies towards the GPU it can fulfil chief executive Jen-Hsun Huang's prediction that "the CPU has run its course and the soul of the PC is shifting quickly to the GPU."