On September 30th NVIDIA unveiled its latest GPU architecture, codenamed Fermi. The first Fermi GPUs will contain 512 CUDA Cores, capable of more than 8x the double precision floating-point throughput of its predecessor, the GT200 GPU.  The GPU also incorporates error correcting (ECC) memories and caches, a new cache hierarchy, increased shared memory and register file sizes, and the ability to execute C++ programs.

From the NVIDIA Press release:

SANTA CLARA, Calif. Sep. 30, 2009

NVIDIA Corp. today introduced its next generation CUDA™ GPU architecture, codenamed Fermi. An entirely new ground-up design, the Fermi architecture is the foundation for the world's first computational graphics processing units (GPUs), delivering breakthroughs in both graphics and GPU computing.

NVIDIA and the Fermi team have taken a giant step towards making GPUs attractive for a broader class of programs, said Dave Patterson, director Parallel Computing Research Laboratory, U.C. Berkeley and co-author of Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach.  I believe history will record Fermi as a significant milestone.

Presented at the company's inaugural GPU Technology Conference, in San Jose, California, Fermi delivers a feature set that accelerates performance on a wider array of computational applications than ever before. Joining NVIDIA's press conference was Oak Ridge National Laboratorywho announced plans for a new supercomputer that will use NVIDIA® GPUs based on the Fermi architecture. Fermi also garnered the support of leading organizations including Bloomberg, Cray, Dell, HP, IBM and Microsoft.

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