NVIDIA recommends new MacBook Pro to CUDA developers

According to NVIDIA, developers working on applications based on its CUDA parallel computing architecture will have particular reason to look forward to Apple's new MacBook Pro models. NVIDIA is supplying the GPU for the 15-inch series with Retina display.

The company says that the integrated GeForce GT 650M GPU, which is based on the new Kepler architecture, is particularly suitable for research and development projects. However, NVIDIA did not have much choice when it comes to recommending Apple hardware for CUDA developers, as iMacs and the Mac Pro series currently use graphics cards by their competitor, AMD.

Interestingly, NVIDIA recommends the GPU of the MacBook Pro laptops for applications running under Linux. In NVIDIA's announcement, Senior Product Manager Will Ramey does not clarify whether this is intended as a reference to the underlying Unix-like structure of Apple's Mac OS X, or whether NVIDIA is actually suggesting that developers should run a different operating system on the MacBook Pro computers.

In any case, the company says that the current CUDA 4 release works well on the GT 650M. The card offers two SMX processors with 192 cores each and can access 1GB of dedicated GDDR5 memory at transfer rates of up to 80GB per second. A 15-page "NVIDIA CUDA Getting Started Guide for Mac OS X" is available for download.

(fab)