Why are GPUs Winning the Enterprise: A Story of Speed, Visualization & GIS

From game consoles to supercomputers and now the datacenter, GPUs are permeating more and more of the computing ecosystem. By boasting order of magnitude performance improvements on key tasks and exhibiting massive cost of ownership advancements these once specialized chips are writing a new chapter in enterprise computing. Sam Madden, professor at MIT's Computer Science and AI Lab, will cover the evolution of compute and why it impacts databases along the dimensions of speed, memory and scalability. Madden will detail those insights with a case study from Cambridge Telematics where he is a founder and the Chief Scientist. The evolution of compute, particularly GPUs, needs software to harness its promise. The second part of the webinar will feature one of Sam’s former students, founder and CEO of MapD, Todd Mostak. Todd will address what software optimizations MapD has employed to harness the parallel processing power of GPUs: LLVM, backend rendering, and memory management. There will be a live product demonstration using the 1.1B row NYC taxi/limo/uber dataset. Ample time will be left for Q&A.