BANGALORE, INDIA: Before explaining the implementation of CUDA, let's refresh what the difference between a CPU and a GPU is. CPUs are designed to carry on serial tasks whereas GPUs can process in parallel. CUDA is a software platform to use GPUs for parallel high performance processing.

Just look at the amazing video on 'Youtube,' that compares the working of a CPU and a GPU by the popular serial on Discovery: Myth Busters' (in.youtube.com/watch?v=0udMBdo0Rac). CUDA is small set of extensions to C language that enables implementation of parallel algorithms; GPUs have hundreds of cores with shared resources, FPUs, and registers that can run threads in parallel.

CUDA includes C/C++ software development tools, function libraries, and a hardware abstraction mechanism that hides the GPU hardware from developers. CUDA works along with conventional C/C++ compilers making it possible to mix GPU code with the general purpose CPU code.

Installation
In this section we would help you to install CUDA on your machine. You first need a CUDA enabled graphics cards. In our implementation we are using 'GeForce 9600 GT' graphics card. More information on CUDA enabled products and development with CUDA can be obtained from the web page: www.nvidia.com/cuda. Now the next step is to download CUDA software. On the same link click on 'DOWNLOAD CUDA 'and enter your operating system (Windows XP in our case). We would be using CUDA 2.0; there are three things to be downloaded: CUDA drivers, CUDA tool kit and CUDA SDK.

CUDA 2.0 supports version 177.35 or later NVIDIA ForceWare graphics drivers for Windows XP. To check the version of drivers on your machine go to 'NIVIDA Control Panel' and click on 'Help>System Information'. If the version of derivers is lower than 177.35 then download and install CUDA drivers. The next thing to be downloaded and installed is CUDA toolkit. This contains tool needed to compile and build CUDA applications.

Finally one can download and install CUDA SDK for sample projects. To verify installation run 'bandwidthTest' program present at 'C:\Program Files\NVIDIA Corporation\NVIDIA CUDASDK\bin\ win32\ Release.' If properly installed, the output window will show 'Test PASSED' in the second last line and the name of graphics card in the first line. To test the version of CUDA drivers, open command prompt and type 'nvcc -V'. Besides these CUDA software one can also use Microsoft's Visual Studio 2005 for developing C/C++ applications.