Of course, just as in prior versions, PerfHUD 6.0 Beta includes three powerful analysis modes:
The Performance Dashboard, for monitoring your GPU usage in real-time.
The Frame Debugger, for examining the data associated with every draw call in your frame.
The Frame Profiler, an automated analysis mode that profiles your application on a draw call level.
Browse over to our Beta page to download the PerfHUD installer, and get documentation. You can also check out our first screencast for PerfHUD 6, which covers Texture Visualization and Overrides.
GPU Gems: Programming Techniques, Tips, and Tricks for Real-Time Graphics, the first in our series of award-winning series of Gems books, is now available for free reading in HTML. The HTML version contains the entire text of the original Frontline-award-winning book.
With over 40 authors from game studios, movie effects, academia, and hardware companies, this is an instantly-invaluable web resource.
We've published a new user guide, available in HTML or PDF form, covering the use of Standard Annotations and Semantics ("SAS") in NVIDIA's FX Composer and the NVIDIA Shader Library. This new document collects the previously-scattered info on SAS, includes examples of scripting, and also covers CgFX.
This slide set lists all the recent and upcoming updates to various NVIDIA developer tools around the GDC 2008 time frame. It covers software products such as PerfHUD 6.0, FX Composer 2.5, the NVIDIA Shader Debugger, our SDKs, and much more.
With GDC 2008 Expo opening today, be sure to visit the AGEIA PhysX booth (West Hall Meeting Rooms 15 & 16),
and learn about how NVIDIA and AGEIA will take physics on a GPU to new levels.
AGEIA's PhysX software is widely adopted with more than 140 PhysX-based games shipping or in development on Sony Playstation3, Microsoft XBOX 360, Nintendo Wii, and gaming PCs. By combining AGEIA’s powerful PhysX technology with NVIDIA’s industry-leading GPU architectures, we will ensure that gamers and developers alike take advantage of the most compelling physics on the market.
As these new engineering developments expand the market and possibilities for great in-game physics driven by GPU computation, we will also continue to support CPUs in keeping with the heterogeneous hardware/software model already pioneered by PhysX. Existing PhysX developers can continue to develop as before, and the PhysX SDK binaries still remain free to PC developers.
Physics is one of the next great opportunities for gaming innovation. It is a substantial and visceral differentiator for game developers and a tremendous improvement to the gaming experience. The combination of NVIDIA and AGEIA technologies will deliver that next-generation experience.
CMP's Game Developer Magazine has named GPU Gems 3 as its 2007 Front Line Award winner in the Books category. Congratulations to all of the contributors and to the GPU Gems 3 team for their excellent work.
PerfHUD 5 was also named a Finalist in the Programming/Production category. The press release containing all of this year's winners is available here.
It introduces several new features and improvements:
New OpenGL profiles (gp4vp, gp4gp, and gp4fp) for GeForce 8 extensions
These expose new DirectX 10-class features including geometry
shaders, bindable constant buffers for uniforms, texture arrays,
first-class integer support and more
Support for Apple's new "Leopard" release of Mac OS X 10.5
New DirectX 9 profiles (hlslv and hlslf) to cross-translate Cg to HLSL
Documentation updates, including Cg Standard Library and standard CgFX states
New examples demonstrating texture-space bump mapping setup via a
geometry shaders, shadow volume generation via a geometry shader,
bindable constant buffers, and more
Thanks to the developers who have already responded to our 2007 Developer Survey, we've started right away in adding new features and tools to our developer web site. If you haven't let your voice be heard yet, here's your chance -- help us to guide our efforts, as we focus on creating the tools and programs that you really need to bring your next graphics project to a new level!
To accomodate the busy US Holidays, we are extending the period of the Developer Survey until Friday, December 7th.
As before, we are including each respondant in a drawing for one of four GeForce 8800 GTX 768MBgraphics cards, or one of ten copies of the new must-have graphics book GPU Gems 3.
It only takes a few minutes, and you've got nothing to lose but plenty to gain. Press Here to begin!
Full URL (in case you want to mail this to a friend):
Cg 2.0 Beta has just been released, and includes many new features, such as new OpenGL profiles for GeForce 8 extensions, geometry shader support, and support for Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard). Check out the the beta page or the release notes for more information.
This update includes numerous improvements to the NVSG SDK as well as a new VisSim demo, which illustrates the integration of physics (Bullet physics system), audio (OpenAL), and graphics through Producer, Cal3D, FreeType, and of course NVSG.
If you're excited about our developer tools or education efforts, you may want to check out these two new jobs. If you're attending SIGGRAPH, we encourage you to come by our booth to chat with us.
The successful candidate will produce world-class educational programs by harnessing various resources including: webcasts, videos, books, forums, developer events, universities, and schools. The candidate must have a significant understanding of the graphics APIs (OpenGL and DirectX). The successful candidate will serve as project manager/editor of all courseware and will work closely with engineers to extend and deepen the scope, distribution, and presentation of electronic and printed material. Strong written and communication skills and a passion for education are a must.
Qualifications:
BS or equivalent required. (Computer Science preferred, with programming experience)
Knowledge of computer graphics including DirectX and/or OpenGL
Knowledge of current web technologies is a plus
Proven ability to deliver high-quality projects on time
In this role you will drive the development and promotion of world class developer tools and SDKs to create the ultimate development toolset for tomorrow's artists and GPU programmers. You will be responsible for product definition, product development schedules, product positioning, evangelism to developers, product launch, and development of the product perception with press and analysts.
Your technical background, excellent communication skills, intimate knowledge of the competitive landscape and persuasive personality allow you to aggressively position your product. You are comfortable presenting to a wide range of audiences. Technical depth developed in a software engineering or product management role supports your understanding of the design cycles for game development tools and helps you build credibility with the engineering teams you will work with. You enjoy problem solving, always looking for ways to overcome obstacles and ensure success of your products. Your passion to win focuses the whole team to deliver innovative products on schedule.
Minimum Requirements:
BS or equivalent required. (Computer Science preferred)
Familiarity with DirectX and/or OpenGL.
2 to 5 years experience in computer graphics or in the computer software industry demonstrating the ability to deliver successful projects on time
Knowledge of production workflows from programmer to artist is a plus
FX Composer 2 is a powerful integrated development environment for shader authoring. With support for DirectX and OpenGL, HLSL, COLLADA FX, and CgFX, as well as .fbx, .x, .3ds, .obj, and .dae formats, FX Composer provides true cross-platform functionality.
We strongly recommend that you read through the Quick Tutorial (linked from FX Composer's new Start Page), as well as the User Guide (also linked from FX Composer's Start Page) to get a good understanding of FX Composer's extensive capabilities. These include Shader Library integration, ShaderPerf analysis, animation support, COLLADA support, scripting, effect and project wizards, customizable toolbars and layouts, and much more.
This public beta of PerfHUD includes 64-bit support for Windows XP and Vista, an updated driver, and minor bug fixes and improvements. We look forward to hearing your candid feedback on our developer forums, since it will help us to build a product that best suits your needs.
This release candidate of FX Composer 2 includes various bug fixes and minor improvements, including better support for older Shader Model 2.0 GPUs. Please note that the shader templates generated by the shader authoring wizard use the ps_3_0 profile, but you can modify them to use ps_2_a if you have older hardware.
We encourage you to visit our public developer forums, where you can discuss FX Composer 2 with other users, as well as the development team. We look forward to seeing you there
The latest versions of our CUDA toolkit and SDK provide everything you need to harness the GPU's power for any kind of computing. This latest release of the CUDA SDK features several new samples, such as:
Binomial Option Pricing
Black-Scholes Option Pricing
Monte-Carlo Option Pricing
Parallel Mersenne Twister (random number generation)
Parallel Histogram
Image Denoising
Sobel Edge Detection Filter
Altogether you'll find more than 40 code samples that you can learn from and extend for your own projects.
If you would like to work more closely with NVIDIA on a High-Performance Computing (HPC) project, please sign up to become a Tesla Registered Developer.
We are pleased to unveil the cover of the upcoming “GPU Gems 3” book. This image has been rendered in NVIDIA’s “Human Head” demo, which features Doug Jones, who recently starred as the Silver Surfer in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.
The book will be in full color, hard cover, and will contain 41 chapters, including “Advanced Skin Rendering”, which explains how to render ultra-realistic characters. GPU Gems 3 will be released at SIGGRAPH 2007 but can already be pre-ordered.
We will release more information about this project as we get closer to SIGGRAPH.
We are currently considering hands-on training sessions at SIGGRAPH 2007 for both PerfKit 5 and FX Composer 2, which will be publicly available soon. Both products have been rearchitected to offer improved user interfaces as well as numerous new features.
Each tool's lab session will be approximately 2 hours long, and will give you the opportunity to learn about and experience using the tool, from the basics to advanced techniques.
The cost for each session will be roughly $200. This price includes a heavily discounted GeForce 8600 GT board that you will get to keep after the training.
Our GDC 2007 presentations are available for download:
NVIDIA FX Composer 2: A Comprehensive Shader Development Package [download] Slides (PDF) GPU Optimization with the Latest NVIDIA Performance Tools [download] Slides (PDF)
We are pleased to demonstrate the latest version of our NVIDIA Developer Toolkit at GDC 2007, complete with six all-new software products for developers:
FX Composer 2. Featuring DirectX and OpenGL support via HLSL, Cg, and COLLADA FX, as well as powerful pipeline integration features for real production environments.
GPU-Accelerated Texture Tools. Now more than 10x faster with GPU acceleration via CUDA, and support for DirectX 10 texture formats.
PerfHUD 5. Featuring powerful edit-and-continue for shaders and render states, customizable graphs, DirectX 10 and Vista support, and much more.
ShaderPerf 2. Support for vertex and pixel shader analysis as well as Release 100 drivers.
We are showing off all these tools at GDC in booth # 5134 and at our various sessions. The Shader Library, SDK 10, GPU-Accelerated Texture Tools, and ShaderPerf 2 are now available for download. Betas of FX Composer 2 and PerfKit 5 will be available soon after GDC.
Don't miss out on a chance to check out all our latest tools at our booth and talks at GDC:
PerfKit 5.
Featuring powerful edit-and-continue for shaders and render states,
customizable graphs, DirectX 10 and Vista support, and much more.
FX Composer 2.
Featuring DirectX and OpenGL support via HLSL, Cg, and COLLADA FX, as
well as powerful pipeline integration features for real production
environments.
SDK 10. All-new code samples for DirectX, OpenGL, and CUDA.
Texture Tools. Now more than 7x faster with GPU acceleration via CUDA, and support for DirectX 10 texture formats
Shader Library. The world's largest shader library.
Don’t forget to pick up a free NVIDIA Developer Toolkit DVD at our booth (#5134)!
PerfGraph is a simple cross-platform performance monitoring application that uses NVIDIA's instrumented driver and NVPerfSDK to give a graphical representation of internal GPU counters. You can also use the application to graph non-GPU counters, such as CPU usage.
This code has been released on SourceForge under the GNU General Public License (GPL) so that developers can easily modify, improve, and collaborate on the code.
As you may know, we have an extensive collection of texture tools on our web site. We want to hear your feedback to help us prioritize our efforts and to ensure that we are building the best possible software for you.
Developers who complete the entire survey (with meaningful responses) will be entered into a raffle for one of 5 copies of Digital Texturing and Painting. Incomplete surveys or fictitious responses will automatically disqualify you from the raffle. Only legitimate developers are eligible for this survey.
This survey closes on Friday, January 12 at 11:59 pm Pacific Time.
We are pleased to announce NVPerfKit 2.1, the latest version of our comprehensive suite of performance tools for debugging and profiling OpenGL and Direct3D software applications for Windows and, for the first time, Linux.
New in this release:
- Release 90 driver support - 32-bit and 64-bit Linux support (NVPerfSDK only) - 64-bit Windows support - Improved features in NVPerfHUD (including "take screenshot" [F10]) - Improved installer with automatic driver removal and installation
Also, don't forget to visit our brand-new NVPerfHUD screenshot gallery, which shows top game titles being analyzed by their developers using NVPerfHUD.
Real-time graphics is going to leap forward again. API are becoming more flexible than ever before allowing a new class of effects and improved developer tools increase performance and productivity on many platforms, including Linux. We invite you to attend the following tutorials:
• Next Generation Programmability in OpenGL • Physics on NVIDIA GPUs • State of the Art Cross Platform Shader Development • Next Generation Effects in DirectX10 • Optimize Your GPU with the Latest NVIDIA Performance Tools (including Linux Performance Tools)
At the end of each session a high-end NVIDIA graphics card will be given away. To participate, swipe your badge at the entrance and get a raffle ticket.
NVIDIA Engineers will demonstrate tools to improve shading quality and graphics performance on current projects. They will also talk about what you should absolutely know for your next Direct3D10 title. Do not miss these sessions at the Develop Conference held in Brighton, UK.
• Shaders: The Sky is the Limit. NVIDIA and Sony joint presentation (Thursday July 13th, from 11am - noon)
• Optimize Your GPU with the Latest NVIDIA Performance Tools (Thursday July 13th, from 1:30pm - 2:30pm)
• Next Generation Games with Direct3D10 (Thursday July 13th, from 3:00pm - 4:00pm)
We are proud to release NVPerfKit 2, a comprehensive suite of performance tools to help debug and profile OpenGL and Direct3D applications. NVPerfKit gives you access to low-level performance counters inside the driver and hardware counters inside the GPU itself. The counters can be used to determine exactly how your application is using the GPU, identify performance issues, and confirm that performance problems have been resolved.
A major new component in NVPerfKit 2 is NVPerfHUD 4. This latest version of our real-time performance analysis tool now features automated performance analysis, access to GPU performance counters, updated and improved performance graphs, and much more. In a recent survey, over 100 NVPerfHUD 4 users reported an average performance improvement of 34.8% by using NVPerfHUD 4 to tune their applications. These users also reported that NVPerfHUD 4 helped them find an average of 11 rendering bugs during development. (Results were obtained from individuals using a variety of system configurations and applications. Individual results may vary.)
NVPerfKit 2 consists of the following components:
Instrumented Driver
Interfaces with graphics API and GPU to provide performance counter data
Our GDC Presentations are now available in Acrobat and PowerPoint formats. Visit our GDC 2006 Presentations page and start improving your applications today.
We're proud to announce the release of 
GPU Gems: Programming Techniques, Tips, and Tricks for Real-Time Graphics, the first in our series of award-winning series of Gems books, is 
NVPerfSDK's Sample Application
