International Mathematics Olympiad 2007

In the 48th International Mathematics Olympiad (IMO) being held in Hanoi, Vietnam, the Russian delegation came in first with six gold medals and the Chinese won second with five golds and one silver. Vietnam and South Korea came tied for third place with South Korea with three gold and three silver medals.

Most teachers and students commented that the six questions given over the two days of the contest, July 25-26, were hard but interesting. And as in previous years, the third and sixth problems were more difficult than others in order to help identify outstanding contestants. The highest possible score for all six questions is 42. The top 1/12 of the contestants receive goal medals, the top 2/12 of the remaining, silver medals, and the next 3/12, bronze ones. Of the rest of the contestants, anyone who records the highest possible score (7) on any one question is awarded an honor prize.

IMO, an annual competition for mathematically gifted high school students from all over the world, is held in a different country every year. The first IMO was held in 1959 in Romania, with 7 countries participating. Spain and Germany will respectively organize upcoming IMOs in the next two years.

The highest score was 37 by Konstantin Matveev of Russia. Peter Scholze of Germany and Caili Shen of China scored 36. Danylo Radchenko of Ukraine and Pietro Vertechi of Italy scored 35. Last year Zhiyu Liu of China, Iurie Boreico of Moldova and Alexander Magazinov of Russia could get perfect score of 42 (for solving 6 problems).

Here are 2 relevant links: Problems, Results.

Nvidia's CUDA 1.0

Nvidia CUDA 1.0 is a C-compiler and Software Development Kit (SDK) for developing computing applications on Nvidia Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). GPU Computing with the CUDA SDK is a new approach to computing where hundreds of on-chip processors simultaneously communicate and cooperate to solve complex computing problems. The GPU is ideally suited for computationally intensive applications such as seismic processing for oil and gas exploration, computing in bioscience, and financial modeling. The introduction of CUDA technology made the parallel computing power of the GPU accessible to virtually any developer through standard C programming language.

Nvidia has recently released a plug-in example that allows Matlab programs to use standard GPU libraries to speed up their applications. The plug-in example also shows users how to write their own versions, enabling them to take the performance critical piece of their code and harness the capabilities of the GPU through the Nvidia CUDA software environment.

The combination of GPU computing technology and the CUDA software environment delivers a flexible, massively parallel computing platform for today’s most demanding data-intensive applications. While a typical Matlab simulation of 2D isotropic turbulence at a resolution suitable for scientific publications (1024x1024) would typically take a couple of days, such a simulation with the plug-in takes as little as four hours.

CUDA 1.0 includes new C compiler optimizations and performance enhancements along with additional functionality and C code examples. CUDA Blas and FFT libraries have been further optimized and include additional functionality and new C code examples relevant to areas such as computational finance and medical imaging are installed with the SDK.

Nvidia's CUDA technology is available in GeForce® 8800 graphics and future Nvidia Quadro® Professional Graphics solutions. Developers can download the beta version of the CUDA Software Developers Kit (SDK) and C-compiler for Windows XP and Linux (RedHat Release 4 Update 3) from the Nvidia Developer Web site at http://www.developer.nvidia.com/.

VridgeR for 3D Image Data Processing

Kanagawa, Japan based Digital Process Ltd has developed VridgeR, which the company describes as 'bridge between Virtual and Real stages'. VridgeR is a software package that uses a special rendering technique that does not use polygons, and can display highly complex models using standard hardware.

Conventional CAD or 3D software processes the image data into polygons to be displayed. When developing massive objects such as cars or planes which can contain millions of polygons, conventional display systems cannot render these models quickly with a high level of accuracy. Instead of using polygons for curved surfaces, VridgeR uses a hybrid mesh, which can create precise, curved surfaces.

Using special compression techniques, 20GB of aircraft CAD data can be loaded onto less than 1GB RAM with complete mathematical precision. Display accuracy is controlled dynamically and special functions such as measurement can perform with high accuracy. VridgeR has the potential of accelerating digital process for wide area of engineering from development stage to sales preparation of wide range of products.

For more details, visit the VridgeR page.