60 companies showcase GPU apps

The GPU is put in center stage at the Emerging Companies Summit (ECS) of the GPU Technology Conference to be held this September in California. Sixty companies from around the world will present their GPU-based technologies, including computer vision, robotics, gesture recognition and video processing.

An advisory committee selected 24 of the 60 companies to present on stage before panels of technology leaders, analysts and investors. In these sessions, the CEOs will discuss business strategy with panels comprised of technology executives from Adobe, Cisco, Google, IBM and Microsoft, along with members of leading investment firms, like Charles River Ventures, Interwest, Morgenthaler Ventures and Sutter Hill.

Among these 24 companies are Milabra for its visual recognition technology that makes online advertising more effective; Bunkspeed for its 3D rendering and animation software; Playcast for games on demand; Cooliris for its visual web browser for photos and video; Softkinetic for its gesture recognition technology; Universal Robotics for its software that lets robots learn from their environment; and Useful Progress for its medical imaging technology.

Despite challenging economic conditions, the innovations are providing substantial growth potential and attracting the attention of corporate investors and members of the VC community.

The Third Annual ECS provides an opportunity to see how startups are using GPUs to supercharge existing applications and create new solutions. Familiar sectors, such as media and entertainment, have already been fundamentally altered by the GPU. And new industries and applications are rapidly emerging in the fields of computer vision, facial and gesture recognition, medical imaging, physics and artificial intelligence.