The GPU Technology Conference (GTC) which will be taking place October 11-14 in San Jose, has published its list of focus topics for the coming year’s event. In addition to some of the more predictable inclusions (CFD, ray tracing, visualization and the like) is cloud computing.

We were on site last year to cover the event and found a number of elements to discuss from the GPU cloud sphere. With the release of a great deal of news since that time (including Amazon’s announcement of its GPU-flavored instances) and a wealth of new GPU cloud case studies (which will be the subject of a feature later this week) there is little doubt that the cloud topic will be more robust.

Scanning through the list reveals that like last year, the focus areas include a number of application domains. For instance, data mining and business intelligence, bioinformatics, digital content creation and film and finance are all topics of interest.

These are not only valuable topics for attendees due to GPU acceleration on physical hardware consideations—a number of these areas are rife with case studies that use GPU-enabled clouds.

Again, there is a more in-depth exploration of what is happening with GPU-boosted clouds later in the week, but to lead up to that article (and to put the call out there for those who might be attending) the list alone provides a few hints at the role cloud computing will play in areas that are reliant on GPU computing.

GTC ’11 opened its call for “the best and brightest minds in GPU computing for four days of immersion in world-class scientific research and practices.” The organizers are currently looking for experts from industry and academia to present advancements in the field via speaking engagements and poster presentation opportunities.

It’s my hope that this year there will be more cloud computing-related additions to the session and poster lineup to provide a “case in point” about growing use cases for GPU clouds.

We have met a number of you at SC10 and other events and know some of you have compelling projects that tie the two. If you fall into that category, the deadline for submissions to present sessions at the conference is (a lot closer than it seems) May 3. For those with poster submissions the deadline is June 27. 

Full story at NVIDIA / GTC2011