CUDA Certification

Accelerated Computing CUDA CUDA Programming and Performance
21

Strangely enough…, I got confirmation from certification@nvidia.com that I have been certified…
I am yet to see and confirm from the actual result website…
Anyway, Thank you fcs,Vincent… Hopefully, some1 is listening to this forum…Thank you guys!

22

Good to know finally there is some movement, and congrats by the way :-)

23

Congratulations Sarnath…

24

Congratulations!!! Sarnath. You are certified.

U have great patience.I cannot wait for 5 months to get the result. At least, they could have scored the objective type questions just after the exam itself. I would better plan the exam when they revamp CUDA certification to the latest CUDA 4.0 technology or at least, when they announce that it’s no longer in ‘Beta’ stage. The result should be out in one month time. Since, the change is very fast paced, they could have waited to start the certification only when there is some sort of stability. I don’t think, a lot many of CUDA programmers (from forum itself) have already attempted since announcement of launching cuda certification in June last year, otherwise, we could have seen positive replies as well.

I wonder, if you can get the mail for your result announcement from certification@nvidia.com, why do we not get our queries answered from this mail-id?

25

Hi Everyone,

Thanks for all your wishes.

I got an e-mail from Nadeem who manages the certification.
Looks like NVIDIA is directly looking to get in touch with developers and announcing the results.
For some reasons, the previous arrangements had not worked out for them.

So, if you have taken the test, just be patient for some time.
You should be contacted by NVIDIA sooon,

Thank you
Best Regards,
Sarnath

26

I got reply from the certification team.
Good news is I got certified as a CUDA programmer.

27

Congrats humayunkhan. How long have you waited to recive the result?
I´m thinking about taking the exam.

28

Congratulations HK!! It is quite a difficult exam and it feels pretty good to clear it.

29

I waited for around 4 weeks.

30

Thanks Sarnath.

31

I just took the certification exam, and I was surprised it was much more difficult than I thought.

When I signed up to take it, Prometric never sent me a confirmation, as it had done for other exams that I took. When I went to find out where I signed up to take the exam, the Prometric web-site account area had the exam scheduled, but it did not list where it was, only “Prometric Test Center”, of which there are “7,500 testing centers in 160 countries”. Great. Looking around so more, I found this web page http://prometric.com/NVIDIA/Americas.htm for “help”. The first phone number listed (“To schedule, reschedule, cancel and confirm appointments or for general testing information: 800-741-4551”) was for some completely unrelated business (tire, auto, shipping, … I can’t remember). The second phone number, 800-853-6769, was for Prometric, but it took 15 minutes for service rep to find the record because I didn’t know my Prometric ID off the top of my head. MAKE SURE YOU WRITE DOWN EVERYTHING WHEN YOU SIGN UP!

On the exam, I was really disappointed that NVIDIA, nor Prometric, gives out basic information about the length of the exam, i.e., one, two, three, etc. hours long, nor how many questions. You only discover this when you sit down to take the exam. Hello NVIDIA??? We have busy schedules, and this information is needed for planning. I do not know of any exam in my life that such basic information was not given.

Without giving any details of the exam less I be sued, I was very disappointed with the study materials suggested by the NVIDIA web-site, Udacity CS344: Intro to Parallel Programming | NVIDIA Developer , nor http://www.nvidia.com/object/io_1266605227307.html . The textbook “Programming Massively Parallel Processors” by Kirk and Hwu (nor the other NVIDIA copyrighted textbook “CUDA by Example” by Sanders and Kandrot) is ABSOLUTELY WORTHLESS as a study guide for the exam. The alternative, suggested on the web site, are hours and hours of videos. Unfortunately, we live in the days where nobody reads.

The web site indicates that we’ll get “programming assignments to test depth”. The programming questions are given through a GUI in the typical Prometric computer test format. Unfortunately, don’t expect to have access to your normal programming tools, nor the CUDA header files, for help, or control of interrupting a run if you need to. (There is a timer which seems to kill the process, but it is longer than I would expect.) The GPU that you have to use is some old GPU, a GeForce 9500 or earlier? Do they even sell this hardware anymore? If you planning to take the exam, study this part by doing problems from scratch using Notepad on an old GPU with your old 5 year-old PC.

The other half, “multiple choice questions to test breadth”, actually tests depth, depth of every teeny-tiny optimization you ever really care to know in kernels on different NVIDIA GPU’s. You better know the ins and outs of that old hardware completely, especially the memory model, because it seems like most of the questions deal with the optimization and behavior of that old GPU, not for a more recent Fermi.

While I may sound like I’m a complainer, I like taking hard exams. The only problem with this exam is that so little prep information is given.

Ken

32

Congratulations :-)

33

I have to say that I agree with most if not all of the issues you found at the exam, and I also agree that “Programming Massively Parallel Processors” while a great book is not appropriate as a reference for a certification exam.

But I would also like to point few things:

  • The exam is still in “beta” phase, I expected all those problems and even more, in fact considering the short period of time it has been running (they started last summer) I think things run pretty smoothly, just some issues with delays in getting the grades :-P

  • It is true there is no much information about the exam, but all I have to do was ask (as the certification web suggested) to certification@nvidia.com, they answered all my questions right away the next day, it is true that the information should be out in the first place but in beta stage I guess they are still making changes all the time.

  • About the materials for the certification…well I agree they are not there yet, in all certifications the best materials start to appear after the exam (usually trailing a couple of years) and the most important part would be mock exams and that will also take time.

I have to say I think the materials are not there for the exam, but thay are actually really really good stuff to learn about CUDA and wspeed up your kernels, I think they are terrific.

  • I suggested myself to nvidia that they could make available a simulator of the system for the programming assignment to the people registered to take the exam. I asked about the card (same email address) and they told me what i needed to know about the tesla card it would run the code. while it took me a few minutes to find my way around me I think the assignments accessible enough, the code was clear. my only obstacle was my own tradition of coding 5 bugs per line of code. The advice of practice using only notepad is very good, I would extent that advice to learning and mastering any programming language.

  • I also agree about the questions, but that is a common, unavoidable aspect of any certification program. I was expecting that degree of details, which in some cases is justified while in others is not. this will be easier for future exam takers as mock exam questions start to come out.

  • There’s also the matter of the intrinsic difficulty of a certification exam over a technology that evolves so fast, the exam will always lag behind for some years until CUDA matures and stabilizes, that is nobody’s fault it is the way it is.

As a summary I would say that while I agree with Ken I think these issues are normal given the circumstances and I even expected to be more of them in such a young certification program on such a young technology. Being the pioneers is always hard, having to break the trail…somebody had to be the first.

I did put all my thoughts and feedback in an email and sent them to nvidia, I think they will appreciate your feedback as well.

34

If the certification is in a beta phase, the charges for the exam should be minimal, not $250. This is done for other exams, e.g., the IEEE CSDP.

35

haha that is kind of true, but on the other hand nvidia is handing so much technology and materials for free that is difficult for me to complain about it. you are right though.

Probably most of the exam fee goes to Prometric anyway, and it is difficult to get around that part of the cost.

36

Did anyone get their certificates ?

37

Thanks vicentito…

38

Hi Satyam,

I have passed the CUDA certification some time back. I did not get any physical certificate from NVidia. I did not get any soft copy of the certificate either.

The only thing I got is a mail from Nadeem confirming that I passed the certification. Currently certification status can be known by sending mail to certification@nvidia.com and get a confirmation.

In my opinion Nvidia must give at least a soft copy of the certificate.