According to the NVIDIA blog, the team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory that controls the rover Curiosity is using NVIDIA 3D Vision glasses to see Mars in 3D and plans rover missions in a virtual, game-like environment. Read more
Also, as a helpful aside, Ralph Grabowski, in his latest upFront.eZine (August 14, 2012) defines the NVIDIA technology for those who may not be familar with it:
- NVIDIA is the name of the manufacturer of graphics boards (they do not sell direct, but through third parties like ASUS, PNY, and ZOTAC, and via workstation manufacturers such as Dell, Fujitsu, HP, and Lenovo)
- Quadro is their brand name for graphics boards meant for professional CAD users (GeForce is the line of graphics boards for gamers, and Tegra is for Android and future Windows RT devices, like tablets and smartphones)
- Kepler is the name of their latest GPU architecture (Fermi was the name of the previous one)
- Tesla is their brand name for GPU-based companion processors for HPC (high-performance computing) , and is included with Quadro boards configured with Maximus
- Maximus is a layer of software (unified driver) that directs computing functions, like simulation and rendering, to the Tesla GPU automatically, while the Quadro GPU handles visualization and graphics. It is meant for certified workstations that run multiple graphics boards.