News - Kaspersky works with NVIDIA on GPU virus busting

[HEXUS]

The Russian security software firm says it has been using Tesla and CUDA to speed up its virus detection.

Read more.

[Terbinator]

I thought this was going to say supported in latest update/offering - would of been uber if so.

[shaithis]

I just do not see it.

How many times have I ever waited on my virus scanner? Only when I have been doing a full scan....and then it's all hard disk access, not CPU time.

I fail to see how this is anything but a gimmick.

[ChuvelxD]

I just do not see it.

How many times have I ever waited on my virus scanner? Only when I have been doing a full scan....and then it's all hard disk access, not CPU time.

I fail to see how this is anything but a gimmick.

Go learn something and quit posting ignorance please. Read this awesome article on PCMag.com the other day.

http://blogs.pcmag.com/miller/2009/1...rabee_dead.php

Then read this:

http://blogs.pcmag.com/miller/2009/1...s_roadmaps.php

[MadduckUK]

Go learn something and quit posting ignorance please. Read this awesome article on PCMag.com the other day.

its Rollo's angry persona

[shaithis]

Go learn something and quit posting ignorance please. Read this awesome article on PCMag.com the other day.

http://blogs.pcmag.com/miller/2009/1...rabee_dead.php

Then read this:

http://blogs.pcmag.com/miller/2009/1...s_roadmaps.php

How about you back up what your saying? Rather then posting a couple of links about larabee and GPGPU, how about you explain to me WHY I am wrong?

How about you explain how GPGPU will help virus scanners?

Explain why I NEVER see my CPU spike when my virus checker is doing it's work, yet GPGPU will help it?

Explain, why as a gamer, I would even want GPGPU doing virus scanning while I am gaming, especially when we all have oodles of CPU time going begging most of the time thanks to multi core CPUs?

[aidanjt]

Like I said before, this may be useful if you have 2TB worth of SSDs RAID0'ed, other than that, pointless waste of time and effort.

[ChuvelxD]

How about you back up what your saying? Rather then posting a couple of links about larabee and GPGPU, how about you explain to me WHY I am wrong?

How about you explain how GPGPU will help virus scanners?

Explain why I NEVER see my CPU spike when my virus checker is doing it's work, yet GPGPU will help it?

Explain, why as a gamer, I would even want GPGPU doing virus scanning while I am gaming, especially when we all have oodles of CPU time going begging most of the time thanks to multi core CPUs?

You're looking at this on the wrong scale. Think bigger. You never see a CPU spike because your virus scanner is comparing a library to the files found on your computer. This is quite a simple comparison task.

"Kaspersky Lab uses the Tesla S1070 1U GPU system to accelerate the intellectual services that define the similarity of files. The similarity services enable the identification of new files and define which file, or file groups, most closely resemble the unknown program received by the Company's antivirus lab." - Kaspersky.com

What GPGPU utilizes is parallel computing. Where as a client-side virus scanner compares, the Kaspersky server must perform hundreds of thousands of instructions in order to process extremely complex algorithms. When the Kaspersky anti-virus software on a computer suspects that a file may be malicious, even though it may not match any known virus signatures, the software uploads this file to the Kaspersky Lab data center. The server software then compares the suspected file against more than 50 million known good files and programs. Using complex anti-virus and SPAM detection algorithms, Kaspersky’s server software identifies the risk level of the suspected file and informs the client computer on what kind of preventive action to take.

Now you need to understand the difference between a CPU and a GPU. (Which was the purpose of the links) CPUs are glorified versions of GPUs. A CPU is a complex microprocessor meant to handle a plethora of processes and instructions. The x86 CPUs though only function in a serial-like fashion, one instruction after another. They combated this with multiple cores. Today's Core i7 processors uses 4 cores and 8 threads. The GPU is a much dumbed-down version of a CPU meant to handle simple instructions like rendering. The advantage of a GPU is that it has far many more cores than a traditional CPU. Now GPUs render thousands of polygons like in games and that is where the basis of comparison comes from. The more polygons rendered, the smother the game. Where the CPU and GPU come in to play together is parallel computing.

Because of heat concerns CPUs have not followed Moore's Law as of late and the multi-core processor was born. GPUs actually have a lot more processors, simpler but more. This means some of the work can be offloaded the CPU and transferred to a General Purpose GPU(GPGPU). CUDA is a parallel computing architecture that allows many more instructions to be run at one time on a GPU. Now, these instructions are much simpler, but more of them can be run giving things like math, oil and gas algorithms much greater performance over CPUs. The code can be written in either FORTRAN or C++.

SO, in all of this, the reason Kaspersky has used NVIDIA GPUs and seen a HUGE increase in performance, is because of the numerous amounts of cores processing hundreds of thousands of instructions in parallel. All this, as a fraction of the cost of a traditional server.

"And this isn’t a small increase in performance. Kaspersky Lab are seeing increases of 360 times as compared to a 2.6GHz Intel Core2 Duo." - Kaspersky.com

Core i7s are just too expensive.

[shaithis]

Ah, I see, so this will actually slow down my PC thanks to uploading-over-the-internet anything it determines "may" be a virus......joy. Not only will that slow things down by potentially uploading terrabytes of information from my hard drives but it may well just upload personal and/or confidential information to Kapersky.....Where do i sign up?

I'll stick to my "doesn't slow the PC or it's connection down in any way, virus signature based check" thanks.

[ChuvelxD]

Ah, I see, so this will actually slow down my PC thanks to uploading-over-the-internet anything it determines "may" be a virus......joy. Not only will that slow things down by potentially uploading terrabytes of information from my hard drives but it may well just upload personal and/or confidential information to Kapersky.....Where do i sign up?

I'll stick to my "doesn't slow the PC or it's connection down in any way, virus signature based check" thanks.

Hahahahaha really? You know you make no sense correct? All virus scanners do this, how do you think they enhance their definitions? Weather or not you notice the thousands of data packets sent and recieved, or you have terrabytes of viruses on your computer is your own business.

Don't hate on the tech, we WANT to move forward. Just because it doesn't affect your everyday life, doesn't make it not important.

[Blastuk]

Ah, I see, so this will actually slow down my PC thanks to uploading-over-the-internet anything it determines "may" be a virus......joy. Not only will that slow things down by potentially uploading terrabytes of information from my hard drives but it may well just upload personal and/or confidential information to Kapersky.....Where do i sign up?

I'll stick to my "doesn't slow the PC or it's connection down in any way, virus signature based check" thanks.

Wow this post is dumb.

From what I grasped from the article, your virus scanner runs as it always does, any suspicious files are sent to Kaspersky to process on their Tesla thing. Using GPUs to analyse suspicious files would help speed up things on their side for creating new virus definitions.. in theory.

[kalniel]

There's just some confusion. In the past people have mooted the idea of using GPGPU to accelerate client based scanning - that idea was rightly panned. But 'happily'-parallel server side operations without I/O bottlenecks make perfect sense to be accelerated by APU means if they're simple enough.

[12GaugeShotty]

I just do not see it.

How many times have I ever waited on my virus scanner? Only when I have been doing a full scan....and then it's all hard disk access, not CPU time.

I fail to see how this is anything but a gimmick.

I agree. MSE on my PC is set to do a full scan every Sunday at 2 AM. That's well after I go to sleep and could care less how long it takes or how many resources it is using.

[ChuvelxD]

I agree. MSE on my PC is set to do a full scan every Sunday at 2 AM. That's well after I go to sleep and could care less how long it takes or how many resources it is using.

This article has 0 to do with client-side, anti-virus usage. Once you realize that, you won't be confused at all...

[12GaugeShotty]

This article has 0 to do with client-side, anti-virus usage. Once you realize that, you won't be confused at all...

Guilty as charged.

[shaithis]

Hahahahaha really? You know you make no sense correct? All virus scanners do this, how do you think they enhance their definitions? Weather or not you notice the thousands of data packets sent and recieved, or you have terrabytes of viruses on your computer is your own business.

Don't hate on the tech, we WANT to move forward. Just because it doesn't affect your everyday life, doesn't make it not important.

You do realise how many false-positives can be thrown up with virus scanners? How many times heuristical data analysis can trip up? You could end up sending tons of files to be checked for no reason.

It's something that would have to be implemented extremely well to not be a burden.

And like everything with AV, don't be an idiot and you shouldn't even need the protection. I definitely would not buy an AV program that sends every file back to the author if it thinks may have a virus.

Each to their own though I guess.....