Five of the 60 startups participating in NVIDIA's Emerging Companies Summit (ECS) received a "One To Watch" award for their promising technology and potential market impact.

The companies received the awards at the conclusion of the three-day GPU Technology Conference, which included a parallel track devoted to startup companies utilizing the graphics processing unit (GPU). The companies include:

--  Empulse GmbH, of Cologne, Germany, and its GPU-based database technology which analyzes billions of records in fractions of a second.

--  Scalable Display, of Cambridge, Mass., and its software solution driving high-quality multi-projector display systems.

--  Scaleform, of Greenbelt, Md., and its 3D stereoscopic graphic user interface for Tegra-based mobile devices.

--  Universal Robotics, of Nashville, Tenn., and its advanced, self-learning robots that handle boxes in a near-limitless variety of shapes and sizes.

--  VisiSonics, College Park, Md., and its sophisticated audio tools that accurately identify the source of sound in 3D space.

Highlights / Key Facts:

--  The Second Annual GPU Technology Conference, held from Sept. 20-23, brought together participants from 50 countries to hear more than 270 hours of technical sessions on a wide range of high-performance computing and scientific research subjects. Attendance grew this year by about 50 percent to several thousand.

--  "One To Watch" awards are given to the top five ECS companies based on technology value, market opportunity, market impact and "wow" factor.

--  Awards for each recipient include $10,000 in legal services from Cooley LLP, an NVIDIA Tesla C2050 GPU, a copy of Adobe Creative Suite 5 and two months of cloud-based GPU server hosting from Peer 1.

Quotes:

--  "The companies at this year's ECS showed great breadth in innovations that harness the power of GPUs. We saw a wide range of technology that will change the market and create whole new business opportunities."

-- Jeff Herbst, vice president of business development, NVIDIA

--  "We were blown away by the amount of innovation and science at the show, and honored to be recognized among so many talented and successful companies. The rapid advancement in GPUs has enabled Scaleform to deliver rich 3D experiences, including stereoscopic 3D user interfaces." -- Brendan Iribe, CEO, Scaleform

--  "It's great to be recognized by NVIDIA for being one of the most promising emerging companies. NVIDIA brings together an amazing ecosystem of companies at this conference, and Scalable Display is delighted to be among them." -- Andrew Jamison, CEO, Scalable Display

--  "We're thrilled to be recognized with this award. By using GPUs to accelerate our algorithms, VisiSonics is creating revolutionary products for many markets, and we look forward to accumulating more awards in the years to come." -- Ramani Duraiswami, CEO, VisiSonics

--  "The next generation of robots will depend on parallel computation, and NVIDIA is making that possible. By using GPUs to power machine vision and reactive, real-time motion planning in uncertain environments, our software can control robots in ways that were previously unthinkable." -- Alan Peters, CTO, Universal Robotics

--  "It's amazing to see how so many companies are using GPUs to solve major challenges. We're delighted that our database technology has been recognized as being among the most innovative technologies at this show." -- Michael Hummel, chief architect and founder, Empulse GmbH.