Posts in category: nVidia AI

Generative AI is reshaping trillion-dollar industries, and NVIDIA, a front-runner in smart robotics, is seizing the moment.

Speaking today as part of a special address ahead of CES, NVIDIA Vice President of Robotics and Edge Computing Deepu Talla detailed how NVIDIA and its partners are bringing generative AI and robotics together.

It’s a natural fit, with a growing roster of partners — including Boston Dynamics, Collaborative Robotics, Covariant, Sanctuary AI, Unitree Robotics and others — embracing GPU-accelerated large language models to bring unprecedented levels of intelligence and adaptability to machines of all kinds.

The timing couldn’t be better.

“Autonomous robots powered by artificial intelligence are being increasingly utilized for improving efficiency, decreasing costs and tackling labor shortages,” Talla said.

Present at the Creation

NVIDIA has been central to the generative AI revolution from the beginning.

A decade ago, NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang hand-delivered the first NVIDIA DGX AI supercomputer to OpenAI. Now, thanks to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, generative AI has become one of the fastest-growing technologies of our time.

And it’s just getting started.

The impact of generative AI will go beyond text and image generation — and into homes and offices, farms and factories, hospitals and laboratories, Talla predicted.

The key: LLMs, akin to the brain’s language center, will let robots understand and respond to human instructions more naturally.

Such machines will be able to learn continuously from humans, from each other and from the world around them.

“Given these attributes, generative AI is well-suited for robotics,” Talla said.

How Robots Are Using Generative AI

Agility Robotics, NTT, and others are incorporating generative AI into their robots to help them understand text or voice commands. Robot vacuum cleaners from Dreame Technology are being trained in simulated living spaces created by generative AI models. And Electric Sheep is developing a world model for autonomous lawn mowing.

NVIDIA technologies such as the NVIDIA Isaac and Jetson platforms, which facilitate the development and deployment of AI-powered robots, are already relied on by more than 1.2 million developers and 10,000 customers and partners.

Many of them are at CES this week, including Analog Devices, Aurora Labs, Canonical, Dreame Innovation Technology, DriveU, e-con Systems, Ecotron, Enchanted Tools, GlüxKind, Hesai Technology, Leopard Imaging, Segway-Ninebot (Willand (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd.), Nodar, Orbbec, QT Group, Robosense, Spartan Radar, TDK Corporation, Telit, Unitree Robotics, Voyant Photonics and ZVISION Technologies Co., Ltd.

Two Brains Are Better Than One

In his talk at CES, Talla showed the dual-computer model (below) essential for deploying AI in robotics, demonstrating NVIDIA’s comprehensive approach to AI development and application.

The first computer, referred to as an “AI factory,” is central to the creation and continuous improvement of AI models.

AI factories use NVIDIA’s data center compute infrastructure along with its AI and NVIDIA Omniverse platforms for the simulation and training of AI models.

The second computer represents the runtime environment of the robot.

This varies depending on the application: It could be in the cloud or a data center; in an on-premises server for tasks like defect inspection in semiconductor manufacturing; or within an autonomous machine equipped with multiple sensors and cameras.

Generating Quality Assets and Scenes

Talla also highlighted the role of LLMs in breaking down technical barriers, turning typical users into technical artists capable of creating complex robotics workcells or entire warehouse simulations.

With generative AI tools like NVIDIA Picasso, users can generate realistic 3D assets from simple text prompts and add them to digital scenes for dynamic and comprehensive robot training environments.

The same capability extends to creating diverse and physically accurate scenarios in Omniverse, enhancing the testing and training of robots to ensure real-world applicability.

This dovetails with the transformative potential of generative AI in reconfiguring the deployment of robots.

Traditionally, robots are purpose-built for specific tasks, and modifying them for different ones is a time-consuming process.

But advancements in LLMs and vision language models are eliminating this bottleneck, enabling more intuitive interactions with robots through natural language, Talla explained.

Such machines — adaptable and aware of the environment around them — will soon spill out across the world.

To learn more, attend a virtual CES session and watch Talla’s full talk below.

Celebrate the new year with more cloud gaming. Experience the power and performance of the cloud with more than 20 new games to be added to GeForce NOW in January.

Start with five games available this week, including The Finals from Embark Studios. 

And tune in to the NVIDIA Special Address at CES on Monday, Jan. 8, at 8 a.m. PT for the latest on gaming, AI-related news and more.

It’s the Final Countdown

Fight for fame on the world’s biggest stage with Embark Studios’ The Finals. The free-to-play, multiplayer, first-person shooter is newly supported in the cloud this week, with RTX ON for the most cinematic lighting and visuals for GeForce NOW Ultimate and Priority members.

In The Finals, take part in a deadly TV game show that pits contestants against each other as they battle for a huge reward. Fight alongside teammates in virtual arenas that can be altered, exploited and even destroyed. Manipulate the environment as a weapon itself and use it to take down other players. Drive viewers wild with thrilling combat and flair, using tricks like crashing a wrecking ball into opponents.

Harness the power of the cloud and reach the finals anywhere with the ability to stream across devices. Ultimate members can fight for glory with the advantage of longer gaming sessions, the highest frame rates, ray tracing and ultra-low latency.

In With the New

In Enshrouded, become Flameborn, the last ember of hope of a dying race. Awaken, survive the terror of a corrupting fog and reclaim the lost beauty of the kingdom. Venture into a vast world, vanquish punishing bosses, build grand halls and forge a path in this co-op survival action role-playing game for up to 16 players, launching in the cloud Jan. 24.

Don’t miss the five newly supported games joining the GeForce NOW library this week:

• Dishonored, for Hungary, Czech Republic and Poland (Steam)
• The Finals (Steam)
• Redmatch 2 (Steam)
• Scorn (Xbox, available for PC Game Pass)
• Sniper Elite 5 (Xbox, available for PC Game Pass)

And here’s what’s coming throughout the rest of January:

• War Hospital (New release on Steam, Jan. 11)
• Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown (New release on Ubisoft, Jan. 18)
• Turnip Boy Robs a Bank (New release on Steam and Xbox, available for PC Game Pass, Jan.18)
• Stargate: Timekeepers (New release on Steam, Jan. 23)
• Enshrouded (New release on Steam, Jan. 24)
• Bang-On Balls: Chronicles (Steam)
• Firefighting Simulator – The Squad (Steam)
• Jected – Rivals (Steam)
• The Legend of Nayuta: Boundless Trails (Steam)
• RAILGRADE (Steam)
• Redmatch 2 (Steam)
• Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun (Steam)
• Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun – Aiko’s Choice (Steam)
• Solasta: Crown of the Magister (Steam)
• Survivalist: Invisible Strain (Steam)
• Witch It (Steam)
• Wobbly Life (Steam)

Doubled in December

In addition to the 70 games announced last month, 34 extra joined GeForce NOW:

• Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora (New release on Ubisoft, Dec. 7)
• Goat Simulator 3 (New release on Xbox, available on PC Game Pass, Dec. 7)
• LEGO Fortnite (New release on Epic Games Store, Dec. 7)
• Against the Storm (New release on Xbox, available on PC Game Pass, Dec. 8)
• Rocket Racing (New release on Epic Games Store, Dec. 8)
• Fortnite Festival (New release on Epic Games Store, Dec. 9)
• Stellaris Nexus (New release on Steam, Dec. 12)
• Tin Hearts (New release on Xbox, available PC Game Pass, Dec. 12)
• Amazing Cultivation Simulator (Xbox, available on the Microsoft Store)
• Blasphemous 2 (Epic Games Store)
• Century: Age of Ashes (Xbox, available on the Microsoft Store)
• Chorus (Xbox, available on the Microsoft Store)
• Dungeons 4  (Xbox, available on PC Game Pass)
• Edge of Eternity (Xbox, available on the Microsoft Store)
• Farming Simulator 17 (Xbox, available on the Microsoft Store)
• Farming Simulator 22 (Xbox, available on PC Game Pass)
• Flashback 2 (Steam)
• Forza Horizon 4 (Steam)
• Forza Horizon 5 (Steam, Xbox and available on PC Game Pass)
• Hollow Knight (Xbox, available on PC Game Pass)
• The Front (Steam)
• Martha Iis Dead (Xbox, available on the Microsoft Store)
• Minecraft Dungeons (Steam, Xbox and available on PC Game Pass)
• Monster Hunter: World (Steam)
• Neon Abyss (Xbox, available on PC Game Pass)
• Ori and the Will of the Wisps (Steam, Xbox and available on PC Game Pass)
• Ori and the Blind Forest: Definitive Edition (Steam)
• Raji: An Ancient Epic (Xbox, available on the Microsoft Store)
• Remnant: From the Ashes (Xbox, available on PC Game Pass)
• Remnant II (Xbox, available on PC Game Pass)
• Richman 10 (Xbox, available on the Microsoft Store)
• Spirittea (Xbox, available on PC Game Pass)
• Surgeon Simulator 2 (Xbox, available on the Microsoft Store)
• Sword and Fairy 7 (Xbox, available on PC Game Pass)

Terminator: Dark Fate – Defiance didn’t make it in December due to a change in its publish date. Stay tuned to GFN Thursday for updates.

What are you planning to play this weekend? Let us know on X or in the comments below.

what was the final game you played in 2023?

— NVIDIA GeForce NOW (@NVIDIAGFN) January 3, 2024

An avid cyclist, Thomas Park knows the value of having lots of gears to maintain a smooth, fast ride.

So, when the software architect designed an AI inference platform to serve predictions for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure’s (OCI) Vision AI service, he picked NVIDIA Triton Inference Server. That’s because it can shift up, down or sideways to handle virtually any AI model, framework and hardware and operating mode — quickly and efficiently.

“The NVIDIA AI inference platform gives our worldwide cloud services customers tremendous flexibility in how they build and run their AI applications,” said Park, a Zurich-based computer engineer and competitive cycler who’s worked for four of the world’s largest cloud services providers.

Specifically, Triton reduced OCI’s total cost of ownership by 10%, increased prediction throughput up to 76% and reduced inference latency up to 51% for OCI Vision and Document Understanding Service models that were migrated to Triton. The services run globally across more than 45 regional data centers, according to an Oracle blog Park and a colleague posted earlier this year.

Computer Vision Accelerates Insights

Customers rely on OCI Vision AI for a wide variety of object detection and image classification jobs. For instance, a U.S.-based transit agency uses it to automatically detect the number of vehicle axles passing by to calculate and bill bridge tolls, sparing busy truckers wait time at toll booths.

OCI AI is also available in Oracle NetSuite, a set of business applications used by more than 37,000 organizations worldwide. It’s used, for example, to automate invoice recognition.

Thanks to Park’s work, Triton is now being adopted across other OCI services, too.

A Triton-Aware Data Service

“We’ve built a Triton-aware AI platform for our customers,” said Tzvi Keisar, a director of product management for OCI’s Data Science service, which handles machine learning for Oracle’s internal and external users.

“If customers want to use Triton, we’ll save them time by automatically doing the configuration work for them in the background, launching a Triton-powered inference endpoint for them,” said Keisar.

His team also plans to make it even easier for its other users to embrace the fast, flexible inference server. Triton is included in NVIDIA AI Enterprise, a platform that provides full security and support businesses need — and it’s available on OCI Marketplace.

A Massive SaaS Platform

OCI’s Data Science service is the machine learning platform for both NetSuite and Oracle Fusion software-as-a-service applications.

“These platforms are massive, with tens of thousands of customers who are also building their work on top of our service,” he said.

It’s a wide swath of mainly enterprise users in manufacturing, retail, transportation and other industries. They’re building and using AI models of nearly every shape and size.

Inference was one of the group’s first services, and Triton came on the team’s radar not long after its launch.

A Best-in-Class Inference Framework

“We saw Triton pick up in popularity as a best-in-class serving framework, so we started experimenting with it,” Keisar said. “We saw really good performance, and it closed a gap in our existing offerings, especially on multi-model inference — it’s the most versatile and advanced inferencing framework out there.”

Launched on OCI in March, Triton has already attracted the attention of many internal teams at Oracle hoping to use it for inference jobs that require serving predictions from multiple AI models running concurrently.

“Triton has a very good track record and performance on multiple models deployed on a single endpoint,” he said.

Accelerating the Future

Looking ahead, Keisar’s team is evaluating NVIDIA TensorRT-LLM software to supercharge inference on the complex large language models (LLMs) that have captured the imagination of many users.

An active blogger, Keisar’s latest article detailed creative quantization techniques for running a Llama 2 LLM with a whopping 70 billion parameters on NVIDIA A10 Tensor Core GPUs.

“Even down to four bits, the quality of model outputs is still quite good,” he said. “I can’t explain all the math, but we found a good balance, and I haven’t seen anyone else do this yet.”

After announcements this fall that Oracle is deploying the latest NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs, H200 GPUs, L40S GPUs and Grace Hopper Superchips, it’s just the start of many accelerated efforts to come.

Editor’s note: This post is part of our weekly In the NVIDIA Studio series, which celebrates featured artists, offers creative tips and tricks, and demonstrates how NVIDIA Studio technology improves creative workflows. We’re also deep diving on new GeForce RTX 40 Series GPU features, technologies and resources, and how they dramatically accelerate content creation.

A new year means new creative opportunities and new In the NVIDIA Studio beats.

Each week, featured In the NVIDIA Studio artists share their unique artwork and content creation processes, as well as how NVIDIA Studio — a platform comprising fine-tuned hardware and efficient software powered by NVIDIA and GeForce RTX GPUs — elevates their work.

This week’s featured 3D content creator, Pedro Soares, aka Blendeered, created a stunning NVIDIA-themed New Year’s celebration animation.

Plus, tune in to the NVIDIA Special Address at CES on Monday, Jan. 8, at 8 a.m. PT for the latest on content creation, AI-related news and more.

Blendeered’s Beguiling Renders 

Blendeered’s latest animation was inspired by NVIDIA and the power of technological innovation.

“The scene, New Year’s, showcases a futuristic city with all the buildings funneling to the center point,” said Blendeered. “This evokes the feeling of accelerating toward a brighter future, which is what NVIDIA is all about: taking tech to the next level, every day.”

Happy New Year from NVIDIA Studio!

May your next year be filled with many beautiful renders.

Credit: @Blendeered pic.twitter.com/dCM3Nq1ZeE

— NVIDIA Studio (@NVIDIAStudio) January 1, 2024

The Portugal-based creator first conceptualized the scene.

“The futuristic city needed to give a sense of speed,” he said. He accomplished this using highlighted arrows, neon-green street lines and light beams on digital screens across various high-rise buildings.

Blendeered then built individual assets in Blender version 3.6 — by far his favorite 3D app, in case his stage name didn’t give it away.

“Blender captivates users with its friendly interface, speed, power, real-time rendering and vibrant community — and the best part is that it’s free!” he shared.

His NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 GPU unlocked Blender Cycles’ RTX-accelerated OptiX ray tracing in the viewport for interactive, photorealistic modeling sequences. He also textured and applied color schemes to his 3D assets in Blender.

Next, the artist began lighting the scene using the new Panorama feature in the NVIDIA Canvas app. He tapped OptiX denoising to preview final render results in real time, speeding his workflow.

Available for GeForce RTX GPU owners and free to download, NVIDIA Canvas uses AI to turn brushstrokes into realistic landscape images for quick creation of backgrounds and concept exploration.

Blendeered generated a full, spherical, high-dynamic-range imaging (HDRi) backdrop for his computer-generated imagery workflows — based on AI rendering — with a few simple sketches. He then exported it as an HDR file and imported it into Blender. YouTuber Timo Helmers demonstrates this type of workflow in the video tutorial below.

“NVIDIA Canvas is amazing software that allowed me to make an HDRi backdrop that fit my scene perfectly,” said Blendeered.

From there, he completed the animation process before exporting the files to Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve version 18.

DaVinci Resolve is a key app for GPU acceleration and AI-powered workflows. All of the AI effects in DaVinci Resolve version 18.6 run twice as fast on NVIDIA RTX GPUs with acceleration using the NVIDIA TensorRT software development kit.

Blendeered’s post-production work included GPU-accelerated color grading, video editing and color scopes. And NVENC, a GPU hardware accelerator engine for video decoding, enabled faster, smoother playback and scrubbing of high-resolution video files.

For the final export, the eighth generation NVENC worked together with the built-in dual encoders on the artist’s GeForce RTX 4090 GPU to generate video files twice as fast. For Blendeered, NVIDIA GPUs are the clear choice for content creation because they provide “power, efficiency and reliability.”

When asked to give advice for aspiring artists, Blendeered encouraged beginners to “embrace consistent practice, learn from failures, seek feedback and stay true to the inner artistic voice.”

Check out Blendeered’s portfolio on Instagram.

Follow NVIDIA Studio on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Access tutorials on the Studio YouTube channel and get updates directly in your inbox by subscribing to the Studio newsletter. 

Whether abundant, endangered or extinct, animal species are the focus of countless AI-powered conservation projects.

These initiatives — accelerated using NVIDIA GPUs, deep learning software and robotics technology — are alerting conservationists to poaching threats, powering more sustainable aquaculture and helping scientists monitor coral reef health.

Take a safari through the NVIDIA Blog’s top animal stories of 2023 below.

As a bonus, discover how animals — whether beautiful butterflies, flashy fish or massive mammoths — are inspiring a herd of digital artists.

Protecting Pangolins From Poachers

Conservation AI, a U.K.-based nonprofit, is preserving biodiversity with an edge AI platform that analyzes camera footage in real time to identify species of interest, rapidly alerting conservationists to threats such as wildfires or poachers.

Founded by researchers at Liverpool John Moores University, the nonprofit now has dozens of cameras deployed across the globe running an AI platform built using NVIDIA Jetson modules, the NVIDIA DeepStream software development kit and NVIDIA Triton Inference Server.

The AI software is being deployed in Uganda and South Africa to keep an eye on pangolins and rhinos at risk of being hunted by poachers.

Video courtesy of Chester Zoo, a U.K.-based conservation society. 

Bringing Colossal Insights to a Woolly Problem

Colossal Biosciences is tackling endangered species conservation and de-extinction using computational biology.

Using gene editing technology, AI models and the NVIDIA Parabricks software suite for genomic analysis, scientists at Colossal are working to bring back the woolly mammoth, the dodo bird and the Tasmanian tiger — and protect dwindling species such as the African forest elephant.

After combining incomplete DNA sequences from extinct species’ bone samples with genomic data from closely related creatures, the team uses Parabricks for sequence alignment and variant calling — enabling them to complete analysis 12x faster.

Enabling Efficient Fish Farming

GoSmart, a member of the NVIDIA Inception program for cutting-edge startups and the NVIDIA Metropolis vision AI partner ecosystem, is deploying AI for more efficient and sustainable fish farming.

The company’s compact edge AI system, powered by the NVIDIA Jetson platform, analyzes a pond or tank’s temperature and oxygen levels, as well as the average weight and population distribution of fish — information farmers can use for decisions around fish feeding and harvesting.

The team is also adding AI models that analyze fish behavior and indicators of disease and plans to integrate its solution with autonomous feeding systems.

AI Can See Your (Coral Reef) Halo

Researchers at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa are analyzing satellite imagery using NVIDIA GPU-powered AI to track halos — the rings of sand that surround coral reefs — as a way to assess ecosystem health.

The presence of halos indicates that a coral reef has a healthy population of marine life, including fish and invertebrates. A change in their shape suggests a degrading environment that needs attention from conservationists.

The researchers’ AI tool, which runs on an NVIDIA RTX A6000 GPU, can analyze hundreds of coral reef halos in around two minutes, a task that would take 10 hours for a human to complete.

Reef-Roving Robot Tracks Undersea Life

An autonomous underwater robot powered by the NVIDIA Jetson Orin NX module is roaming reef ecosystems to help scientists understand human impact on reefs and surrounding sea creatures.

Developed by researchers at MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s Autonomous Robotics and Perception Laboratory, the CUREE robot collects environmental data that informs 3D models of reefs.

The team developed an AI model called DeepSeeColor that cleans up blurry underwater footage to enable more accurate fish detection by another neural network. They’re also working on detection models to identify audio samples from different creatures.

Fantastic Fauna: Animals Inspire AI-Powered Digital Art

Greek philosopher Plato said that art imitates life — and digital art is no exception, as exemplified by artists who this year used NVIDIA technology to develop stunning animal-inspired visuals.

Honoring marine life, BBC Studios’ Alessandro Mastronardi created a series of incredibly realistic shark videos and renders in Blender and NVIDIA Omniverse, a platform for connecting and building custom 3D tools and applications with Universal Scene Description (OpenUSD).

Taiwanese artist Steven Tung took a more whimsical approach in The Given Fish, an animation depicting stone fish created using Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Substance 3D Painter and Blender — all accelerated by an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 GPU-powered system.

London-based Dominic Harris used GPU-accelerated AI to render a real-time collage of 13,000 imagined butterflies, which exhibit-goers could make flutter or change color. And Keerthan Sathya, based in Bangalore, used the NVIDIA Omniverse platform to render a mammoth-themed animation.

Before ringing in the new year, GeForce NOW is taking a look back at a 2023 full of top-notch gaming. Explore GeForce NOW’s year in review, which brought more hit games, improved service features and the launch of the Ultimate membership tier.

Plus, GFN Thursday is raising a toast to the GeForce NOW community by delivering more than 40 new games to stream from the cloud.

Wrapping It Up

It’s been an amazing year of cloud gaming. The launch of the Ultimate tier brought high-performance cloud gaming across North America and Europe, streaming from newly rolled out GeForce RTX 4080 SuperPODs.

For the first time in the cloud, members could stream up to 240 frames per second, or 4K 120 fps on the native PC and Mac apps, and experience support for ultrawide resolutions for the smoothest and most immersive gameplay — all thanks to the powerful NVIDIA Ada Lovelace GPU architecture.

To prove the power of the cloud, NVIDIA gave gamers the ultimate test of latency on KovaaK’s, a latency-sensitive, first-person-shooter aim trainer.

Gamers competed for top scores on the leaderboard, and the results were staggering — showing a 1.8x improvement in aiming just by playing with an Ultimate membership.

NVIDIA also posed a challenge to Cyberpunk 2077 fans: to play the graphics-intensive game on an unknown system. Players were astonished to discover that they were playing with full ray tracing on a Chromebook with GeForce NOW. NVIDIA even brought the experience to The Game Awards, showing off the power of gaming on a Chromebook with GeForce NOW on a global stage.

With higher-performance streaming came more collaborations with top-quality publishers.

NVIDIA and Microsoft signed a 10-year partnership this year, bringing hit Xbox PC games and over 100 supported PC Game Pass titles to the cloud, with more to come. Members could stream some of the biggest Xbox PC titles, including the Wolfenstein and Forza Horizon franchises, Starfield, and the Ori and Age of Empires series, across devices at high performance for the first time.

With the Microsoft partnership came the first Activision game in the cloud, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III. With NVIDIA DLSS 3 and Reflex technologies, Ultimate members can get the highest frame rates and lowest latencies for the smoothest gameplay.

Celebrated publisher Capcom also brought to the cloud some of its top games, including Monster Hunter Rise, Monster Hunter: World and Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen.

The year closed out with a celebration spotlighting  500 NVIDIA RTX-supported games and applications. Over 90 titles with RTX ON are featured on GeForce NOW, easily found on the app’s dedicated RTX ON row, including top games Cyberpunk 2077, Alan Wake II, Far Cry 6, Control and more.

The GeForce NOW community put up some impressive numbers, streaming over 250 million hours in the cloud.

And it doesn’t stop there — check back in each week to see what’s in store for GeForce NOW throughout the new year.

In With the New

To celebrate the amazing GeForce NOW community, the cloud gaming service is adding more than 40 Xbox and PC Game Pass titles this week — sure to tide members into the new year.

The best way to experience these games and the over 100 PC Game Pass titles in the cloud is with the latest GeForce NOW membership bundle, which includes a free, three-month PC Game Pass subscription with the purchase of a six-month GeForce NOW Ultimate membership.

Catch the full list of 46 games:

• AI: THE SOMNIUM FILES – nirvanA Initiative (Xbox, available on the Microsoft Store)
• Amazing Cultivation Simulator (Xbox, available on the Microsoft Store)
• The Anacrusis (Xbox, available on the Microsoft Store)
• Age of Wonders 4 (Xbox, available on the Microsoft Store)
• Before We Leave (Xbox, available on the Microsoft Store)
• Century: Age of Ashes (Xbox, available on the Microsoft Store)
• Chorus (Xbox, available on the Microsoft Store)
• Control (Xbox, available on the Microsoft Store)
• Darksiders III (Xbox, available on the Microsoft Store)
• Destroy All Humans! (Xbox, available on the Microsoft Store)
• Disgaea 4 Complete+ (Xbox, available on the Microsoft Store)
• Edge of Eternity (Xbox, available on the Microsoft Store)
• Europa Universalis IV (Xbox, available on the Microsoft Store)
• Evil Genius 2: World Domination (Xbox, available on the Microsoft Store)
• Fae Tactics (Xbox, available on the Microsoft Store)
• Farming Simulator 17 (Xbox, available on the Microsoft Store)
• The Forgotten City (Xbox, available on the Microsoft Store)
• Human Fall Flat (Xbox, available on PC Game Pass)
• Immortal Realms: Vampire Wars (Xbox, available on the Microsoft Store)
• Lethal League Blaze (Xbox, available on the Microsoft Store)
• Martha is Dead (Xbox, available on the Microsoft Store)
• Matchpoint – Tennis Championships (Xbox, available on the Microsoft Store)
• Maneater (Xbox, available on the Microsoft Store)
• The Medium (Xbox, available on the Microsoft Store)
• Metro Exodus (Xbox, available on the Microsoft Store)
• Mortal Shell (Xbox, available on the Microsoft Store)
• MotoGP 20 (Xbox, available on the Microsoft Store)
• Moving Out (Xbox, available on the Microsoft Store)
• MUSYNX (Xbox, available on the Microsoft Store)
• Neon Abyss (Xbox, available on PC Game Pass)
• Observer: System Redux (Xbox, available on the Microsoft Store)
• Pathologic 2 (Xbox, available on the Microsoft Store)
• The Pedestrian (Xbox, available on the Microsoft Store)
• Raji: An Ancient Epic (Xbox, available on the Microsoft Store)
• Recompile (Xbox, available on the Microsoft Store)
• Remnant: From the Ashes (Xbox, available on PC Game Pass)
• Remnant II (Xbox, available on PC Game Pass)
• Richman 10 (Xbox, available on the Microsoft Store)
• Sable (Xbox, available on the Microsoft Store)
• SpellForce 3: Soul Harvest (Xbox, available on the Microsoft Store)
• Surgeon Simulator 2 (Xbox, available on the Microsoft Store)
• Sword and Fairy 7 (Xbox, available on PC Game Pass)
• Tainted Grail: Conquest (Xbox, available on the Microsoft Store)
• Tinykin (Xbox, available on the Microsoft Store)
• Worms W.M.D (Xbox, available on the Microsoft Store)
• Worms Rumble (Xbox, available on the Microsoft Store)

What are you planning to play this weekend? Let us know on Twitter or in the comments below.

2023 was marked by the generative AI boom, representing a new era for how artificial intelligence can be used across industries.

The year’s top videos from the NVIDIA YouTube channel reflect this focus, with popular videos highlighting the technology powering large language models, new platforms for building generative AI applications and how accelerated computing and AI can advance climate science.

And don’t miss replays of NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang’s event appearances — his GTC keynote in March has garnered 22 million views, making it by far the most-viewed video on the channel.

Tune in to NVIDIA’s top five videos of the year:

Predicting Extreme Weather Risk — Weeks in Advance

Explore in colorful detail how running FourCastNet — an AI framework developed by researchers at NVIDIA, Caltech and Lawrence Berkeley Lab — on NVIDIA GPUs enables quicker, more accurate extreme weather predictions.

Accelerating Carbon Capture and Storage

Buckle up — learn how reservoir engineers are using NVIDIA Omniverse, NVIDIA Modulus and accelerated computing to optimize carbon capture, ensuring long-term storage and safer operations.

Visualizing Global-Scale Climate Data

Seeing is achieving with this stunning demo of the NVIDIA Earth-2 platform, which offers high-resolution climate visualizations for scientists, as well as breathtakingly detailed urban airflow information for architects and city planners.

A Tour of the NVIDIA DGX H100

Presenting the engine behind the large language model breakthrough — the NVIDIA DGX H100. Hear from Huang on why DGX is “the essential instrument of AI.”

Fine-Tuning Generative AI With NVIDIA AI Workbench 

Check out this demo — featuring a multitude of Toy Jensens — to learn how NVIDIA AI Workbench streamlines selecting foundation models, building project environments and fine-tuning models with domain-specific data.

With all the talk of how generative AI is going to change the world, it’s worth looking back on how AI’s already enabled leaps and bounds.

NVIDIA helped automate airport operations, vehicle manufacturing, industrial inspections and more with AI to create smarter spaces in 2023.

Airport AI Takes Off

Toronto Pearson International Airport in June deployed the Zensors AI platform, which uses security cameras to generate spatial data to help optimize operations. Zensors is a member of NVIDIA Metropolis, a partner program for improving operations with visual data and AI, and NVIDIA Inception, a free program that nurtures cutting-edge startups.

The Zensors platform uses anonymized data to count travelers in lines, identify congested areas and predict passenger wait times — and it can send alerts to help speed operations. Other startups have landed in this space to reduce flight delays.

“Zensors is making visual AI easy for all to use,” said Anuraag Jain, the company’s cofounder and head of product and technology.

Inspect Your Gadget

Taiwanese manufacturers like Foxconn Industrial Internet, Pegatron, Quanta and Wistron are embracing NVIDIA Metropolis for Factories to enable automated optical inspections.

Pegatron makes motherboards, smartphones, laptops, game consoles and much more. It uses Metropolis for Factories to support its printed circuit board factories, achieving 99.8% accuracy on its automated optical inspection systems.

How’s that for a smarter workspace.

PepsiCo’s AI Pop

Beverage giant PepsiCo has deployed vision AI from KoiReader Technologies, an NVIDIA Metropolis partner, for efficiency gains in reading warehouse labels.

The startup’s technology is being tapped to train and run the deep learning models behind PepsiCo’s AI label and barcode scanning system.

“If you find the right lever, you could dramatically improve our throughput,” said Greg Bellon, senior director of digital supply chain at PepsiCo.

Driving Digital Production

With NVIDIA Omniverse — a collaborative platform for developing Universal Scene Description applications to design, plan and operate manufacturing and assembly facilities — Mercedes-Benz is using digital twins for production.

Harnessing Omniverse, Mercedes-Benz can interact directly with its suppliers, reducing coordination processes by 50%.

“Using NVIDIA Omniverse and AI, Mercedes-Benz is building a connected, digital-first approach to optimize its manufacturing processes, ultimately reducing construction time and production costs,” said Rev Lebaredian, vice president of Omniverse and simulation technology at NVIDIA.

Juicing AI for Batteries

Smart spaces often begin in the virtual world.

Siemens showcased an immersive digital model for a look into future FREYR Battery factories, powered by Omniverse.

The industrial giant demoed a blueprint for how teams can harness comprehensive digital twins virtually using models of existing and future plants. The technologies aim to help FREYR meet surging demand for high-density, cost-effective battery cells.

That’s AI to get charged up about.

Learn about building smart spaces with NVIDIA Metropolis. Learn about connecting and developing OpenUSD applications with NVIDIA Omniverse.

NVIDIA’s AI Podcast had its best year yet — with a record-breaking 1.2 million plays in 2023 and each biweekly episode now drawing more than 30,000 listens.

Among tech’s top podcasts, the AI Podcast has racked up more than 200 episodes and nearly 5 million total plays since its debut in 2016.

Listeners across the globe tune in for smart interviews on generative AI, large language models, as well as more offbeat topics like how AI is tackling challenges like building a self-driving baby stroller or discovering alien signals.

Here are five episodes that drew tens of thousands of listeners in 2023:

Gen AI Enables Scientific Leaps

Caltech’s Anima Anandkumar discusses generative AI’s potential to make splashes in the scientific community. The technology can, for example, be fed DNA, RNA, viral and bacterial data to craft a model that understands the language of genomes, or predict extreme-weather events like hurricanes and heat waves.

Class in Session: AI for Learning

The future of online education and the revolutionary impact of AI on the learning experience were the central themes discussed by Anant Agarwal, founder of edX and chief platform officer at 2U. The MIT professor and edtech pioneer also highlighted the implementation of AI-powered features in the edX platform, including a ChatGPT plug-in.

AI Gets Coding

The world increasingly runs on code. Accelerating the work of those who create that code will boost their productivity — and that’s just what AI startup Codeium, a member of the NVIDIA Inception program for startups, aims to do. The company’s leaders Varun Mohan and Jeff Wang talk about AI’s transformational role in software development.

Mindful Machine-Making

Julia Stoyanovich, associate professor of computer science and engineering at NYU and director of the university’s Center for Responsible AI, discusses how to make the terms “AI” and “responsible AI” synonymous.

AI for Regeneration, Scar Prevention

Scientists at Matice Biosciences are applying AI to study the regeneration of tissues in animals known as super-regenerators, such as salamanders and planarians. Cofounder Jessica Whited, a regenerative biologist at Harvard University, discusses how the research could unlock new treatments to help humans heal from injuries without scarring.

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Make the AI Podcast better by filling out this listener survey.

Editor’s note: This post is part of our weekly In the NVIDIA Studio series, which celebrates featured artists, offers creative tips and tricks, and demonstrates how NVIDIA Studio technology improves creative workflows. We’re also deep diving on new GeForce RTX 40 Series GPU features, technologies and resources, and how they dramatically accelerate content creation.

NVIDIA’s holiday card — enchanting viewers from the perspective of snuggled-up family members on a couch — warmly depicts a crackling fireplace and an NVIDIA robo-dog by the hearth, all framed by a string of sparkling lights.

In the scene, shown above, characters are decked out in NVIDIA-themed socks and under blankets with the pattern from a custom NVIDIA holiday sweater. Detail-oriented viewers can discover hidden treasures: a virtual toy model of NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang — aka Toy Jensen — NVIDIA iconography in the woodwork and an NVIDIA-branded mug.

Members of NVIDIA’s creative team who are featured in this week’s special In the NVIDIA Studio beat — Alessandro Baldasseroni, Michael Johnson and Rini Sugianto — collaborated to build this 3D scene. They combined 60 years of creative experience, AI-powered features and NVIDIA RTX GPU acceleration in their favorite creative apps to incredible effect.

Plus, the latest version of Reallusion iClone, a real-time 3D animation software, offers a crowd-creation system for populating large worlds in NVIDIA Omniverse, a platform that interconnects 3D workflows for live-sync creation.

Populate Virtual Worlds in NVIDIA Omniverse

Reallusion iClone helps artists bring lifelike movement and realistic facial expressions to 3D models.

iClone version 8.4 builds on these capabilities with a simulation system that provides real-time, customizable crowd animations using Motion Director, a cutting-edge motion-matching and trigger-animation technology.

With it, artists can effortlessly spawn lifelike characters complete with facial expressions, accessories and diverse animation styles. The characters can then be directed to intelligently navigate 3D spaces while avoiding collisions and obstacles.

iClone supports live sync with NVIDIA Omniverse Kit-based apps, allowing users to more seamlessly tap its vast libraries of characters and motions.

iClone version 8.4 is free to download. Learn more about the release details.

Averkin’s at It Again

Seasoned In the NVIDIA Studio artist Andrew Averkin can’t help but spread holiday cheer.

His 3D scene Keep Me Warm seamlessly transitions between the immaculately detailed parts of a holiday-themed room. The Christmas trees, bright lights and children’s toys all feature photorealistic detail sure to move viewers, and calming music adds to the scene’s coziness.

Averkin built Keep Me Warm in NVIDIA Omniverse, which is based on the Universal Scene Description framework, aka OpenUSD.

Such inspirational, winter-themed content is just what the NVIDIA Studio team is looking for in the #WinterArtChallenge. Don’t forget to share winter-themed art with the hashtag on Facebook, Instagram or X for a chance to be featured on NVIDIA Studio and NVIDIA Omniverse social media channels.

Imagine coming across this incredible winter berry on a walk in the snow…

Incredible #WinterArtChallenge submission by @Blendeered (inspired by @wildberrymore‘s music).

Share your winter-themed art using the hashtag for a chance to be featured on our social channels! pic.twitter.com/yfPf6HTRrg

— NVIDIA Studio (@NVIDIAStudio) December 11, 2023

And check out Averkin’s Instagram for more engaging content.

Deck the Halls With Tons of Renders

“The goal was to create something that invoked warmth, joy and holiday spirit,” said Johnson on ideating for this year’s NVIDIA holiday card. “There’s nothing better than being with family, cuddled up on the couch, enjoying each other’s time while wearing something really cozy and relaxing.”

The NVIDIA artists created foreground characters starting with basic elements from the trio’s collective asset library.

Baldasseroni took the lead on modeling and tweaking the characters in ZBrush, working closely with Johnson on the right composition, and even provided preliminary posing to help guide the character feel for a relaxed family portrait.

Moving to Adobe Substance 3D Painter, Baldasseroni created and applied custom textures to the models. His NVIDIA RTX A6000 GPU accelerated light and ambient occlusion, baking optimized assets in mere seconds.

Sugianto took on animation work, opening Autodesk Maya where her NVIDIA RTX A6000 GPU provided several key advantages.

RTX-accelerated ray tracing and AI-powered denoising with the Autodesk Arnold renderer resulted in highly interactive and photorealistic modeling.

Autodesk Maya also supports third-party GPU-accelerated renderers, such as V-Ray, OctaneRender and Redshift, which gave Sugianto more options to animate the scene.

With the assets beautifully modeled, textured and animated, Johnson imported all files into the NVIDIA Omniverse USD Composer app to add physically accurate properties for the realistic fire, candle lighting and smoke.

“NVIDIA RTX GPU rendering in USD Composer is so fast at enabling quick iterations and different looks,” said Johnson.

Johnson used OpenUSD files in USD Composer, allowing Baldasseroni and Sugianto to review Johnson’s edits in real time with fully ray-traced details. This eliminated the need to download, upload and reformat files to share and consolidate feedback from other stakeholders, saving valuable time and resources.

Johnson then rendered out still images into Adobe Photoshop for final color grading. He further improved visual quality by upscaling the image using the AI-powered, RTX-accelerated Super Resolution feature — which is significantly faster than traditional methods. Throughout his workflow, Johnson could choose from more than 30 GPU-accelerated features, including blur gallery, object selection, liquify, smart sharpen and perspective.

He then uploaded files into Nuke, a visual-effects and video-editing software, for final GPU-accelerated compositing of all the scene’s elements.

Check out Baldasseroni, Johnson and Sugianto on Instagram.

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