Posts in category: nVidia AI

CES has long been a showcase on what’s coming down the technology pipeline. This year, NVIDIA is showing the radical innovation happening now.

During a special virtual address at the show, Ali Kani, vice president and general manager of Automotive at NVIDIA, detailed the capabilities of DRIVE Hyperion and the many ways the industry is developing on the platform. These critical advancements show the maturity of autonomous driving technology as companies begin to deploy safer, more efficient transportation.

Developing autonomous vehicle technology requires an entirely new platform architecture and software development process. Both the hardware and software must be comprehensively tested and validated to ensure they can handle the harsh conditions of daily driving with the stringent safety and security needs of automated vehicles

This is why NVIDIA has built and made open the DRIVE Hyperion platform, which includes a high-performance computer and sensor architecture that meets the safety requirements of a fully autonomous vehicle. DRIVE Hyperion is designed with redundant NVIDIA DRIVE Orin systems-on-a-chip for software-defined vehicles that continuously improve and create a wide variety of new software- and service-based business models for vehicle manufacturers.

The latest-generation platform includes 12 state-of-the-art surround cameras, 12 ultrasonics, nine radar, three interior sensing cameras and one front-facing lidar. It’s architected to be functionally safe, so that if one computer or sensor fails, there is a back up available to ensure that the AV can drive its passengers to a safe place.

The DRIVE Hyperion architecture has been adopted by hundreds of automakers, truck makers, tier 1 suppliers and robotaxi companies, ushering in the new era of autonomy.

Innovation at Scale

Bringing this comprehensive platform architecture to the global automotive ecosystem requires collaboration with leading tier 1 suppliers.

Desay, Flex, Quanta, Valeo and ZF are now DRIVE Hyperion 8 platform scaling partners, manufacturing production-ready designs with the highest levels of functional safety and security.

“We are excited to work with NVIDIA on their DRIVE Hyperion platform,” said Geoffrey Buoquot, CTO and vice president of Strategy at Valeo. “On top of our latest generation ultrasonic sensors providing digital raw data that their AI classifiers can process and our 12 cameras, including the new 8-megapixel cameras, we are now also able to deliver an Orin-based platform to support autonomous driving applications with consistent performance under automotive environmental conditions and production requirements.”

“Flex is thrilled to collaborate with NVIDIA to help accelerate the deployment of autonomous and ADAS systems leveraging the DRIVE Orin platform to design solutions for use across multiple customers,” said Mike Thoeny, president of Automotive at Flex.

The breadth and depth of this supplier ecosystem demonstrate how DRIVE Hyperion has become the industry’s most open and adopted platform architecture. These scaling partners will help make it possible for the platform to start production as early as this year.

New Energy for a New Era

The radical transformation of the transportation industry extends from compute power to powertrains.

Electric vehicles aren’t just better for the environment, they also fundamentally improve the driving experience for consumers. With a quieter and more sustainable profile, EVs will begin to make up the majority of cars sold over the next several decades.

This evolution has given way to dozens of new energy vehicle startups. They have reimagined the car, starting with a new vehicle architecture based on programmable, software-defined compute. These NEVs will continuously improve over time with over-the-air updates.

Many leading NEV makers are adopting DRIVE Hyperion as the platform to develop these clean, intelligent models. From the storied performance heritage of Polestar to the breakthrough success of IM Motors, Li Auto, NIO, R Auto and Xpeng, these companies are reinventing the personal transportation experience.

These companies are benefiting from new, software-driven business models. With a centralized compute architecture, automakers can deliver fresh services and advanced functions throughout the life of the vehicle.

Truly Intelligent Logistics

AI isn’t just transforming personal transportation, it’s also addressing the rapidly growing challenges faced by the trucking and logistics industry.

Over the past decade, and accelerated by the pandemic, consumer shopping has dramatically shifted online, resulting in increased demand for trucking and last-mile delivery. This trend is expected to continue, as experts predict that 170 billion packages will be shipped worldwide this year, climbing to 280 billion in 2027.

At the same time, the trucking industry has been experiencing significant driver shortages, with the U.S. expected to be in need of more than 160,000 drivers by 2028.

TuSimple is facing these challenges head-on with its scalable Autonomous Freight Network. This network uses autonomous trucks to safely and efficiently move goods across the country. And today, the company announced these intelligent trucks will be powered by NVIDIA DRIVE Orin.

The advanced SoC will be at the center of TuSimple’s autonomous domain controller (ADC), which serves as an autonomous truck’s central compute unit that processes hundreds of trillions of operations per second, including mission-critical perception, planning and actuation functions.

As a result, TuSimple can accelerate the development of a high-performance, automotive-grade and scalable ADC that can be integrated into production trucks.

Everyone’s Digital Assistant

Kani also demonstrated the NVIDIA DRIVE Concierge platform, which delivers intelligent services that are always on.

DRIVE Concierge combines NVIDIA Omniverse Avatar, DRIVE IX, DRIVE AV 4D perception, Riva GPU-accelerated speech AI SDK and an array of deep neural networks to delight customers on every drive.

Omniverse Avatar connects speech AI, computer vision, natural language understanding, recommendation engines and simulation. Avatars created on the platform are interactive characters with ray-traced 3D graphics that can see, speak, converse on a wide range of subjects, and understand naturally spoken intent.

During the CES special address, a demo showed highlights of a vehicle equipped with DRIVE Concierge making the trip to Las Vegas, helping the driver prepare for the trip, plan schedules and, most importantly, relax while the car was safely piloted by the DRIVE Chauffeur.

These important developments in intelligent driving technology, as well as innovations from suppliers, automakers and trucking companies all building on NVIDIA DRIVE, are heralding the arrival of the autonomous era.

GeForce NOW is kicking off the new year by bringing more games, more devices and more networks to our cloud gaming ecosystem.

The next pair of Electronic Arts games, Battlefield 4 and Battlefield V, is streaming on GeForce NOW.

We’re also working closely with a few titans in their respective industries: AT&T and Samsung.

AT&T and NVIDIA have joined forces as collaborators in 5G technical innovation to deliver one of the world’s best gaming experiences. To celebrate, a special promotion for certain AT&T 5G subscribers is ongoing.

Going from the small screen to the big screen, look for GeForce NOW to arrive on select Samsung TVs later this year.

Set Foot on the Battlefield

Prepare for impact. Battlefield 4: Premium Edition and Battlefield V: Definitive Edition join the exhilarating collection of Electronic Arts titles streaming from the cloud.

Embrace unrivaled destruction in Battlefield 4: Premium Edition (Steam and Origin). Play across dynamic, interactive battlefield environments that react in real time to your reactions. Trigger a shipwreck, flood the streets for a tactical advantage, or take the edge on massive, chaotic maps with dozens of different vehicles. Plus, take on an intense single-player campaign where you’ll need to evacuate critical American VIPs from Shanghai and battle against the odds to get your squad home in times of international crisis.

Experience the ultimate war experience in Battlefield V: Definitive Edition (Steam and Origin). Enter mankind’s greatest conflict across land, air and sea and immerse yourself in the hard-fought battles of World War II. With all gameplay content unlocked from the get-go, choose from the complete arsenal of weapons, vehicles and gadgets available to stand out on the battlefield with the complete roster of Elites.

Get locked and loaded to play these games and more from Electronic Arts today on GeForce NOW.

Improved Streaming on 5G

Teaming up as 5G technical innovation collaborators, GeForce NOW is bringing the power of PC gaming to gamers with fast, reliable, secure AT&T 5G with a new offer.

Starting in January, AT&T customers with a 5G device on a 5G unlimited plan or another qualifying unlimited plan can get a six-month GeForce NOW Priority membership at no charge (a $49.99 value)*. Priority members enjoy an experience of up to 1080p at 60 frames per second, with priority access to GeForce NOW servers and extended session lengths of up to six hours. They also have access to RTX games.

Streaming to Even More TVs, Soon

NVIDIA is collaborating with Samsung to bring GeForce NOW to its Smart TVs. Our cloud gaming service will be added to the Samsung Gaming Hub, a new game-streaming discovery platform that bridges hardware and software to provide a better player experience.

We’ll have more announcements later this year, but anticipate the streaming experience being available in Q2.

This follows last month’s beta release of the GeForce NOW app for LG 2021 WebOS Smart TVs. The beta app is available in the LG Content Store for certain 2021 models. Stay tuned for updates as we approach a full release and add support for additional TVs, including 2022 models.

2021 delivered a host of great benefits for members, notably the GeForce NOW RTX 3080 membership with 1440p and 120 FPS gameplay streaming from the cloud.

2022 is sure to deliver, so check back every GFN Thursday as we share news on upcoming game launches, new game releases, service updates and more.

*Subject to change. Restrictions apply. See att.com/gaming for more details.

Not so long ago, searching for information could lead to a library to scan endless volumes or even tediously sift through microfilm. Clearly, technology is making the world a better place.

Scientists, researchers, developers and companies have been on a quest to solve some of the world’s most pressing problems. Only now they’re accelerating their efforts by putting NVIDIA GPU-driven AI to work.

And the benefits can be seen across critical global issues such as COVID-19 and climate change, to education and employment. Below is just some of the amazing work of 2021.

Accelerating COVID-19 Research

In 2021, medical researchers were able to accelerate vaccine discovery results to months instead of years. Advances in NVIDIA GPUs, AI and specialized software helped find the way.

Many played a part. Leading research institutions began harnessing NVIDIA GPUs to drive their work in cryo-electron microscopy, a technique used to study the structure of molecules — such as the spike proteins on the COVID-19 virus — and accelerate drug and vaccine discovery.

Highlighting this technological shift, four teams used NVIDIA accelerated computing and AI platforms to win spots as finalists for a Gordon Bell award or a special Gordon Bell prize for COVID research.

Modeling Climate Change 

Scientists are modeling climate change. As polar caps melt, one recent effort aims to predict sea ice loss. But what if you could accurately model the entire Earth’s change over time, using physics-based models and high-resolution graphics to show regional changes?

NVIDIA at GTC shared plans for creating a digital twin of Earth in Omniverse. The effort promises the world’s most powerful AI supercomputer, Earth-2, dedicated to forecasting the impacts of climate change.

With extreme weather events on the rise, climate-related disasters are increasingly threatening property and lives.

Speeding Disaster Detection

For the 2021 wildfire season in the U.S., the total damage and cumulative economic loss is predicted to be between $70 billion and $90 billion, according to AccuWeather. And floods cause more than $40 billion in damages worldwide a year, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The human toll, in lives lost and livelihoods upended, has been devastating as well.

Flood detection models can help people in threatened zones evacuate to safety in time during heavy rains. Fire detection AI can help stop the spread of fires, prevent further air pollution and loss of trees and homes.

Creating Employment Equity 

The United Nations, citing the impact of technological advances on the labor market, has helped developed a strategy on the future of work that sets goals for decent and inclusive growth in work.

Data science startup Sama is committed to creating employment opportunities for underserved communities. The company’s market-leading data annotation platform, accelerated by NVIDIA GPUs, gives its customers an opportunity to partner with a socially responsible business and work with underserved communities.

Sama has about 4,000 employees with benefits working from East Africa to support its platform.

In addition to the social benefits of helping reduce inequality, Sama aims to address data bias. Creating diverse datasets can help ensure that AI models can be trained so that features work for everyone, helping mitigate risks for companies deploying them.

Helping Teach Students

Younger generations need to develop the skills, especially in STEM fields, to tackle these challenges. AI can help.

For example, U.S. math students rank 31st in the world, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. To improve classroom engagement, a research team backed by the National Science Foundation has been developing AI to assist math teachers.

The effort has been tested in Colorado public schools, where it uses AI to analyze teachers’ use of discussion techniques as well as students’ responses. The AI-driven software offers instructors feedback that they can use for follow-up.

Separately, students are also learning AI. NVIDIA and the Boys & Girls Clubs of Western Pennsylvania are partnering on an effort to bring hands-on AI education to youth in clubs across the U.S. Among the first to adopt the program is the Boys & Girls Clubs of Hudson County, where students this summer learned how to build AI projects to aid Alzheimer’s patients and monitor pedestrian safety using NVIDIA Jetson Nano 2GB developer kits.

The school teaching aid and the Boys & Girls program are just a few of the examples displaying AI’s promise as a positive impact on education.

NVIDIA Inception is one of the largest startup ecosystems in the world — and its thousands of members achieved impressive feats in 2021, bringing AI and data science to an array of industries.

NVIDIA Inception nurtures cutting-edge AI, data science and HPC startups with go-to-market support, expertise and technology. This year, the program surpassed 9,000 members — about two-thirds of the total number of AI startups in the world, as estimated by Pitchbook.

Inception members worldwide are using AI to detect and monitor wildfires, power checkout-free refreshment stands at stadiums, predict car crashes, monitor utility poles and sort recyclables.

Here are some of the stories shared in 2021 by NVIDIA Inception companies doing breakthrough work in different industries:

Agriculture: Greeneye Cuts Chemicals, Costs for Farmers

Tel Aviv startup Greeneye is developing AI for precision spraying of crops, reducing use of herbicides by as much as 90 percent. Its system uses the NVIDIA Jetson platform to target herbicides on individual weeds in milliseconds, decreasing water and soil contamination. The company is working with corn and soybean farmers in the midwest U.S. to deploy its AI-driven smart sprayers on tractors.

Automotive: Plus Revs Up Autonomous Trucks

Self-driving truck company Plus, based in Silicon Valley, is building an autonomous vehicle platform that can be retrofitted to existing trucks or added to new vehicles by manufacturers. A software-defined system built on NVIDIA DRIVE Orin, the PlusDrive platform uses lidar, radar and cameras to gather data about a truck’s surroundings, plan its course and control the vehicle.

Healthcare: Peptone Powers Protein Engineering

U.K.-based Peptone has developed a protein drug discovery engine that helps scientists find protein variants with promising therapeutic properties. The startup uses generative AI models and complex simulations running on NVIDIA DGX A100 GPUs to model unstructured proteins, which are involved in cancer, inflammatory diseases and neurodegenerative diseases.

Public Sector: Fotokite Supports First Responders 

Fotokite, based in Zurich, used the NVIDIA Jetson platform to build an autonomous tethered drone that gives first responders an aerial perspective during fires, search-and-rescue missions or medical emergencies. The system’s thermal camera can help firefighters locate hotspots that need attention, find the safest location to enter or exit a structure, and guide firefighters on whether their hoses are targeting the right points.

Retail: Heartdub Drives Sustainable Fashion

Beijing-based Heartdub digitizes textiles and uses AI to simulate how clothes look on the human body, enabling creators to display and verify designs virtually. Its physics engine, which takes advantage of NVIDIA Quadro RTX 8000 GPUs and NVIDIA HDR InfiniBand networking, can lessen the number of physical samples needed, reduce waste from excess fabric and minimize unsold inventory.

Read more startup stories and join NVIDIA Inception.

It’s the final countdown for what’s been a big year for cloud gaming. For the last GFN Thursday of the year, we’re taking a look at some of the GeForce NOW community’s top picks of games that joined the GeForce NOW library in 2021.

Plus, check out the last batch of games coming to the cloud this year, with seven new additions streaming this week.

Bringing Gaming to Gamers

This year, the GeForce NOW library has reached over 1,100 PC games streaming on the service, including nearly 100 free-to-play options. Plus, new titles come to the cloud every GFN Thursday, meaning more players can play more games that they own.

Whether they’re playing on underpowered PCs, Macs, Chromebooks, SHIELD TVs, Android devices, iPhones or iPads, there’s a PC game for every player to stream instantly from this ever-expanding library — at legendary GeForce levels of performance.

Pumped Up Picks 

To round out a year full of great gaming and new title additions, the GeForce NOW community shared some of their picks to play on the cloud.

Guardians of the galaxy with RTX 3080 4K and HDR pic.twitter.com/cCzm2TyzUQ

— TheNorseman5 (@TheNorseman5) December 20, 2021

Guardians of the Galaxy, 4K 60fps on my Shield Pro!

— Lee Reid – ReidoBaggins (@ReidoBaggins) December 20, 2021

Members are having a blast strapping on Star-Lord’s boots for an original adventure in Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, and have shared their love for the game.

“Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy looks absolutely stunning on GeForce NOW,” said DrSpaceman. “The colorful, alien worlds are so vibrant with RTX ON and the game plays like a dream.”

“Playing this game on the 3080 tier is just beautiful,” said Bill from NerdNest.tv. “The art direction is top notch.”

Gamers are also delighted to befriend charming spirit companions and enjoy a rich tale in Kena: Bridge of Spirits, and thrilled to overthrow a corrupt government in Far Cry 6.

“Kena: Bridge of Spirits was by far one of my favorite games, due to the graphics, visuals and the storyline,” said VetCloudGaming. “The visuals were amazing and reminded me of a film.”

@playnewworld ! New world for the win !!

— Wuyts jeroen (@Wuytsjeroen1990) December 20, 2021

For fun with friends, players are squading up to explore, build, craft and battle in the MMO New World or become the Vikings they were born to be in Valheim.

“New World has to be the biggest surprise game of the year,” said Marchief from Cloud Gaming Xtreme. “So many people wanted it, and now it’s on GeForce NOW.”

If stretching 2021 to include an extra month from the end of last year — members are taking Cyberpunk 2077 to the next level with cinematic quality by turning RTX ON for a glamorous game and gritty story.

Cyberpunk 2077 in 4K on the Shield with my 3080 membership

— H e l l M o n k e y (@HellMonkey88) December 20, 2021

Cyberpunk 2077, RTX 3080 at 1440p

— Ølivier GT: OlivierChlc (@OlivierChlc) December 20, 2021

Other games we’ve seen mentioned frequently include PowerWash Simulator and Gas Station Simulator for entertaining scenarios with wacky outcomes. Games like No Man’s Sky and Icarus are popular options for those looking for a challenge to explore and survive. And members wanting to become an unstoppable warrior should try Warframe for a sci-fi, story-driven, free-to-play game.

The Power to Play With GeForce RTX 3080

Another big win for GeForce NOW members this year is the ability to play all of these titles using the newest generation of cloud gaming with a GeForce NOW RTX 3080 membership.

RTX 3080 memberships turn nearly any device into a gaming rig capable of streaming at up to 1440p resolution and 120 frames per second on PCs, native 1440p or 1600p at 120 FPS on Macs, and 4K HDR at 60 FPS on SHIELD TV, with ultra-low latency that goes head-to-head with many local gaming experiences.

It also comes with the longest gaming session length available of eight hours, full control to customize in-game graphics settings, as well as RTX ON rendering environments in cinematic quality for supported games.

Besides powering up your ultimate cloud gaming experience on GeForce NOW, for a limited time, get the gift of a copy of Crysis Remastered free with the purchase of an RTX 3080 membership or six-month Priority membership. Terms and conditions apply.

End Games for 2021

The following seven titles come to the cloud this week to close out a year packed full of gaming:

• BattleBeasts (Steam)
• Moving Out (Epic Games Store)
• NARAKA: BLADEPOINT (Epic Games Store)
• Operencia: The Stolen Sun (Steam)
• PC Building Simulator (Epic Games Store)
• Salt and Sanctuary (Epic Games Store)
• Wargroove (Steam)

We make every effort to launch games on GeForce NOW as close to their release as possible, but, in some instances, games may not be available immediately.

Stay tuned and look out for new announcements at CES to see how we’re kicking off 2022. Tell us what you want to see next for GeForce NOW on Twitter or in the comments below.

Recognized as one of tech’s top podcasts, the NVIDIA AI Podcast is approaching 3 million listens in five years, as it sweeps across topics like robots, data science, computer graphics and renewable energy.

Its 150+ episodes reinforce the extraordinary capabilities of AI — from diagnosing disease to boosting creativity to helping save the Earth — while focusing on the people behind the magic.

Here are our most-played episodes from 2021:

NVIDIA’s Liila Torabi Talks the New Era of Robotics Through Isaac Sim

Robots aren’t limited to the assembly line. Liila Torabi, senior product manager for Isaac Sim, a robotics and AI simulation platform powered by NVIDIA Omniverse, talks about where the field’s headed.

GANTheftAuto: Harrison Kinsley on AI-Generated Gaming Environments

Humans playing games against machines is nothing new, but now computers can develop their own games for people to play. Programming enthusiast and social media influencer Harrison Kinsley created GANTheftAuto, an AI-based neural network that generates a playable chunk of the classic video game Grand Theft Auto V.

Jules Anh Tuan Nguyen Explains How AI Lets Amputee Control Prosthetic Hand, Video Games

With deep learning, amputees can now control their prosthetics by simply thinking through the motion.

Jules Anh Tuan Nguyen, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Minnesota’s biomedical engineering department, speaks about his efforts to allow amputees to control their prosthetic limb — right down to the finger motions — with their minds.

Matt Ginsberg Built a GPU-Powered Crossword Solver to Take on Top Word Nerds

Dr.Fill, the crossword puzzle-playing AI created by Matt Ginsberg — serial entrepreneur, pioneering AI researcher and former research professor — scored higher than any humans earlier this year at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament.

GE’s Danielle Merfeld and Arvind Rangarajan on AI and Renewable Energy

At GE Renewable Energy, CTO Danielle Merfeld and technical leader Arvind Rangarajan are focused on  advancing renewable energy. They cover how the company uses AI and a human-in-the-loop process to make renewable energy more widespread.

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What better way to look back at NVIDIA’s top five videos of 2021 than to hop into the cockpit of a virtual plane flying over Taipei.

That was how NVIDIA’s Jeff Fisher and Manuvir Das invited viewers into their COMPUTEX keynote on May 31. Their aircraft sailed over the city’s green hills and banked around its tallest skyscraper, Taipei 101, on the wings of Microsoft Flight Sim running on an NVIDIA RTX 3080 GPU.

It was a fitting start to one of the world’s largest annual tech gatherings, and one of the many virtual events in the second year of the COVID pandemic.

GeForce RTX and AI at COMPUTEX

In the keynote (below), Fisher unveiled our latest flagship gaming GPU, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, and the latest games it brings to life with features like ray tracing.

Das revealed new ways to access enterprise AI through subscriptions to NVIDIA Base Command in the cloud and the growing lineup of NVIDIA Certified Systems, many of which are available from partners based in Taiwan.

Omniverse Enterprise and Research at SIGGRAPH

A history of computer graphics packed into less than two minutes of video narrated by Alvy Ray Smith, the computer scientist who co-founded Pixar and helped pioneer animated movies, introduced an Aug. 10 special address at SIGGRAPH.

Richard Kerris, vice president of Omniverse platform development, launched NVIDIA Omniverse Enterprise, an environment where companies from Adobe to Zoom can create virtual worlds and digital twins.

Sanja Fidler, senior director of AI research at NVIDIA, walked viewers through a grab bag of research projects including software to create your personal avatar in real time.

Making of a Kitchen Keynote

In his SIGGRAPH talk, Kerris showed a clip giving a behind-the-scenes look at how NVIDIA used Omniverse to make CEO Jensen Huang’s GTC keynote in April.

The full 30+ minute mini-documentary (below) debuted at SIGGRAPH and was one of our most popular outtakes from 2021, viewed nearly 1.5 million times. It’s the story of how 34 artists, 15 researchers and 21 Jensens made magic in Omniverse.

A Three-Chip Company

The content of that GTC keynote included a fair amount of its own tech fireworks.

In declaring NVIDIA a “three-chip company,” Huang announced the NVIDIA Grace CPU, for building what he called “giant scale-out” AI and high performance computing systems; the NVIDIA BlueField-3 DPU for networking; and NVIDIA DRIVE Atlan for autonomous vehicles.

With those headliners, as well as new software stacks for conversational AI, recommender systems, networking, security and more, it’s no wonder the talk (below) was viewed more than 2.2 million times.

Digital Twins and Avatars

In retrospect, it was a year of digital twins and virtual worlds. So, it was fitting that one of our most memorable moments was the debut of Toy Jensen, a character based on our CEO, brought to life by NVIDIA Omniverse Avatar.

Toy Jensen hit the stage in the November GTC keynote (below). It’s work that will animate tomorrow’s smart retail shops and drive-throughs and even smart cars, thanks to NVIDIA DRIVE Concierge.

In his talk, our very real CEO also described a new supercomputer we’ll build called NVIDIA Earth-2, to advance climate science.

“I can’t imagine a greater and more important use” for all the technologies NVIDIA has created, Huang said.

Q&A With Toy Jensen

And just for fun, here’s a short Q&A with Toy Jensen.

Happy holidays, members.

This GFN Thursday is packed with winter sales for several games streaming on GeForce NOW, as well as seasonal in-game events. Plus, for those needing a last minute gift for a gamer in their lives, we’ve got you covered with digital gift cards for Priority memberships.

To top it all off, six new games join the GeForce NOW library this week for some festive fun.

Jingle Bells, Holiday Sales, Events Are on the Way

Whether you made the naughty or nice list this year, there are plenty of games on your wishlist on sale.

Snag some top titles from Square Enix like Guardians of the Galaxy and Life is Strange: True Colors. Dive into great games from Deep Silver like Metro Exodus and Kingdom Come Deliverance. Experience hits from Ubisoft like Far Cry 6 and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. Get your GOG game on playing Cyberpunk 2077 or The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt GOTY.

To catch even more of the games from the GeForce NOW library on sale this holiday season, check out the “Sales and Special Offers” row on the GeForce NOW app.

On top of these winter sales and for a limited time, get the gift of a copy of Crysis Remastered free with the purchase of a six-month Priority membership or the new GeForce NOW RTX 3080 membership. Terms and conditions apply.

Also, keep an eye out for holiday-themed in-game events in World of Tanks and more. Get to the tank in the Schwarzenegger Campaign, where you will receive missions from Arnold himself.

With over 1,100 titles streaming on the cloud, including nearly 100 free-to-play options and more coming every week, there’s a game for everyone to enjoy this holiday.

The Perfect Gift for a Gamer

The perfect last-minute present for a gamer in your life is the gift of PC gaming on any device.

Grab a GeForce NOW Priority membership digital gift card, available in two-, six- or 12-month options. Power up your gamer’s GeForce NOW compatible devices with the kick of a full gaming rig, priority access to gaming servers, extended session lengths and RTX ON to take supported games to the next level of rendering quality.

Check out the GeForce NOW membership page for more information on priority benefits.

Gift cards can be redeemed on an existing GeForce NOW account or added to a new one. Existing Founders and Priority members will have the number of months added to their accounts.

Let it Stream, Let it Stream, Let it Stream

No matter if the weather outside is frightful, streaming games is delightful.

GFN Thursday is all about games. It also means taking games to the next level. This week, Far Cry 6 and Bright Memory: Infinite go bigger and bolder with support for RTX ON.

Plus, this GFN Thursday, enjoy six new games ready to stream from the GeForce NOW library:

• SCARF (new game launch on Steam and Epic Games Store, Dec. 23)
• EVE Online (Epic Games Store)
• Farming Simulator 22 (Steam and Epic Games Store)
• House Flipper (Steam and Epic Games Store)
• Second Extinction (Epic Games Store)
• Tannenberg (Steam and Epic Games Store)

Note: members who purchased the Farming Simulator 22 DLC directly from their website will not be able to access it on GeForce NOW. DLC purchased from the respective supported game store — Steam or Epic Games Store — will be playable.

We make every effort to launch games on GeForce NOW as close to their release as possible, but, in some instances, games may not be available immediately.

Also, keep an eye out for the free Epic Games Store titles that are being given away over the holidays. Like last year, we’ll look to add as many of these as we can when we return next year.

Whether you’re celebrating the holidays or just looking forward to a weekend full of gaming, tell us what games are bringing you joy on Twitter or in the comments below.

𝙥𝙞𝙘𝙩𝙪𝙧𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙨: you’re out for holiday break; no work, no school

what game are you streaming on GFN first?

— NVIDIA GeForce NOW (@NVIDIAGFN) December 20, 2021

It was memories of playing Pac-Man and Super Mario Bros while growing up in Colombia’s sprawling capital of Bogotá that inspired Yenifer Macias’s award-winning submission for the #CreateYourRetroverse contest, featured above.

The contest asked NVIDIA Omniverse users to share scenes that visualize where their love for graphics began. For Macias, that passion goes back to childhood. She loved video games — but was all the more wowed by their art.

Now, using Omniverse, a physically accurate 3D design collaboration platform that runs on NVIDIA Studio products and supports the leading 3D content creation tools of the industry, Macias accelerates her work as a 3D artist — making environments and props for video games, animation, films and advertisements.

She aimed in her #CreateYourRetroverse scene, she said, to “immerse viewers in the game world for a bit and remind them of childhood.”

The Artist’s Journey

Macias loved to doodle and always knew she’d study art.

A 3D animation course she took at a vocational institute in Bogotá confirmed her passion. She wanted to make 3D art all day, every day. Due to financial hardships, however, Macias didn’t have a home computer.

To practice her graphics skills, Macias took classes and completed internships — and with her first paycheck as a 3D artist, she bought a PC to continue her projects at home.

Over the past eight years, Macias has completed a wide range of work including visual effects, architectural drawings and freelance animations. She uses design tools like Adobe Substance Painter, Autodesk Maya and ZBrush.

From Concept to Execution

For her #CreateYourRetroverse scene, Macias started with an initial sketch:

Based on references, she then created all of the props and objects for the environment from scratch in Autodesk Maya. Next, she brought her assets into the Omniverse Create app — using an Omniverse Connector — where she fine-tuned lighting, texture and render.

“I found Omniverse’s powerful render engine to be incredible — you can make changes to the lighting and materials, seeing the results in real time,” Macias said.

Despite being a first-time user of Omniverse, Macias said the Omniverse Create app for massive 3D world building helped her finish the project on a tight timeline and “was very user friendly.”

Looking forward, she plans to use Omniverse’s real-time collaboration feature to team up on projects with artists across the world.

With Omniverse, NVIDIA Studio creators like Macias can supercharge their artistic workflows with optimized RTX-accelerated hardware and software drivers, and state-of-the-art AI and simulation features.

Explore the NVIDIA Omniverse gallery, forums and Medium channel. Check out Omniverse tutorials on Twitter and YouTube, and join our Discord server and Twitch channel to chat with the community.

Data centers need extremely fast storage access, and no DPU is faster than NVIDIA’s  BlueField-2.

Recent testing by NVIDIA shows that a single BlueField-2 data processing unit reaches 41.5 million input/output operations per second (IOPS) — more than 4x more IOPS than any other DPU.

The BlueField-2 DPU delivered record-breaking performance using standard networking protocols and open-source software. It reached more than 5 million 4KB IOPS and from 7 million to over 20 million 512B IOPS for NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF), a common method of accessing storage media, with TCP networking, one of the primary internet protocols.

To accelerate AI, big data and high performance computing applications, BlueField provides even higher storage performance using the popular RoCE network transport option.

In testing, BlueField supercharged performance as both an initiator and target, using different types of storage software libraries and different workloads to simulate real-world storage configurations. BlueField also supports fast storage connectivity over InfiniBand, the preferred networking architecture for many HPC and AI applications.

Testing Methodology

The 41.5 million IOPS reached by BlueField is more than 4x the previous world record of 10 million IOPS, set using proprietary storage offerings. This performance was achieved by connecting two fast Hewlett Packard Enterprise Proliant DL380 Gen 10 Plus servers, one as the application server (storage initiator) and one as the storage system (storage target).

Each server had two Intel “Ice Lake” Xeon Platinum 8380 CPUs clocked at 2.3GHz, giving 160 hyperthreaded cores per server, along with 512GB of DRAM, 120MB of L3 cache (60MB per socket) and a PCIe Gen4 bus.

To accelerate networking and NVMe-oF, each server was configured with two NVIDIA BlueField-2 P-series DPU cards, each with two 100Gb Ethernet network ports, resulting in four network ports and 400Gb/s wire bandwidth between initiator and target, connected back-to-back using NVIDIA LinkX 100GbE Direct-Attach Copper (DAC) passive cables. Both servers had Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) version 8.3.

For the storage system software, both SPDK and the standard upstream Linux kernel target were tested using both the default kernel 4.18 and one of the newest kernels, 5.15. Three different storage initiators were benchmarked: SPDK, the standard kernel storage initiator, and the FIO plugin for SPDK. Workload generation and measurements were run with FIO and SPDK. I/O sizes were tested using 4KB and 512B, which are common medium and small storage I/O sizes, respectively.

The NVMe-oF storage protocol was tested with both TCP and RoCE at the network transport layer. Each configuration was tested with 100 percent read, 100 percent write and 50/50 read/write workloads with full bidirectional network utilization.

Our testing also revealed the following performance characteristics of the BlueField DPU:

• Testing with smaller 512B I/O sizes resulted in higher IOPS but lower-than-line-rate throughput, while 4KB I/O sizes resulted in higher throughput but lower IOPS numbers.
• 100 percent read and 100 percent write workloads provided similar IOPS and throughput, while 50/50 mixed read/write workloads produced higher performance by using both directions of the network connection simultaneously.
• Using SPDK resulted in higher performance than kernel-space software, but at the cost of higher server CPU utilization, which is expected behavior, since SPDK runs in user space with constant polling.
• The newer Linux 5.15 kernel performed better than the 4.18 kernel due to storage improvements added regularly by the Linux community.

Record-Setting DPU Storage Performance Enables Storage Performance With Security

In today’s storage landscape, the vast majority of cloud and enterprise deployments require fast, distributed and networked flash storage, accessed over Ethernet or InfiniBand. Faster servers, GPUs, networks and storage media all tax server CPUs to keep up, and the best way to do so is to deploy storage-capable DPUs.

The incredible storage performance demonstrated by the BlueField-2 DPU enables higher performance and better efficiency across the data center for both application servers and storage appliances.

On top of fast storage access, BlueField also supports hardware-accelerated encryption and decryption of both Ethernet storage traffic and the storage media itself, helping protect against data theft or exfiltration.

It offloads IPsec at up to 100Gb/s (data on the wire) and 256-bit AES-XTS at up to 200Gb/s (data at rest), reducing the risk of data theft if an adversary has tapped the storage network or if the physical storage drives are stolen or sold or disposed of improperly.

Customers and leading security software vendors are using BlueField’s recently updated NVIDIA DOCA framework to run cybersecurity applications – such as a distributed firewall or security groups with micro-segmentation – on the DPU to further improve application and network security for compute servers, which reduces the risk of inappropriate access or data modifications on the storage attached to those servers.

Learn More About NVIDIA Networking Acceleration 

Learn more about NVIDIA DPUs, DOCA, RoCE, and how DPUs and DOCA enable accelerated networking and Zero-Trust Security with these links:

• NVIDIA BlueField DPU information
• NVIDIA DOCA DPU development platform 
• NVIDIA Developer Blog: NVIDIA improves the scalability of Zero-Touch RoCE, making it easier for more customers to enjoy the higher storage performance from RoCE 
• NVIDIA Blog: NVIDIA Enables Future of Zero-Trust Enterprise Security with DPUs, DOCA and security ISV partnerships