Posts in category: nVidia AI

AI is teaching cars to make better decisions, so could it do the same for surgeons?

Addressing that question is the mission of Theator, a startup based in Palo Alto, Calif., with an R&D site in Tel Aviv, that’s striving to fuel the nascent revolution in autonomous surgery.

Theator co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Dotan Asselmann said his company has been monitoring advances in self-driving cars as a blueprint for surgery, with a focus on using AI-driven analytics to improve decision-making.

Just as autonomous carmakers want to stop a vehicle before an accident, Theator wants to stop surgeries before any mistakes. And it’s doing this by analyzing video taken of surgeries being performed all over the world.

“Because it can scale, AI can acquire much more experience than any surgeon,” said Asselmann. “Our model has already analyzed thousands of surgeries that one individual physician would never have time to experience themselves.”

Turning Video Into Shared Knowledge

The problem Asselmann and the Theator team have identified is a lack of standardization in the surgical review process. Most surgeons learn their craft from just a few people. In fact, Asselmann said, many pick up the majority of their knowledge from their own experiences.

“Horizontal data sharing between surgeons has been limited — it’s mainly happened at conferences,” he said. “In today’s COVID reality, surgeons’ ability to expand their knowledge at scale is stifled.”

However, while the practice of conducting visually aided surgery has taken off and most operating rooms have been equipped with cameras that record procedures, surgeries are not routinely captured, stored or analyzed. This is what spurred Theator’s inception and has fueled its ongoing mission to harness AI and computer vision to power surgery.

The company’s technology is delivered through an edge appliance mounted on an operating room’s laparoscopic cart. From there, the NVIDIA Jetson AGX Xavier platform processes the videos, and Theator’s software anonymizes and then uploads them to its training environments in the Amazon and Azure clouds.

There, the company runs a variety of AI models, with training occurring on a cluster of NVIDIA V100 Tensor Core GPUs, while NVIDIA T4 Tensor Core GPUs handle inference.

Once a video of a surgery has been processed, surgeons can immediately view highlight packages that focus on the select critical minutes where important decisions were made. Each procedure is added to Theator’s training dataset, thus expanding its models’ understanding.

By applying AI-driven analytics to the videos, Theator’s platform deconstructs the resulting data into steps, events, decisions and milestones. This allows surgeons to conduct post-surgery reviews, where they can compare parts of the procedure with previous identical procedures.

The platform can also use previous procedures to provide pre-operative assistance, and it can match videos to identify the cause of post-surgical complications. Future applications include the ability to predict, and potentially reduce, the need for costly and time-consuming interventions resulting from complications.

For example, a patient who develops a post-operative fever may have a bleed that has been left open. In the future, watching a Theator video summary could help a surgeon determine whether there was a problem before performing a scan or corrective procedure.

Ensuring Better Surgical Decisions

Asselmann believes that Theator can remove the cloud component from the equation and achieve the holy grail of real-time surgical support within a year or two – relying solely on its AI algorithms to conduct entire analytics processes on premises during minimally invasive surgery.

While the company’s focus is currently on aiding surgeons, he expects semi-autonomous surgery to be possible within the next five years. And while there will likely always be a surgeon in the loop, Asselmann believes level 3 or 4 automation for surgery will be utilized first and foremost in developing countries, where 5 billion people lack access to adequate surgical care.

Theator has reached this far with the help of NVIDIA Inception, an accelerator program for startups in the AI and data science fields. Asselmann credits the program with helping “increase our model training efficiency and reduce compute costs, while guiding the selection of the right hardware for our edge device.”

Through the NVIDIA Inception program, Theator was also provided a private demonstration of the NVIDIA Clara Guardian AI healthcare framework, as well as the NVIDIA DeepStream software development kit, which the startup used to build its high-efficiency real-time video pipeline.

Equipped with NVIDIA’s support, Theator can continue to bring critical context to the decisions surgeons are making every day in operating rooms all over the world.

“Surgeons are inundated with endless parameters flowing from multiple directions during surgery,” said Asselmann. “Our objective is to reduce the cognitive overload and aid them in making the optimal decision at the right time, for the right patient and circumstances.”

“You’ll still call the shots,” he says, “but you’ll be a much better surgeon with AI.”

Feature image credit: David Mark.

For many, the term “autonomous vehicles” conjures up images of self-driving cars. Autonomy, however, is transforming much more than personal transportation.

Autonomous trucks are commercial vehicles that use AI to automate everything from shipping yard operations to long-haul deliveries. Due to industry pressures from rising delivery demand and driver shortages, as well as straightforward operational domains such as highways, these intelligent trucks may be the first autonomous vehicles to hit public roads at scale.

This technology uses long-range, high-resolution sensors, a range of deep neural networks and high-performance, energy-efficient compute to improve safety and efficiency for everyday logistics.

With the rise of e-commerce and next-day delivery, trucking plays an increasingly vital role in moving the world forward. Trucks transport more than 70 percent of all freight in the U.S. Experts estimate that most essential businesses, such as grocery stores and gas stations, would run out of supplies within days without these vehicles.

These trends come as driver shortages accelerate. The American Trucking Association reports the industry has struggled with driver supply over the past 15 years. It estimates the industry could be in need of 160,000 drivers by 2028 if trends continue. Additionally, limits on the amount of hours drivers can consecutively work restricts operation.

Autonomous driving can help ease the strain of trucking demand, as well as increase efficiency, by operating around the clock with lower requirements for human labor. In fact, a recent pilot run by self-driving trucking startup TuSimple and the U.S. Postal Service showed that autonomous trucks repeatedly arrived ahead of schedule on hub-to-hub routes.

And with hub-to-hub autonomous trucks constrained to fenced-in areas or highways, most autonomous trucks don’t have to deal with the challenges of urban traffic and neighborhood driving, freeing up roadblocks to widespread deployment.

This groundbreaking development is possible in part due to centralized, high-performance compute such as the NVIDIA DRIVE platform. With the capability to process the redundant and diverse deep neural networks necessary to operate without human supervision, these vehicles are poised to revolutionize delivery and logistics in the years to come.

Scalable Solutions for the Long Haul

Autonomous driving is a scalable technology. The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) defines it in categories that include assisted driving where the driver is still in control (level 2) as well as full self-driving, where no human supervision is required (level 4/5). AI compute must also be able to scale with the capabilities of self-driving software.

In addition, the system must be able to handle the harsh environments of trucking. The average truck driver travels 100,000 miles a year, compared with the average motorist, who drives about 13,500 miles a year.

NVIDIA DRIVE is the only solution that easily scales from level 2 AI-assisted driving to fully autonomous operation while being designed to withstand the wear and tear of long-haul trucking.

This versatility and durability is already in development today. Companies such as Locomation are leveraging the compute platform for platooning pilots, where one driver operates a lead truck while a fully autonomous follower truck drives in tandem. Truck manufacturer FAW and startup PlusAI are jointly developing a large-scale autonomous trucking fleet. TuSimple uses NVIDIA DRIVE in its fleet.

On the Open Road

Beyond improving current trucking practices, autonomous driving technology is opening up entirely new possibilities for the industry.

Volvo Group, one of the largest truck makers in the world, is using NVIDIA DRIVE to train, test and deploy self-driving AI vehicles, targeting public transport, freight transport, refuse and recycling collection, construction, mining, forestry and more.

It’s even envisioning cab-less operation within shipping yards and on industrial roads with the Vera pilot truck.

Self-driving truck startup Einride is also developing cab-less vehicles. It recently announced the next generation of its Pod trucks, powered by NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Orin. These futuristic electric haulers will be able to scale from closed-facility operation to fully autonomous driving on backroads and highways.

With high-performance, energy-efficient AI compute at the core, autonomous trucks will push the limits of what’s possible in delivery and logistics, transforming industries around the world.

It’s a celebration, gamers!

One year ago to the day we launched GeForce NOW, our cloud gaming service that transforms ordinary hardware into an extraordinarily powerful GeForce gaming PC. It’s the always-on gaming rig that never needs upgrading or patching and can instantly play your library of games.

We’ve been blown away by the passion and fandom of its members. Over 175 million hours have been streamed and more than 130 million moments have been captured with NVIDIA Highlights. It is the gamers who continue to push GeForce NOW forward.

Over the past year, we onboarded hundreds of games and are now supporting more than 800 titles, including 80 of the most-played free-to-play games, from over 300 publishers. Games like Cyberpunk 2077, Control and The Medium turned RTX ON to deliver real-time ray tracing and cinematic-quality graphics.

A glimpse into year one for GeForce NOW

We added new platforms, including Chromebook, iPhone and iPad, over the past few months. Today, GeForce NOW extends to even more PCs and Macs with Chrome browser support in beta. Additionally, Mac support expands to include new Apple M1-based hardware.

GeForce NOW has grown globally as well, with more than 65 countries now supported by our own service and more being added regularly by our GeForce NOW Alliance.

New Games, New Features — That’s GFN Thursday

Mark your calendars! GFN Thursday is our ongoing commitment to bringing great PC games and service updates to members each week. Check in every Thursday to discover what’s new in the cloud, including games, exclusive features and news on GeForce NOW.

Thirty new games will join the GeForce NOW library this month, including a number of day-and-date releases. Highlights include Apex Legends Season 8, Valheim, Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Earthblood and a demo for Square Enix’s highlighly anticipated Outriders game, coming to GeForce NOW on Feb. 25.

For the full list of games, including today’s GFN Thursday release, check out our latest blog.

Adding Even More Ways to Play

Switching between work and gaming is now just a Ctrl+Tab away.

Starting today, we’re adding beta support for Chrome browser on Windows PC and macOS, so members can access GeForce NOW instantly from more devices. The native applications on each platform still provide the best experience and features, but now gaming is even more convenient.

To get started, launch Chrome and head over to https://play.geforcenow.com. Then, simply log in and play.

Create desktop shortcuts by clicking on a game to open the details, and select +SHORTCUT to help launch your favorite games faster.

Members can also quickly and easily invite friends to play the same game. Click on a game to open the details, copy the URL shown in your browser, then share over social media, text or email.

Our latest client release also adds official support for Macs with the new Apple M1 chip via Rosetta 2. Apple products with the new chip will ask you to install Rosetta, if you haven’t previously, before installing the GeForce NOW app.

The Celebration Begins

All month long we’ll be celebrating GFN members with a series of rewards and giveaways. In the days ahead, Founders members can look forward to a unique offer in their inbox, while all members will have something special waiting as well.

And on social there will be weekly opportunities to win premium prizes, including Steel Series Arctis Pro wireless headphones, Razer Kishi controllers and more.

Now is the perfect time to encourage your friends to join you in the cloud by signing up for a free membership. Or upgrade to a Founders membership for priority access to gaming servers, extended session lengths and RTX ON for supported games.

GeForce NOW is available on nearly any PC, Mac, Chromebook, iPhone or iPad, and Android devices including NVIDIA SHIELD TV.

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter to get in on the fun, and subscribe to the GeForce NOW newsletter for game updates and the latest news.

Scientifically speaking, today is the best day of the week, because today is GFN Thursday. And that means more of the best PC games streaming right from the cloud across all of your devices.

This is a special GFN Thursday, too — not just because it’s the first Thursday of the month, which means learning about some of the games coming throughout February, but also because it’s GeForce NOW’s one-year anniversary. One year ago, we opened the cloud for any PC gamer whose rig needed a boost, and gave our Founders members RTX ON for supported games. Today, we offer over 800 games streaming instantly, with more on the way each week.

For now, let’s get into the best part of GFN Thursday: new games.

Let’s Play Today

The complete list of games joining GeForce NOW this week can be found below, but here are a few highlights:

Apex Legends Season 8 (Origin and Steam)

Time to bring the boom in Season 8 – Mayhem. Meet a new Legend, Fuse, who doesn’t lack confidence, but often lacks a plan. He’s a blow-up-first ask-questions-later kinda guy.

Valheim (day-and-date release on Steam)

A brutal exploration and survival game for 1-10 players, set in a procedurally generated purgatory inspired by Viking culture. Battle, build and conquer your way to a saga worthy of Odin’s patronage!

Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Earthblood (day-and-date release on Epic Games Store)

A unique experience full of savage combat and mystical adventures. You are Cahal, a powerful Garou who can transform into a wolf and a Crinos, a huge ferocious beast. Master your three forms and their powers to punish those who defile Gaia.

In addition to these highlights, members can look for the following:

• Blue Fire (Steam)
• Code2040 (Day-and-date release on Steam)
• Curious Expedition 2 (Steam)
• Magicka 2 (Steam)
• Might & Magic Heroes V: Tribes of the East (Steam)
• Mini Ninjas (Steam)
• Order of Battle: World War II (Free to play on Steam)
• Path of Wuxia (English language release on Steam)
• Secret World Legends (Free to play on Steam)
• Warhammer 40,000 Gladius Relics of War (Epic Games Store)

Looking Ahead to the Rest of February

Beyond this week, members can start getting excited about the following games:

Outriders Demo (day-and-date release on Steam)

Square Enix and People Can Fly present OUTRIDERS, a 1-3 player, drop-in-drop-out co-op shooter set in an original, dark and desperate sci-fi universe.

And here are even more titles joining GeForce NOW in February:

• Art of Rally (Steam, Epic Games Store)
• Darkest Hour: A Hearts of Iron Game (Steam)
• Day of Infamy (Steam)
• Everspace (Steam)
• Farm Manager 2018 (Steam)
• Farmer’s Dynasty (Steam)
• Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris (Steam)
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III (Steam)
• Lumberjack’s Dynasty (Steam)
• Observer: System Redux (Steam)
• Project Highrise (Steam)
• Rise of Industry (Steam)
• Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2 (Steam)
• South Park: The Fractured But Whole (Steam)
• South Park: The Stick of Truth (Steam)
• Thea 2: The Shattering (Steam)

In Case You Missed It

In addition to the games we shared on the GeForce Forums, we had some surprise additions in January, including:

• HITMAN 3 (Epic Games Store)
• The Medium (Steam, Epic Games Store)
• Immortals Fenyx Rising Demo (Ubisoft Connect, Epic Games Store)
• Dyson Sphere Program (Steam)
• Neon Abyss (Epic Games Store)

That’s a whole lotta gaming. What will you play in February? Let us know on Twitter or in the comments below.

Not many can claim to be a computer programmer, nonfiction author and poet, but Brian Christian has established himself as all three.

Christian has just released his newest book, The Alignment Problem, which delves into the disparity that occurs when AI models don’t do exactly what they’re intended to do.

The book follows on the success of Christian’s previous work, The Most Human Human and Algorithms to Live By. Now a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley, Christian joined AI Podcast host Noah Kravitz to talk about the alignment problem and some new techniques being used to address the issue.

The alignment problem can be caused by a range of reasons — such as data bias, or datasets used incorrectly and out of context. As AI takes on a variety of tasks, from medical diagnostics to parole sentencing decisions, machine learning researchers are expressing concern over the problem.

Listen to the full podcast to hear about this and more — including Christian’s book club experience with Elon Musk and why he chose to double major in philosophy and computer science.

Key Points From This Episode:

• The Alignment Problem features insights from hundreds of interviews Christian did with those he calls “first responders” to the ethical and scientific concerns surrounding the issue. He believes this group is evolving into a new interdisciplinary field.
• Christian is also director of technology at McSweeney’s Publishing and scientific communicator in residence at Simon’s Institute for the Theory of Computing. He talks to Kravitz about how he managed to combine his love for both computer science and creative writing in his current career.

Tweetables:

“Philosophy and computer science are really on a collision course.” — Brian Christian [20:23]

“This new interdisciplinary field, thinking about … how exactly are we going to get human norms into these ML systems.” — Brian Christian [26:25]

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As the Sundance Film Festival kicks off today, “Baymax Dreams of Fred’s Glitch,” an interactive short from Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution and Disney Television Animation, is streaming from the cloud to virtual festivalgoers, using GeForce NOW.

The interactive short is part of the New Frontier Alliance Showcase at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, a partner-driven presentation of envelope-pushing cinematic visions. New Frontier’s immersive program and platform showcase stories created through new convergences of film, art, and cutting-edge technology.

“Disney has the greatest storytellers in the world,” said Kaki Navarre, director, content technology, Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution. “By embracing new technologies and methods, like NVIDIA RTX GPUs and interactive streaming with GeForce NOW, we can free those content creators from the processing limitations of client devices, advancing what is possible from a computational perspective, which grants significant creative freedom in how stories can be brought to life for an audience.”

Disney has selected NVIDIA RTX GPUs to power the first-of-its-kind experience, and our cloud gaming service, GeForce NOW, will deliver it.

In the interactive short, it’s up to the audience to help Fred as he tries to contain an adorable yet destructive glitch of his own creation that causes havoc inside the head of Baymax, a compassionate, cutting-edge robot.

NVIDIA GPUs are no stranger to cutting-edge visuals. For over a decade, every Oscar-nominated film for Best Visual Effects has taken to the big screen thanks to NVIDIA GPUs.

The Baymax Dreams experience is the first premium, interactive, 3D-animated content of its kind. It features touch interaction and is fully remote-rendered on our GeForce NOW cloud gaming servers. These elements allow the audience to do more than just choose the path of the story — it gives them agency.

Characters in the episode can respond positively or negatively depending on the speed and efficiency of participation.

Delivering Real-time Interactive Entertainment with GeForce NOW

Using GeForce NOW, real-time content is streamed to a user’s device in a fraction of a second. This allows seamless interaction without losing graphics quality on mobile platforms. Participants can have a high-quality experience regardless of how powerful or modern their device might be.

GeForce NOW data centers house powerful NVIDIA RTX GPUs designed for cloud gaming. They’re optimized for fast video encoding and provide high-quality visuals with reduced latency. They’re optimal for gaming as well as other forms of interactive entertainment.

It’s also the first native touch experience streaming on GeForce NOW. That’s something NVIDIA will bring more of to the cloud in the future.

The interactive short is streaming for a limited time on GeForce NOW for iOS Safari users. GeForce NOW members can interact with the short using touch input from their iPhone or iPad.

We love PC games. The newest titles and the greatest classics. FPS, RPG, grand strategy, squad-based tactics, single-player, multiplayer, MMO — you name it, we love it.

There are more than 800 games on GeForce NOW — including 80 of the biggest free-to-play games — streaming straight from the cloud. And thanks to the explosive growth of PC gaming in recent years, there are more games to play than ever.

Fun fact: those games often launch on Thursdays, right alongside our client and backend updates. That makes Thursday our favorite day of the week. So let’s formalize it, right?

This is GFN Thursday — our weekly celebration of the newest games, features and news, streaming from the cloud to you.

This week’s a doozy, too. But before we get into the games, let’s set the stage and answer a few questions.

What is GFN Thursday?

GFN Thursday is our ongoing commitment to bringing great PC games and service updates to our members each week. Come back every Thursday to discover what’s new in the cloud, including games, exclusive features, and news on GeForce NOW.

Why Thursdays?

Because Mondays are boring? Seriously, over the course of the past year, many of our most played games either launched or released major season updates on Thursdays — and we aim to support these launches as soon after their release as possible.

Many of the top free-to-play games, from Fortnite to Apex Legends, Destiny 2 and more, also release major season updates for Thursdays. We’re committed to supporting each new content release the moment it’s available, with updates rolling out to members across all our data centers, in all of our regions as quickly as possible.

Our members love to learn what’s coming each week to the GeForce NOW library and plan their gaming for the weekend. We do, too. With GFN Thursday updates every week, you’ll always know what’s ready to play across your devices, even if you’re away from your gaming rig.

What if I want to know what games are coming in the future?

Okay, then the first GFN Thursday of each month is for you. That’s when we’ll share the games we anticipate adding to GeForce NOW throughout that month.

This list may not be every game that releases in a month, however. Things move fast, and we know there will be surprises. In January alone, we shared 23 games coming to GeForce NOW, with HITMAN 3 and Everspace 2 being late-breaking additions we were also able to welcome this month.

Games will continue to be added every week, but that first GFN Thursday of the month will give you a glimpse at what to expect. That way you can shop with confidence, knowing what’s to come.

Okay, so what’s happening this GFN Thursday?

Finally, let’s get to the good stuff. The complete list of games joining GeForce NOW this week can be found below, but here are a few highlights:

The Medium (Steam & Epic Games Store)

Founders can play with RTX ON and discover a dark mystery only a medium can solve. Travel to an abandoned communist resort and use your psychic abilities to uncover its deeply disturbing secrets, solve dual-reality puzzles, survive encounters with sinister spirits and explore two realities at the same time.

Immortals Fenyx Rising Demo (Ubisoft Connect & Epic Games Store)

In this free demo from Ubisoft, play as Fenyx, a new winged demigod, on a quest to save the Greek gods and their home from a dark curse. Take on mythological beasts, master the legendary powers of the gods and defeat Typhon, the deadliest Titan in Greek mythology, in an epic fight for the ages.

Members with the full game and Season Pass can also play the new Immortals Fenyx Rising DLC, A New God, on Jan. 28.

Dyson Sphere Program (Steam)

Build the most efficient intergalactic factory in this space simulation strategy game. Harness the power of stars, collect resources, plan and design production lines and develop your interstellar factory from a small space workshop to a galaxy-wide industrial empire.

Here’s the full list for Jan. 28. What are you looking forward to playing? Let us know below.

We’ll see you next week for a very exciting one-year anniversary edition of GFN Thursday!

• The Medium (Steam, Epic Games Store)
• Immortals Fenyx Rising Demo (Ubisoft Connect, Epic Games Store)
• Beholder (Steam)
• Caves of Qud (Steam)
• Dyson Sphere Program (Steam)
• Kathy Rain (Steam)
• Neon Abyss (Epic Games Store)
• Gods Will Fall (launching Friday on Steam, Epic Games Store)

Designers, engineers, researchers, creative professionals all need the flexibility to run complex workflows – no matter where they’re working from.

With the newest release of NVIDIA virtual GPU (vGPU) technology, enterprises can provide their employees with more power and flexibility through GPU-accelerated virtual machines from the data center or cloud.

Available now, the latest version of our vGPU software brings GPU virtualization to a broad range of workloads — such as virtual desktop infrastructure, high-performance graphics, data analytics and AI —  thanks to its support for the new NVIDIA A40  and NVIDIA A100 80GB GPUs. The new release also supports the NVIDIA GPU Operator, a software framework that simplifies GPU deployment and management.

Powerful Performance for Power Users

NVIDIA RTX Virtual Workstation (vWS) software is a major component of the vGPU portfolio, designed to help users run graphics-intensive applications on virtual workstations. With NVIDIA A40 powering NVIDIA RTX vWS, professionals can achieve up to 60 percent⁽¹⁾ faster virtual workstation performance per user and 2x⁽²⁾ faster rendering than the previous generation RTX 6000 GPUs.

NVIDIA A40 includes second-generation RT Cores and third-generation Tensor Cores to help users accelerate workloads like photorealistic rendering of movie content, architectural design evaluations, and virtual prototyping of product designs. With 48GB of GPU memory, professionals can easily work with massive datasets and run workloads like data science or simulation with even larger model sizes.

NVIDIA A40 support with the latest vGPU software enables complex graphics workloads to be run in a virtualized environment with performance that is on par with bare metal.

“With support for NVIDIA’s latest vGPU software, and the new NVIDIA A40 with Citrix Hypervisor 8.2 and Citrix Virtual Desktops, we can continue providing the performance customers need to run graphics-intensive visualization applications as their data and workloads grow,” said Calvin Hsu, vice president of product management at Citrix. “The combination of Citrix and NVIDIA virtualization technologies provides access to these applications from anywhere, with an experience that is indistinguishable from a physical workstation.”

The NVIDIA vGPU January 2021 software release supports the NVIDIA A100 80GB to deliver increased memory bandwidth, unlocking more power for large models. This builds on the September release, which introduced compute features that included support for the NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPU, the most advanced GPU for AI and high performance computing.

Additional new features include simplified GPU management in Kubernetes through NVIDIA GPU Operator, which is now supported with NVIDIA Virtual Compute Server and NVIDIA RTX vWS software. Containers, including the GPU-optimized software available in the NGC catalog, can be easily deployed and managed in VMs.

With this new release, customers and IT professionals can continue managing their multi-tenant workflows running in virtual machines using popular hypervisors, like Red Hat Enterprise Linux, while the certified GPU Operator brings a similar experience to containerized deployments on top of Red Hat virtualization platforms using Red Hat OpenShift.  

“The combination of NVIDIA’s latest generation A40 GPU and NVIDIA vGPU software, supported with Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat Virtualization, offers a powerful platform capable of serving some of the most demanding workloads ranging from AI/ML to visualization in the oil and gas as well as media and entertainment industries,” said Steve Gordon, director of product management at Red Hat. “As organizations transform and increasingly use containers orchestrated by Kubernetes as key building blocks for their applications, we see Red Hat OpenShift as a likely destination for containerized and virtualized workloads alike.”

To find a certified server, see the NVIDIA vGPU Certified Server page.

Learn more about NVIDIA vGPU software portfolio, which includes:

• NVIDIA RTX Virtual Workstation (RTX vWS) (formerly known as Quadro Virtual Data Center Workstation or Quadro vDWS)
• NVIDIA Virtual Compute Server (vCS)
• NVIDIA Virtual PC (vPC) (formerly known as GRID vPC)
• NVIDIA Virtual Applications (vApps) (formerly known as GRID vApps)

_{1. Tested on a server with Intel Xeon Gold 6154 3.0GHz 3.7GHz Turbo, RHEL 8.2, vGPU 12.0 software, running four concurrent users per GPU, RTX6000P-6Q versus A40-12Q, running SPECviewperf 2020 Subtest 4K 3dsmax-07 composite.}

_{2. Iray 2020.1. Render time (seconds) of NVIDIA Endeavor scene.}

When it comes to autonomous vehicle sensor innovation, it’s best to keep an open mind — and an open development platform.

That’s why NVIDIA DRIVE is the chosen platform on which the majority of these sensors run.

In addition to camera sensors, NVIDIA has long recognized that lidar is a crucial component to an autonomous vehicle’s perception stack. By emitting invisible lasers at incredibly fast speeds, lidar sensors can paint a detailed 3D picture from the signals that bounce back instantaneously.

These signals create “point clouds” that represent a three-dimensional view of the environment, allowing lidar sensors to provide the visibility, redundancy and diversity that contribute to safe automated and autonomous driving.

Most recently, lidar makers Baraja, Hesai, Innoviz, Magna and Ouster have developed their offerings to run on the NVIDIA DRIVE platform to deliver robust performance and flexibility to customers.

These sensors offer differentiated capabilities for AV sensing, from Innoviz’s lightweight, affordable and long-range solid-state lidar to Baraja’s long wavelength, long-range sensors.

“The open and flexible NVIDIA DRIVE platform is a game changer in allowing seamless integration of Innoviz lidar sensors in endless new and exciting opportunities,” said Innoviz CEO Omer Keilaf.

Ouster’s OS series of sensors offers high resolution as well as programmable fields of view to address autonomous driving use cases. It also provides a camera-like image with its digital lidar system-on-a-chip for greater perception capabilities.

Hesai’s latest Pandar128 sensor offers a 360-degree horizontal field of view with a detection range from 0.3 to 200 meters. In the vertical field of view, it uses denser beams to allow for high resolution in a focused region of interest. The low minimum range reduces the blind spot area close to and in front of the lidar sensor.

“The Hesai Pandar128’s resolution and detection range enable object detection at greater distances, making it an ideal solution for highly automated and autonomous driving systems,” said David Li, co-founder and CEO of Hesai. “Integrating our sensor with NVIDIA’s industry-leading DRIVE platform will provide an efficient pathway for AV developers.”

With the addition of these companies, the NVIDIA DRIVE ecosystem addresses every autonomous vehicle development need with verified hardware.

Plug and Drive

Typically, AV developers experiment with different variations of a sensor suite, modifying the number, type and placement of sensors. These configurations are necessary to continuously improve a vehicle’s capabilities and test new features.

An open, flexible compute platform can facilitate these iterations for effective autonomous vehicle development. And the industry agrees, with more than 60 sensor makers — from camera suppliers such as Sony, to radar makers like Continental, to thermal sensing companies such as FLIR — choosing to develop their products with the NVIDIA DRIVE AGX platform.

Along with the compute platform, NVIDIA provides the infrastructure to experience chosen sensor configurations with NVIDIA DRIVE Sim — an open simulation platform with plug-ins for third-party sensor models. As an end-to-end autonomous vehicle solutions provider, NVIDIA has long been a close partner to the leading sensor manufacturers.

“Ouster’s flexible digital lidar platform, including the new OS0-128 and OS2-128 lidar sensors, gives customers a wide variety of choices in range, resolution and field of view to fit in nearly any application that needs high-performance, low-cost 3D imaging,” said Angus Pacala, CEO of Ouster. “With Ouster as a member of the NVIDIA DRIVE ecosystem, our customers can plug and play our sensors easier than ever.”

Laser Focused

The NVIDIA DRIVE ecosystem includes a diverse set of lidar manufacturers — including Velodyne and Luminar as well as tier-1 suppliers — specializing in different features such as wavelength, signaling technique, field of view, range and resolution. This variety gives users flexibility as well as room for customization for their specific autonomous driving application.

The NVIDIA DriveWorks software development kit includes a sensor abstraction layer that provides a simple and unified interface that streamlines the bring-up process for new sensors on the platform. The interface saves valuable time and effort for developers as they test and validate different sensor configurations.

“To achieve maximum autonomous vehicle safety, a combination of sensor technologies including radar and lidar is required to see in all conditions. NVIDIA’s open ecosystem approach allows OEMs and tier 1s to select the safest and most cost-effective sensor configurations for each application,” said Jim McGregor, principal analyst at Tirias Research.

The NVIDIA DRIVE ecosystem gives autonomous vehicle developers the flexibility to select the right types of sensors for their vehicles, as well as iterate on configurations for different levels of autonomy. As an open AV platform with premier choices, NVIDIA DRIVE puts the automaker in the driver’s seat.

AI, the most powerful technology of our time, demands a new generation of computers tuned and tested to drive it forward.

Starting today, data centers can get boot up a new class of accelerated servers from our partners to power their journey into AI and data analytics. Top system makers are delivering the first wave of NVIDIA-Certified Systems, the industry’s only servers tested for modern workloads.

These systems speed AI thanks to NVIDIA’s latest GPUs riding NVIDIA Mellanox networks. They spin up machine learning techniques that unearth insights from growing mounds of corporate data, gems that traditional systems miss.

Dell Technologies, GIGABYTE, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Inspur and Supermicro are all shipping certified servers today. NVIDIA is collaborating with top OEMs around the world to drive AI forward across every industry.

The first systems off the line using NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPUs include:

• Dell EMC PowerEdge R7525 and R740 rack servers
• GIGABYTE R281-G30, R282-Z96, G242-Z11, G482-Z54, G492-Z51 systems
• HPE Apollo 6500 Gen10 System and HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen10 Server
• Inspur NF5488A5
• Supermicro A+ Server AS -4124GS-TNR and AS -2124GQ-NART

They all carry the NVIDIA-Certified Systems badge that gives customers confidence they’re buying systems that meet NVIDIA’s best design practices. That means they can tackle the toughest tasks in machine learning, data analytics and more.

A Tipping Point for Enterprise AI

The systems arrive as leading corporations are getting traction in AI.

American Express is using the latest AI models for real-time fraud detection. Ford taps generative adversarial networks to generate data it needs to test self-driving cars. And Dominos applies AI to improve predictions of when orders will be ready for the 3 billion pizzas it delivers every year.

They are among many companies plugging into a powerful new form of computing, born on the web and now spreading into sectors from retail and logistics to banking and healthcare.

Gartner estimates 37 percent of all organizations have AI in production today and predicts that will double to 75 percent by 2024.

Scaling a Big Data Mountain

Companies seek strategic insights hidden in a rising mountain of data. Walmart, for example, processes more than 2.5 petabytes of data every hour.

AI models to sift through that data have grown in size by nearly 30,000x in just five years, driving the need for accelerated computing. And the diversity of models and workloads using them continues to expand, so businesses need the flexibility of GPUs.

The rising tide of data and the expanding AI models to sift through it are spawning an exponential increase in network traffic both in the data center and at the network’s edge. To cope, companies need a secure, reliable and high-speed infrastructure that scales efficiently.

Acing the Test for AI

NVIDIA-Certified Systems deliver the performance, programmability and secure throughput enterprise AI needs. They combine the computing power of GPUs based on the NVIDIA Ampere architecture with secure, high-speed NVIDIA Mellanox networking.

To pass the certification, the systems are tested across a broad range of workloads, from jobs that require multiple compute nodes to tasks that only need part of the power of a single GPU.

The systems are optimized to run AI applications from the NGC catalog, NVIDIA’s hub for GPU-optimized applications.

NGC is also the home for an expanding set of software development kits that bring AI to vertical markets such as healthcare (Clara) and robotics (Isaac). In addition, it holds frameworks that help companies get started in emerging use cases like recommendation systems (Merlin) and intelligent video analytics (Metropolis).

Specifically, NVIDIA-Certified Systems must pass tests on:

• Deep learning training and inference
• Machine learning algorithms
• Intelligent video analytics
• Network and storage offload

The tests focus on real-world use cases. They use popular AI frameworks and containers, all available in the NGC catalog.

As a result, NVIDIA-Certified Systems let every company access the same hardware and software behind some of the most powerful AI computers on the planet.

All of the world’s largest cloud service providers and eight of the world’s top 10 supercomputers are powered by NVIDIA technology. And NVIDIA-based systems lead in AI benchmarks such as MLPerf.

A Peek Under the Hood

NVIDIA-Certified Systems include powerful data center servers with as many as eight A100 GPUs and high-speed InfiniBand or Ethernet network adapters. Others are mainstream AI systems tailored to run AI at the edge of the corporate network.

OEMs certify the systems using NVIDIA Mellanox cables, switches and network cards such as ConnectX-6 InfiniBand or Ethernet adapters and BlueField-2 DPUs. In addition to high throughput at low latency, these adapters support multiple layers of security from a hardware root of trust at boot time to connection tracking for applications.

Every system was certified using either an NVIDIA Mellanox 8700 HDR 200G InfiniBand switch or the Mellanox SN3700 Ethernet switch.

All NVIDIA-Certified Systems are available with enterprise support across the full software stack, including support for open source code. That’s because we want to ensure enterprises across all vertical markets can quickly enjoy the benefits of AI.

With the latest systems from Dell Technologies, GIGABYTE, HPE, Inspur, and Supermicro, every company can start its own journey to enterprise AI.

To date, 14 servers from six systems makers are certified and ready to provide accelerated computing. They are among 70 systems from at least 11 system makers engaged in the program.

Stay tuned for news of more NVIDIA-Certified Systems from more partners.