Computer graphics giant Nvidia Corporation (NASDAQ: NVDA) has taken important steps towards artificial intelligence, as it was demonstrated by the release of the Tesla P100 silicone chip, “the largest chip that has ever been made” according to Jen-Hsun Huang, Nvidia’s CEO.
This is a bold move as Intel Corp revealed a similar technology just a couple of days ago, but it appears that the Tesla P100 doubled the capacities of the devices revealed by Intel. Nvidia’s CEO stated that the chip contains over 15 billion transistors and that it will be acquired firstly by cloud computing services. The company is expected to release a supercomputer carrying the astounding amount of eight Tesla P100 chips, alongside many applications to develop artificial intelligence.
What is it good for?
Nvidia’s next supercomputer, known as DGX-1, is to include 7TB of storage. The DGX-1 will have a neural network training software, although it is expected that developers will create their own frameworks for their projects. The intelligent learning system aims to simulate human patterns of thought, which is able to collect and analyze large amounts of data, and subsequently perform tasks with enormous precision.
This type of computer systems is used to interpret images, objects, statistics and anything that could be intertwined into a pattern. The area of artificial intelligence has come a long way in such a short time, as computing engineering has less than 80 years old since it began as a science.
Nvidia has taken a safe and ambitious decision as virtual reality hardware is already being sold. Facebook, HTC and Google are also working at virtual reality systems, to which Nvidia seems to have a very clear and concise statement on the whole matter, mainly because Nvidia’s systems and hardware are already being used to fuel virtual reality software and hardware, alongside artificial intelligence systems.
Jen-Hsun Huang commented that they will set a great deal of effort in developing 360 perspective through a project named Iray VR. It is expected to be a great addition for professionals in engineering and industrial design, as it will allow the user to personally witness, for example, a car’s interior in first person. There are also plans of working alongside NASA to develop a virtual reality experience of Mars’ surface.
Source: Fortune