Nvidia at GTC: No GTX 11, Hello DGX

Graphics industrial powerhouse did not reveal any information on the upcoming GTX 11 series at this year’s Graphics Technology Conference. In fact, most of the keynote focused on enterprise technology rather than gaming. Still, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang revealed a few interesting toys coming up in the near future. After all, whether it’s for gaming or for commercial use, bringing the future today is what a tech convention is all about.

Nvidia Reveals Quadro GV100

First up is the Quadro GV100, and it is one beast of a graphics processor. It possesses 10000 CUDA cores and 236 teraflops of Tensor cores for a total of 64GB VRAM. The GV100 processes photorealistic computer graphics through real-time ray tracing. Long considered the holy grail of CGI, this process simulates the behavior of light, creating realistic shines, reflections, glare, etc. The secret is the company’s RTX technology which enables the GPU to accomplish this in real time.

As a high-end enterprise level GPU, the GV100 will probably cost a hefty sum. The unit used for the demonstration was a $68,000 Nvidia DGX Station powered by four of these GPUs.

Medical Imaging with Project: Clara

According to Nvidia, updating every imaging system in the field would take 30 years. There are over 3 million units installed, and only 100,000 units sold every year. Project: Clara aims to solve this through inferential AI technology. Simply streaming a 15-year old ultrasound scan into Clara’s data center allows the printer to create a full 3D model.

Next up is one of the most important applications of modern GPU technology: medical imaging. Huang defines Clara as a “virtualized data center, remoted, multi-modality, multi-user.” It processes all media of medical imaging including as ultrasounds, MRIs, or CT scans.

The DGX-2 Supercomputer

Speaking of DGX, Nvidia also unveiled what Huang refers to as “the world’s most powerful computer.” Behold the DGX-2. This monster of a machine weighs 350 lbs, and crunches in at 2 petaflops, 512 GB, and 10kW. With 14 TB/s of bandwidth, it possesses 200 times that of the world’s fastest NIC, and can potentially download 1,440 movies in a single second. It is 10 times more powerful than its predecessor, the DGX-1, released only 6 months ago.

Huang places the DGX-2 at the $399,000 mark. “This replaces $3M of 300 dual-CPU servers consuming 180 kilowatts. This is 1/8^th the cost, 1/60^th of the space, 18^th the power.”

The Nvidia Holo-deck

Straight out of sci-fi, the Holo-deck brings children’s visions of the future into reality. The VR of the Holo-deck renders a car and an environment, which an operator can then interact with. While this sounds like a standard video game concept so far, the actual application of the technology lies in remotely piloting vehicles in real time. Imagine the remote system featured in the recent Black Panther movie, or the computer-rendered vehicles from the Matrix.