Nvidia's New 9.4-petaflop Supercomputer Aims To Help Prepare Self-driving Cars

Certain, it might allow you to run all of the Minecraft shaders you might possibly install, but supercomputers tend to seek out themselves involved in actual beneficial work, like molecular modeling or weather prediction. Or, in the case of Nvidia's latest monolithic machine, it can be used to further self-driving-car know-how.

Nvidia on Monday unveiled the DGX SuperPOD. Now the 22nd-quickest supercomputer on the earth, it is meant to practice the algorithms and neural networks tucked away inside autonomous development automobiles, bettering the software program for better on-highway outcomes. Nvidia points out that a single automobile collecting AV data could generate 1 terabyte per hour -- multiply that out by a complete fleet of vehicles, and you may see why crunching loopy quantities of knowledge is necessary for something like this.

The DGX SuperPOD took just three weeks to assemble. Using 96 Nvidia DGX-2H supercomputers, comprised of 1,536 interconnected V100 Tensor Core GPUs, the whole shebang produces 9.Four petaflops of processing power. As an example for how beefy this system is, Nvidia pointed out that running a selected AI coaching mannequin used to take 25 days when the model first got here out, but the DGX SuperPOD can do it in underneath two minutes. Yet, it's not a terribly giant system -- Nvidia says its general footprint is about 400 times smaller than comparable choices, which may very well be built from thousands of particular person servers.

A supercomputer is but one part of a bigger ecosystem -- in spite of everything, it needs an information middle that can actually handle this kind of throughput. Nvidia says that corporations who need to use a solution like this, however lack the information-center infrastructure to take action, can rely on numerous partners that may lend their area to others. MINECRAFT

Whereas DGX SuperPOD is new, Nvidia's DGX supercomputers are already in use with varied manufacturers and corporations who need that type of crunching power. Nvidia stated in its blog put up that BMW, Continental and Ford are all utilizing DGX systems for various functions. As autonomous development continues to develop in scope, having this type of processing energy is going to prove all but vital.