Advanced business analytics and intelligence software providing company SAS partners with Clemson University to deploy artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) software for education and research.
The new partnership will provide SAS’ advanced data science and analytics tools to Clemson students and faculty as a part of a new $3.3 million commitment to assist teaching and academic research.
Students and faculty at Clemson, including those at the Watt Household Innovation Center, will have access to SAS knowledge science and assessment tools for aiding educational training and research.
CEO of SAS Jim Goodnight said, “Clemson’s students, faculty and researchers will be able to use the latest industry-leading SAS AI and advanced analytics software to learn new skills and generate new breakthroughs.”
The company mentioned that its partnership with Clemson gives students who know SAS Viya and other analytics skills a competitive advantage. SAS Viya, the company’s flagship artificial intelligence and data analytics platform, allows users to turn raw data into actionable insights.
Clemson researchers will be able to use the massive data sets generated by SAS Viya to investigate a range of essential topics, including racial inequities in education, addiction, wildlife disease, agriculture, and the human genome. SAS is used in Clemson’s courses to better educate students for employment in multiple sectors, such as healthcare, finance, government, and other fields.
Additionally, SAS will also offer faculty and staff teaching materials to assist them in incorporating SAS into their curriculum and research.
Founding dean of the College of Science, Cynthia Young, said, “By integrating SAS into coursework, we’re helping strengthen literacy in data science.”
She further added that their students become more competitive, their alumni become more successful, and the state and nation gain a workforce that understands SAS and is better prepared to advance various industries through data.
Nvidia GTC 2022 began on March 21 and ended on March 24. Highlights of the event were CEO Jensen Huang’s keynote address on AI advancements, Omniverse, GPU for data centers, etc. Huang’s digital avatar, dressed like him, made several appearances throughout the speech.
Nvidia is the world’s largest graphics processing unit manufacturer, or GPU; a chip first used to accelerate graphics in gaming technology. Since then, Nvidia has steadily found new use cases for the GPU, including artificial intelligence (AI), autonomous vehicles, 3D video rendering, genomics, digital twins, etc.
Following are the major announcements:
RTX Professional GPUs
Nvidia launched seven new GPUs for laptops and desktops based on Nvidia Ampere architecture, including third-gen Tensor Cores, second-gen RT cores, and CUDA Cores. The announced GPUs include RTX A500, Nvidia RTX A5500, RTX A2000 8GB, RTX A3000 12GB, RTX A1000, and RTX A4500. The Nvidia RTX A5500 desktop GPUs are already available through select channel partners from March 23. The GPU will be launched globally by the second quarter of the year.
Grace CPU Superchip
Grace CPU Superchip is the name of Nvidia’s new Arm Neoverse-based discrete data center CPU. It’s specifically designed for AI infrastructure that requires high-performance computing. The company claims that this new Superchip’s performance is twice that of similar options available in the market. Nvidia’s computing software stacks, such as Nvidia HPC, Nvidia AI, Nvidia RTXTM, and Omniverse, will run on the Grace CPU Superchip. This super chip is similar to Grace Hopper Superchip, the first CPU-GPU module released by Nvidia last year. The grace CPU super will offer record performance, energy economy, memory bandwidth, and configuration for the most demanding computer applications like data analytics, scientific computing, hyperscale computing, and artificial intelligence.
DRIVE Sim
One of the new launches at the Nvidia SPRING 2022 GPO technology conference was a new AI tool for its DRIVE Sim. This unique technology can accurately reconstruct and modify real driving scenarios, which have been possible because of Nvidia’S research breakthroughs such as omniverse platforms and drive maps. According to the demonstration by Jensen Haung, the founder and CEO of Nvidia, the tool will enable developers to test driving scenarios with rapid iteration. The system uses LIDAR, camera, and vehicle data from real-world driving scenarios to reproduce incidents that improve the training of autonomous vehicle systems.
DGX H100 System
Nvidia’s DGX 100 System is powered by Nvidia H100 Tensor nCore GPUs. It contains eight Nvidia H100 GPUs, delivering 32 petaflops of AI performance at new FP8 precision. The new DGX100 system is 6x faster than the previous generation. The next-generation Nvidia DGX SuperPOD and Nvidia DGX POD AI infrastructure platforms will be built on DGX H100 systems. Eos, a new, powerful supercomputer launched at the same Nvidia GTC 2022 event, demonstrates these advancements.
EOS
Eos supercomputer is based on DGX H100, the fourth-generation DGX system (also launched at the same event) and is powered by octuple NVLink-connected H100 GPUs. Eos will contain 18 32-DGX H100 Pods for 576 DGX H100 systems; 4,608 H100 GPUs; 500 Quantum-2 InfiniBand switches; and 360 NVLink switches. It will offer an incredible 18 exaflops of AI performance, and Nvidia expects it to be the world’s fastest AI supercomputer when it’s deployed.
Isaac Nova Orin
The newly launched Issac Nova Orin architecture and Jetson AGX Orin developer kit will accelerate the development of autonomous mobile robots. Isaac Nova Orin, built on Nvidia Jetson AGX Orin edge AI system, is a cutting-edge compute and sensor reference platform to help accelerate the creation of autonomous mobile robots (AMRs). It features high-performance artificial intelligence processing capability along with state-of-an-art sensor technology.
Accelerated digital twins platform
The Accelerated digital twins’ platform consists of the Modulus AI framework for developing physics-machine learning neural network models and Nvidia Omniverse 3D virtual world simulation platform. It can create interactive AI simulations in real-time. This platform can accurately reflect the real world and accelerate simulations like computational fluid dynamics up to 10,000 times faster than traditional methods. The goal is to make it easier for researchers to model complex systems at higher accuracy and speed observed with previous models.
DRIVE Hyperion 9
DRIVE Hyperion 9 is the next-generation open platform for automated and autonomous vehicles launched at Nvidia GTC 2022. It is a programmable architecture created on multiple DRIVE Atlan computers to achieve in-cabin functionality and intelligent driving. Hyperion 9 is compatible across versions, and users can migrate to DRIVE Atlan and beyond and leverage current investments in the DRIVE Orin platform.
Leading autonomous vehicle manufacturing company Tesla announced the opening of its first European Gigafactory located near Berlin, Germany.
This milestone marks the commencement of Tesla’s first European hub, which was first announced two years ago. CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk, and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz attend the inauguration event of Tesla’s newly established Gruenheide plant.
Musk has announced Master Plan Part 3 for Tesla, which he claims would skyrocket the company’s scaling. In addition to the opening, Musk also rolled out the first batch of Model Y cars to the customers.
Thirty customers and their families cheered as Musk danced and joked with fans as they caught the first view of their cars via a glittering, neon-lit Tesla-branded tunnel.
Musk wanted the plant to begin its operations eight months ago, but local authorities claim that the factory got established in a remarkable time considering the size of the project.
According to the plans, the Gigafactory will hire more than 12,000 employees, making it the largest employer in the region. Shortly, Tesla’s new plant will achieve a peak manufacturing capacity of 500,000 cars annually and generate 50-gigawatt hours of battery capacity through its battery plant, which will be the highest in Germany.
Moreover, Musk stated that a test version of Tesla’s new “Full Self-Driving” software would be released in Europe next year after getting regulatory permission from concerned authorities.
Hubertus Bardt from the German Economic Institute said to DW, “After one year, Tesla decided to also build a battery factory there, meaning that the approval process had to start from the beginning — so the whole process didn’t actually take too long considering the difficult issues involved.”
However, this episode has also invited criticism over the issue of excessive water consumption as the plant was built over a considerably short period of time.
Multinational camera technology and social media company Snap acquired next-generation brain-computer interface startup NextMind to accelerate the development of future augmented reality (AR) glasses.
The companies did not provide any information regarding the valuation of this acquisition deal. Snap Lab has added NextMind to help drive long-term augmented reality research activities.
Snap Lab is a hardware development team of the company tasked with developing products for Snap’s AR platform.
According to the company, Snap Lab’s products, such as Spectacles, look into the possibilities for the Snap Camera’s future. The hardware team is now working on the future of artificial intelligence in Snap Camera and Spectacles.
Snap AR is aimed at content creators worldwide, with the goal of revolutionizing how digital content is created and explored. This acquisition of NextMind will drastically boost Snap Lab’s offerings by utilizing NextMind’s expertise in the domain.
As a part of the acquisition deal, the first product from NextMind, a $400 headband developer kit released two years ago, will be discontinued. However, the company’s twenty workers will continue to work for Snap Lab in France.
Snap mentioned in a blog, “Spectacles are an evolving, iterative research and development project, and the latest generation is designed to support developers as they explore the technical bounds of augmented reality.”
In the past, Snap has acquired multiple companies working in the augmented reality domain, including WaveOptics, which it bought last year. Additionally, Snap is also hiring extensively for various roles at multiple locations. Interested candidates can apply from the official website of Snap.
Paris-based brain-computer interface company NextMind was founded by Gwendal Kerdavid and Sid Kouider in 2017. NextMind is best known for developing a non-invasive brain-computer interface (BCI) technology to make it simpler to interact with electronic devices without using hands. To date, the startup has raised $4.6 million from investors like Bpifrance, Nordic Makers, and others in its seed funding round.
NVIDIA showcases a new artificial intelligence (AI) tool for its DRIVE Sim to advance autonomous vehicle development during the recently held Spring 2022 GPU Technology Conference (GTC).
The unique technology was able to accurately reconstruct and modify actual driving scenarios. NVIDIA mentioned in a blog that these capabilities are made possible by NVIDIA Research breakthroughs, including the NVIDIA Omniverse platform and NVIDIA DRIVE Map.
The tool was demonstrated by the founder and CEO of NVIDIA, Jensen Huang. According to the demonstration, the tool will enable developers to quickly test multiple road scenarios with rapid iteration.
Any situation can be reproduced in simulation and used as the basis for various changes, such as modifying the trajectory of an approaching car or adding an impediment to the driving path, allowing developers to enhance the AI driver.
Developers can use a camera, lidar, and vehicle data from real-world drives to reproduce incidents, helping them better train autonomous vehicle systems.
Moreover, virtual reconstruction allows engineers to identify potentially tricky conditions in which to train and evaluate the AV system. The technology can drastically help developers boost continuous AV training, testing, and validation pipeline.
Nevertheless, NVIDIA also mentioned that this is a complicated process that requires the expertise of engineers and artists as it takes a long time and a lot of effort to recreate real-world driving scenarios and generate real data from them in simulation.
“NVIDIA has implemented two AI-based methods to seamlessly perform this process: virtual reconstruction and neural reconstruction. The first replicates the real-world scenario as a fully synthetic 3D scene, while the second uses neural simulation to augment real-world sensor data,” mentioned the blog.
Tech giant NVIDIA might soon use Intel’s foundry service to manufacture its chips. The development was hinted at by the founder and CEO of NVIDIA, Jensen Huang.
According to him, Nvidia is considering leveraging Intel’s new foundry company to manufacture chips, but any agreement will take time to establish.
Huang wants to diversify his company’s suppliers as much as possible. Thus he is thinking about partnering with Intel, which is one of the world’s largest semiconductor manufacturers.
Over the last few years, Intel has pledged to transform itself into a chip manufacturer for the world, opening its factories to manufacture chips designed by anybody willing to pay.
Nvidia currently builds its products with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Samsung Electronics Co. Huang mentioned that foundry conversations take a long time as their ties with TSMC and Samsung in the past have taken years to develop. Whether the partnership between NVIDIA and Intel gets solidified is yet to be seen.
Reuters reported that Intel’s shares rose by 2.5% following Huang’s comments. “I’m sure he’s interested in having more options … and it doesn’t cost him anything to say that. But it doesn’t tell you anything at all about what it’s actually going to look like when they get there,” said Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon.
Huang stated that trusting and working with industry partners is critical, and Nvidia has historically partnered with a number of such companies, including Intel. He added that sharing chip designs with their competition Intel’s foundry services is not a concern for him.
Retail grocery company Kroger partners with technology giant NVIDIA to improve its grocery stores using NVIDIA’s cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) technology.
Through digital twin simulations, Kroger and NVIDIA will establish a next-gen artificial intelligence lab and demonstration center to enhance Kroger’s freshness programs, improve shipping operations, and offer a better shopping experience in stores.
The companies said that the newly announced artificial intelligence lab would be built in Kroger’s Cincinnati-based headquarters office located in the United States.
According to the plan, the NVIDIA AI Enterprise software suite will be used for retail, NVIDIA Omniverse Enterprise will be deployed to develop digital twin simulations, and NVIDIA cuOpt to investigate logistical efficiencies.
Vice President and General Manager of Retail at NVIDIA, Azita Martin, said, “NVIDIA and Kroger’s collaboration on AI and digital twins will further expand Kroger’s digital technology leadership.”
She further added that Kroger already provides exceptional customer service in its stores and quick home delivery. Now, with the help of NVIDIA AI, shoppers will get more personalized experiences in real locations.
NVIDIA said that the initial installation would use nine NVIDIA DGX A100 systems, NVIDIA InfiniBand networking, and NVIDIA RTX workstations to acquire relevant data from 2,800 store locations across the United States.
The collaboration will allow the companies to find out how NVIDIA’s technology can perform the following tasks-
Detect early signs of deteriorating freshness using computer vision and analytics.
Use dynamic routing for last-mile delivery to assure freshness of delivered products.
Optimize store efficiency and processes with digital twin store simulation.
Vice President of Technology Transformation and Research & Development at Kroger, Wesley Rhodes, said, “Our collaboration with NVIDIA supports Kroger’s ‘Fresh for Everyone’ commitment.” He also mentioned that they are excited to learn more about how AI and data analytics can help them give anything, anytime, anywhere to their customers.
In the recent GTC 2022 event, NVIDIA announced the launch of its new Arm Neoverse-based discrete data center CPU named NVIDIA Grace CPU Superchip.
The CPU has been specifically designed for artificial intelligence infrastructure and high-performance computing. NVIDIA claims that its Grace CPU Superchip offers two times the performance when compared with other similar options available in the market.
NVIDIA’s Grace CPU Superchip comes with two CPU chips linked together using NVIDIA’s novel high-speed, low-latency chip-to-chip interconnect, NVLink-C2C.
According to NVIDIA, its computing software stacks, including NVIDIA RTXTM, NVIDIA HPC, NVIDIA AI, and Omniverse, will all run on the Grace CPU Superchip.
Founder and CEO of NVIDIA, Jensen Huang, said, “A new type of data center has emerged — AI factories that process and refine mountains of data to produce intelligence.” He further added that the Grace CPU Superchip combines the best performance, memory bandwidth, and NVIDIA software platforms into a single chip that will shine as the AI infrastructure’s CPU.
The Grace CPU Superchip is similar to NVIDIA’s Grace Hopper Superchip, which was the company’s first CPU-GPU combined module released last year. The similarity between the two chips include the CPU architecture, and the NVLink-C2C interconnect.
Grace CPU Superchip has 144 Arm cores in a single socket with a projected best-in-class performance of 740 on the SPECrate®2017_int_base benchmark. The powerful Grace Superchip is built on the latest data center architecture, Arm V9, which combines the best single-threaded core performance with compatibility for Arm’s new generation of vector extensions to provide unmatched performance.
Additionally, its revolutionary memory subsystem, which consists of LPDDR5x memory with Error Correction Code for the best balance of performance and power consumption, also provides industry-leading energy efficiency and memory bandwidth.
With the record performance, memory bandwidth, energy economy, and configurability, the Grace CPU Superchip will thrive at the most demanding high-performance computing, artificial intelligence, data analytics, scientific computing, and hyper-scale computing applications.
Global tech giant NVIDIA announces the launch of its new range of RTX professional GPUs during its recently held Spring 2022 GPU Technology Conference (GTC).
NVIDIA unveiled seven new GPUs for desktops and laptops based on Nvidia Ampere architecture, including second-gen RT cores, third-gen Tensor Cores, and CUDA Cores.
The announced GPUs include Nvidia RTX A5500, RTX A500, RTX A1000, RTX A2000 8GB, RTX A3000 12GB, and RTX A4500.
The RTX A5500 with 16GB of RAM is NVIDIA’s new flagship laptop GPU, capable of handling the most demanding 3D and video applications. Moreover, it provides two times the rendering performance when compared with its previous generation RTX 5000.
According to the company, its RTX A5500 desktop GPUs are already available through select channel partners from March 23. The GPU will be launched globally by the second quarter of the year.
NVIDIA’s new laptop GPUs come with the latest RTX and Max-Q technology, offering unmatched performance in the thin and light notebook category. The A2000 8GB, RTX A3000 12GB, and RTX A4500 each have twice the memory of their predecessors, allowing them to handle larger models and multi-app workloads.
Additionally, NVIDIA announced the launch of its new Studio range of laptops in collaboration with ASUS and MSI.
The ASUS ProArt Studiobook 16 is a high-performance laptop that can be customized with various professional and consumer GPUs. The powerful laptop features a 16-inch 120 Hz 3.2K OLED wide-view 16:10 display with certified color accuracy, a three-button touchpad for 3D designers, an ASUS dial for video editing, and an extended touchpad for stylus compatibility.
The MSI laptops named Z16P and Z17 offer True Pixel display with QHD+ resolution and 100 percent DCI-P3 color. The laptops feature NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti or RTX A5500 GPUs.
Enterprise software developing company Locofy.ai raises $3 million in its recently held pre-seed funding round led by Accel, January Capital, Golden Gate Ventures, and Boldcap.
Angel investors and tech founders from Ola, Hasura, Holistics, Wego, GajiGesa, 1Bstories, Ohmyhome, CyberSierra, Wekan, and Canva’s former Head of Growth were among those that participated in the round.
According to Locofy.ai, it plans to use the freshly raised funds to expand its engineering and data science teams to accelerate product development.
Abhinav Chaturvedi, a partner at Accel India, said, “It takes an enormous amount of time and bandwidth of the frontend team to translate sparkling designs into precise code.”
He further added that Locofy.ai would address this issue by delivering high-quality translation and dynamic variable flexibility. Additionally, Locofy.ai also launched its global beta program and has already automated over two million lines of code.
Locofy.ai says that a shortage of qualified technical personnel has become a global issue that the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated. Using high-productivity low-code development platforms like Locofy.ai, companies are solving this problem.
The newly generated funds will allow Locofy.ai to further enhance the capabilities of its platform. Interested users can visit Locofy.ai’s official website to try out the company product for free.
Singapore-based software startup Locofy.ai was founded by Honey Mittal and Sohaib Muhammad in 2021. The firm specializes in providing a service that converts designs into code. The unique solution lets developers and designers work faster with its low-code platform that translates designs to production-ready code.
The goal of Locofy.ai is to eliminate engineers’ routine tasks without adding complexity by automating 50% or more of the present workflow, beginning with frontend code.
“Overtook an army of good developers to build world-class products like Airbnb and Uber. We believe that will look very different in the next decade,” said co-founder and CEO of Locofy.ai Honey Mittal.
