If you’re involved with virtual reality, self-driving cars or any discipline where Deep Learning is involved, Nvidia’s GPU Technology conference, held in San Jose April 4-7, is the hot ticket for 2016. Even a brief look at the sessions listed in the program will tell you that the once-humble Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) is now being used to solve some of the world’s most advanced technical challenges. We’ll be covering several of the developments announced at the conference in upcoming stories but for now here’s a quick sampler of the sights, sounds, and ideas you’ll encounter at GTC 2016.
Visit the Drone Zones – Smart drones are a hot topic at GTC16 so the conference has created two separate netted cages for live demos of drones equipped with embedded GPU technology. One drone uses its GPU to map out a simulated terrain. Another tiny flyer navigates randomly-placed aisles in a simulated warehouse while noting the location and orientation of each box on the shelves. In the outside Drone Zone another manufacturer demonstrates its machine’s ability to identify and track a person, even when they’re in a crowd or partially obscured by smoke.
Experience VR Up Close & Personal at The VR Village – Nvidia and its partners have set up a suite of demos which give you the chance to check out some of the latest VR gear and applications. There’s usually a long line but it’s worth the 15 to 20-minute wait to don a headset and dive into your choice of virtual experiences. During my first visit to VR Village, I learned how to paint in 3D and took a virtual tour of Nvidia’s yet-to-be built headquarters. The experiences were so compelling that I braved the lines for a second visit where I got to preflight and fly an F-14 Tomcat and swing a lightsaber for the Rebel Alliance alongside some of my favorite Star Wars characters.
Hang Out at an Nvidia Hang Out – With all the cool hardware on display, it might seem a bit odd that a bunch of white boards would be one of the most exciting things at GTC until you realize who’s hanging out around them. These strategically-placed geek magnets serve as meeting places where some of the sharpest minds I’ve encountered. As evidenced by the scrawlings on the white boards, the topics being kicked around are diverse, ranging from self-learning schema to genetic algorithm generation. And don’t forget to check out some of the poster session posters which are adjacent to the Hang Out Zones!
RoboRace: Championship Racing, No Driver – RoboRace may be the ultimate geek challenge competition, which fuses AI with automotive engineering. There are several conference sessions dedicated to the race series where teams of programmers and engineers will pit their self-driving algorithms against each other in full-size, driverless electric cars that are reputed to be “Crazy Fast”.
Deep Learning in a Box – Normally, a product would not make my Top 5 list but I made an exception for Nvidia’s DGX-1, a Deep Learning supercomputer crammed into a 2U rack server form factor. Comprised of 8 of Tesla GP100 GPU modules and 128GB of memory, the DGX1 is optimized for Deep Learning applications and delivers 170TFLOPS of computing power – the equivalent of 250 top-line server boxes. Besides Deep Learning applications, that’s enough compute power to do things like real-time visualization of combustion simulations (see the photo gallery for examples).