BENGALURU: Every year, Nvidia GTC (GPU Technology Conference) generates great interest among developers, researchers, and IT professionals as the conference witnesses informative discussions on the latest tech advancements and trends by experts. Over the past 15 years, GTC has grown to be the world's most important AI conference. This year, the conference was held between March 18 and 21 at San Jose, California, and the excitement was around 6G, intelligent robots, among others.
Takeaways from GTC
In his keynote address, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang, who unveiled high-speed AI graphics processors called Blackwell, NIM microservices, and Omniverse Cloud APIs, said accelerated computing has reached a tipping point and that general-purpose computing has run out of steam. "We need another way of doing computing: so that we can continue to scale; so that we can continue to drive down the cost of computing; so that we can continue to consume more and more computing while being sustainable. Accelerated computing is a dramatic speedup over general-purpose computing, in every single industry,” he said.
Huang announced Project GR00T, a general-purpose foundation model for humanoid robots. At GTC, he brought on stage a pair of diminutive Nvidia-powered robots from Disney Research. "The soul of Nvidia - the intersection of computer graphics, physics, and artificial intelligence... It all came to bear at this moment,” he said.
Blackwell enables organisations everywhere to build and run real-time generative AI on trillion-parameter large language models at up to 25x less cost and energy consumption than its predecessor. The company also announced a 6G research platform, which is open, flexible and interconnected, offering researchers a comprehensive suite to advance AI for radio access network (RAN) technology. The platform allows organisations to accelerate the development of 6G technologies that will connect trillions of devices with the cloud infrastructures.
"The future convergence of 6G and AI holds the promise of a transformative technological landscape," said Charlie Zang, senior vice-president of Samsung Research America. "This will bring seamless connectivity and intelligent systems that will redefine our interactions with the digital world, ushering in an era of unparalleled innovation and connectivity,” he said.
From generative AI to robotics to automotive, the latest autonomous vehicle technology, GTC 2024 had it all. Many leading automotive and robotics companies showcased next-generation vehicles and autonomous machines at the event. Twenty-five robots ranging from humanoids to industrial manipulators were displayed at the conference.
Also, leading AI application developers across a wide range of industries are using the company's digital human technologies to create lifelike avatars for commercial applications and dynamic game characters. Experts also spoke about the rise of multi-modal AI, which can process diverse data types handled by different models. At GTC, the company inked various partnerships. Microsoft is expanding its collaboration with Nvidia to bring the power of generative AI, the cloud and accelerated computing to healthcare and life sciences organisations.
"The convergence of AI, cloud computing and healthcare is set to transform patient care," said Kimberly Powell, vice-president of healthcare at Nvidia. The expanded collaboration will extend opportunities for healthcare providers, pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, and medical device developers to innovate rapidly across clinical research, drug discovery and care delivery.