NVIDIA announced its GPU Cloud (NGC), a cloud-based platform designed to develop AI easily.
Speaking at the eighth annual GPU Technology Conference, NVIDIA CEO and founder Jensen Huang said that NGC will make it easier for developers to access the latest, optimized deep learning frameworks and the newest GPU computing resources.
“We’re designing a cloud platform that will unleash AI developers, so they can build a smarter world,” said Jim McHugh, vice president and general manager at NVIDIA. “You can do your best work no matter where you are, using our latest technology in the cloud. It’s accelerated computing when and where you need it.”
Developers and data scientists face the challenge to gather software components– including deep learning frameworks, libraries, operating system and drivers– into a single stack. Another hurdle is getting access to the latest GPU computing resources to train a neural network.
Nvidia said it has solved the first challenge earlier this year by combining the key software elements within the NVIDIA DGX-1 AI supercomputer into a containerized package. As part of the NGC, this package, called the NGC Software Stack, will be more widely available and kept updated and optimized for maximum performance.
To address the hardware challenge, NGC will give developers the flexibility to run the NGC Software Stack on a PC (equipped with a TITAN X or GeForce GTX 1080 Ti), on a DGX system or from the cloud.
In another announcement, the company said it is collaborating with Toyota to deliver artificial intelligence hardware and software technologies that will enhance the capabilities of autonomous driving systems planned for market introduction within the next few years.
Toyota, one of the world’s largest automakers, will use the NVIDIA DRIVE PX AI car computer platform to power advanced autonomous driving systems planned for market introduction.
Engineering teams from the two companies are already developing sophisticated software on NVIDIA’s AI platform, enabling Toyota vehicles to better understand the massive volume of data generated by sensors on the car, and to handle the broad spectrum of autonomous driving situations.
Further, NVIDIA CEO and founder Jensen Huang introduced the NVIDIA Isaac robot simulator, which utilizes sophisticated video-game and graphics technologies to train intelligent machines in simulated real-world conditions before they get deployed.
The company also introduced a set of robot reference-design platforms that make it faster to build such machines using the NVIDIA Jetson platform.
“Robots based on artificial intelligence hold enormous promise for improving our lives, but building and training them has posed significant challenges,” Huang said.
At GTC, more than 50 companies from around the world are showing robots capable of a huge range of capabilities, all of which incorporate NVIDIA’s Jetson platform.
