Academics Mory Gharib and Alireza Ramezani in 2020 were spitballing a transforming robot that is now getting a shot at work that’s literally out of this world: NASA Mars Rover missions.
Caltech has unveiled its multi-talented robot that can fly, drive, walk and do eight permutations of motions through a combination of its skills. They call it the Multi-Modal Mobility Morphobot, or M4, which is enabled by the NVIDIA Jetson platform for edge AI and robotics.
“It grew in the number of functions that we wanted to do,” said Gharib, a professor of aeronautics and bioinspired engineering at Caltech. “When we proposed it to our design team, at first they all said, ‘no.’”
Caltech funded its initial research, and NASA and its Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) funded its next phase and brought in Ramezani, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Northeastern University, as a faculty researcher at JPL last summer to develop it further.
Its M42 version is now under development at NASA as a Mars Rover candidate and has interest from the U.S. Department of Transportation, Gharib said.
“At NASA, we’re being tested right now for transforming while landing,” he said.
And since recently releasing a paper on it in Nature Communications, Gharib says he’s been inundated with proposals.
“We’re kind of dizzy about how it suddenly got so much attention,” he said. “Different organizations want to do different things and are coming to approach us.”
Firefighting, Search and Rescue Operations
The Caltech team behind the paper — Gharib and Ramezani, as well as Eric Sihite, a postdoctoral scholar research associate in aerospace at Caltech; Arash Kalantari, from JPL; and Reza Nemovi, a design engineer at CAST — said the M4 is designed for diverse mission requirements in search and rescue, among other areas.
For example, when it’s not feasible to roll or walk into areas — like fire zones — it can fly and do reconnaissance to assess situations using its cameras and sensors.
According to Gharib, multiple fire departments in the Los Angeles area have contacted Gharib with interest in the M4.
“For first responders, this is huge because you need to land in a safe area and then drive into the situation,” he said.
Versatile Drone Deliveries to Get the Job Done
Caltech’s team also aims to solve complications with drone deliveries using the M4. Drone deliveries are the “low hanging fruit,” for this robot, said Gharib.
Traditional drones for deliveries are problematic because nobody wants drones landing near their home or business for safety reasons, he said. The M4 can land somewhere isolated from people and then drive to finish deliveries, making it a safer option, he added.
The M4 can also fly into areas where truck deliveries might have a difficult time getting into or can’t offer delivery service at all.
“There are a lot of places where truck deliveries can’t go,” he said.
Right now, the M4 is capable of traveling as fast as 40 mph, and its battery can last up to 30 minutes on a charge. But the team is working to design larger drones with longer flight times, bigger payloads and increased travel distances.
Just like that, summer falls into September, and some of the most anticipated games of the year, like the Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty expansion, PAYDAY 3 and Party Animals, are dropping into the GeForce NOW library at launch this month.
They’re part of 24 new games hitting the cloud gaming service in September. And the next Game Pass title to join the cloud at launch is Sea of Stars, part of 13 new games this week.
Keep an eye on GFN Thursday to see the next Microsoft titles joining the cloud this month, including Quake II, Gears Tactics and Halo Infinite.
Plus, NVIDIA has worked with Google to give Chromebook owners a new offer that includes three free months of a GeForce NOW Priority membership. GeForce NOW cloud gaming goes perfectly together with Chromebooks, which provide up to 1,600p resolution and 120Hz+ displays.
Party Hard in the Cloud
The cloud is about to get wild.
Make painfully great memories with friends in Party Animals, a hilarious, physics-based party brawler from Recreate Games and Source Technology. Fight friends as adorable puppies, mischievous kittens, magical unicorns or other fuzzy creatures or terrorize them as fearsome sharks and ferocious dinosaurs to be the last one standing.
Battle it out by picking up an assortment of weapons to get an edge over others or punch, toss, jump, kick and headbutt others in the brawl. Bring the action across multiple game modes — each requires a different strategy to win.
Get fierce for party game night, whether playing with friends locally on the couch or across devices online. Party Animals joins the cloud at launch on Thursday, Sept. 21.
Work Hard, Play Hard
Shiny new GeForce NOW offers for Chromebook owners.
One of the best ways to stream games from GeForce NOW is with the new Cloud Gaming Chromebooks, which feature screens that display beautiful scenes at up to 1,600p and 120Hz+.
Chromebook gamers can jump right into 100+ free-to-play titles and over 1,600 hit games, like Baldur’s Gate 3, Remnant II, supported games from the Xbox PC Game Pass library and more. GeForce NOW Priority members can also explore the worlds of Cyberpunk 2077, Control and other titles with RTX ON, and Ultimate members can level up and access new NVIDIA technologies like DLSS 3.5 in upcoming games like Alan Wake 2 and Portal with RTX. Compete online with ultra-low latency and other features perfect for playing.
Starting today, Google and NVIDIA are offering all Chromebook owners three free months of a GeForce NOW Priority membership to get gamers started. And those interested in leveling up to an Ultimate membership, the highest-performing tier, are already able to get three free months of a GeForce NOW Ultimate membership with the purchase of a Cloud Gaming Chromebook. Find more details on how to redeem the offer in Google’s Keyword blog or on the Chromebooks Perks page.
New Games as Far as the Eye Can Sea
Time to sea the stars from the cloud.
New games come with each GFN Thursday, and this week’s batch includes Sea of Stars from Sabotage Studio. A retro-inspired role-playing game drawing from classics like Chrono Trigger, it features a vibrant world, a dynamic combat system and a story of cosmic proportions. Play as two Children of the Solstice, who combine the powers of the sun and moon to perform Eclipse Magic, the only force capable of fending off the monstrous creations of an evil alchemist known as the Fleshmancer. Sea of Stars is now available for members to stream from the cloud via Game Pass or Steam.
Check out the list of 13 new games joining this week:
Sea of Stars (New release on Xbox and Steam, Aug. 28)
This week’s Game On giveaway with SteelSeries includes Dying Light 2 and three-day Ultimate membership codes. It’s the last week of the giveaway, so check out the SteelSeries page for details on how to enter.
Amazing August
On top of the 32 games announced in August, an additional 36 joined the cloud last month across multiple stores:
Orwell: Keeping an Eye on You (Free game on Epic Games Store, Aug. 10)
Each year, nearly 32 million people travel through the Bengaluru Airport, or BLR, one of the busiest airports in the world’s most populous nation.
To provide such multitudes with a safer, quicker experience, the airport in the city formerly known as Bangalore is tapping vision AI technologies powered by Industry.AI.
A member of the NVIDIA Metropolis vision AI partner ecosystem, Industry.AI has deployed its vision AI platform across BLR’s newest terminal, T2, known as the Garden Terminal for its green spaces, indoor gardens and waterfalls. It’s one of the first deployments of intelligent video analytics at scale in an Indian airport.
Greenery in BLR’s newest terminal.
Industry.AI increases the safety and efficiency of the terminal’s operations by using vision AI and object detection to track abandoned baggage, flag long passenger queues and alert security teams of potential issues, among other use cases.
By identifying congestion points and anticipating delays with vision AI, staff can proactively redirect passengers to less crowded areas or provide signals to open additional checkpoints, reducing wait times and enhancing passenger experiences.
“Deploying vision AI at this scale is a first for us,” said George Fanthome, chief information officer at BLR’s parent company. “By adopting such advanced deep learning technologies, we strive to be one of the best airports in the world and provide our customers the best experience.”
Smarter, Safer Airport Operations
The Industry.AI platform connects more than 500 live camera feeds across the BLR terminal to vision AI technologies that can accomplish nearly a dozen tasks in real time.
For one, the platform can detect when luggage or a purse is left unattended.
It also helps to manage passenger queues at terminal entries, check-in counters, security check lanes and other areas. Airport staff can be trained to proactively perform tasks based on historical data of passenger movement collected by the AI platform.
“Our platform speeds up passenger flow during peak hours of operation by alerting airport staff about longer-than-optimal lines,” said Tejpreet Chopra, CEO of Industry.AI. “This is done through a dashboard with a real-time visual and sensor feed that allows the airport staff to respond to the situation in the shortest possible time.”
Unauthorized people and vehicles in the airport can also be tracked and alerted to the platform’s users in real time for enhanced security. In addition, Industry.AI detects speed violations made by vehicles outside the terminal, helping to manage safe transportation around the travel hub.
AI helps manage transportation inside and outside of BLR.
And with the NVIDIA DeepStream software development kit for AI-powered video analytics, along with technical expertise from NVIDIA — a benefit of being a member of the NVIDIA Inception program for cutting-edge startups — Industry.AI built and deployed the BLR solution in just three months.
“NVIDIA Metropolis enabled us to develop our vision AI applications more cost-effectively and bring them to market faster,” Chopra said.
Looking forward, Industry.AI plans to deploy NVIDIA-powered accelerated computing and vision AI technologies across BLR’s other terminals and at additional airports, too.
“BLR’s focus on adopting advanced AI technologies sets a new benchmark for passenger experience at airports,” Chopra said.
In the global entertainment landscape, TV show and film production stretches far beyond Hollywood or Bollywood — it’s a worldwide phenomenon.
However, while streaming platforms have broadened the reach of content, dubbing and translation technology still has plenty of room for growth.
Deepdub acts as a digital bridge, providing access to content by using generative AI to break down language and cultural barriers.
On the latest episode of NVIDIA’s AI Podcast, host Noah Kravitz spoke with the Israel-based startup’s co-founder and CEO, Ofir Krakowski. Deepdub uses AI-driven dubbing to help entertainment companies boost efficiency and cut costs while increasing accessibility.
The company is a member of NVIDIA Inception, a free program that offers startups go-to-market support, expertise and technological assistance.
Traditional dubbing is slow, costly and often missing the mark, Krakowski says. Current technology struggles with the subtleties of language, leaving jokes, idioms or jargon lost in translation.
Deepdub offers a web-based platform that enables people to interact with sophisticated AI models to handle each part of the translation and dubbing process efficiently. It translates the text, generates a voice and mixes it into the original music and audio effects.
But as Krakowksi points out, even the best AI models make mistakes, so the platform involves a human touchpoint to verify translations and ensure that generated voices sound natural and capture the right emotion.
Deepdub is also working on matching lip movements to dubbed voices.
Ultimately, Krakowski hopes to free the world from the restrictions placed by language barriers.
“I believe that the technology will enable people to enjoy the content that is created around the world,” he said. “It will globalize storytelling and knowledge, which are currently bound by language barriers.”
Dramatic gains in hardware performance have spawned generative AI, and a rich pipeline of ideas for future speedups that will drive machine learning to new heights, Bill Dally, NVIDIA’s chief scientist and senior vice president of research, said today in a keynote.
Dally described a basket of techniques in the works — some already showing impressive results — in a talk at Hot Chips, an annual event for processor and systems architects.
“The progress in AI has been enormous, it’s been enabled by hardware and it’s still gated by deep learning hardware,” said Dally, one of the world’s foremost computer scientists and former chair of Stanford University’s computer science department.
He showed, for example, how ChatGPT, the large language model (LLM) used by millions, could suggest an outline for his talk. Such capabilities owe their prescience in large part to gains from GPUs in AI inference performance over the last decade, he said.
Gains in single-GPU performance are just part of a larger story that includes million-x advances in scaling to data-center-sized supercomputers.
Research Delivers 100 TOPS/Watt
Researchers are readying the next wave of advances. Dally described a test chip that demonstrated nearly 100 tera operations per watt on an LLM.
The experiment showed an energy-efficient way to further accelerate the transformer models used in generative AI. It applied four-bit arithmetic, one of several simplified numeric approaches that promise future gains.
Bill Dally
Looking further out, Dally discussed ways to speed calculations and save energy using logarithmic math, an approach NVIDIA detailed in a 2021 patent.
Tailoring Hardware for AI
He explored a half dozen other techniques for tailoring hardware to specific AI tasks, often by defining new data types or operations.
Dally described ways to simplify neural networks, pruning synapses and neurons in an approach called structural sparsity, first adopted in NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPUs.
“We’re not done with sparsity,” he said. “We need to do something with activations and can have greater sparsity in weights as well.”
Researchers need to design hardware and software in tandem, making careful decisions on where to spend precious energy, he said. Memory and communications circuits, for instance, need to minimize data movements.
“It’s a fun time to be a computer engineer because we’re enabling this huge revolution in AI, and we haven’t even fully realized yet how big a revolution it will be,” Dally said.
More Flexible Networks
In a separate talk, Kevin Deierling, NVIDIA’s vice president of networking, described the unique flexibility of NVIDIA BlueField DPUs and NVIDIA Spectrum networking switches for allocating resources based on changing network traffic or user rules.
The chips’ ability to dynamically shift hardware acceleration pipelines in seconds enables load balancing with maximum throughput and gives core networks a new level of adaptability. That’s especially useful for defending against cybersecurity threats.
“Today with generative AI workloads and cybersecurity, everything is dynamic, things are changing constantly,” Deierling said. “So we’re moving to runtime programmability and resources we can change on the fly,”
In addition, NVIDIA and Rice University researchers are developing ways users can take advantage of the runtime flexibility using the popular P4 programming language.
Grace Leads Server CPUs
A talk by Arm on its Neoverse V2 cores included an update on the performance of the NVIDIA Grace CPU Superchip, the first processor implementing them.
Tests show that, at the same power, Grace systems deliver up to 2x more throughput than current x86 servers across a variety of CPU workloads. In addition, Arm’s SystemReady Program certifies that Grace systems will run existing Arm operating systems, containers and applications with no modification.
Grace gives data center operators a choice to deliver more performance or use less power.
Grace uses an ultra-fast fabric to connect 72 Arm Neoverse V2 cores in a single die, then a version of NVLink connects two of those dies in a package, delivering 900 GB/s of bandwidth. It’s the first data center CPU to use server-class LPDDR5X memory, delivering 50% more memory bandwidth at similar cost but one-eighth the power of typical server memory.
Hot Chips kicked off Aug. 27 with a full day of tutorials, including talks from NVIDIA experts on AI inference and protocols for chip-to-chip interconnects, and runs through today.
As generative AI and large language models (LLMs) continue to drive innovations, compute requirements for training and inference have grown at an astonishing pace.
To meet that need, Google Cloud today announced the general availability of its new A3 instances, powered by NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs. These GPUs bring unprecedented performance to all kinds of AI applications with their Transformer Engine — purpose-built to accelerate LLMs.
Availability of the A3 instances comes on the heels of NVIDIA being named Google Cloud’s Generative AI Partner of the Year — an award that recognizes the companies’ deep and ongoing collaboration to accelerate generative AI on Google Cloud.
The joint effort takes multiple forms, from infrastructure design to extensive software enablement, to make it easier to build and deploy AI applications on the Google Cloud platform.
At the Google Cloud Next conference, NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang joined Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian for the event keynote to celebrate the general availability of NVIDIA H100 GPU-powered A3 instances and speak about how Google is using NVIDIA H100 and A100 GPUs for internal research and inference in its DeepMind and other divisions.
During the discussion, Huang pointed to the deeper levels of collaboration that enabled NVIDIA GPU acceleration for the PaxML framework for creating massive LLMs. This Jax-based machine learning framework is purpose-built to train large-scale models, allowing advanced and fully configurable experimentation and parallelization.
PaxML has been used by Google to build internal models, including DeepMind as well as research projects, and will use NVIDIA GPUs. The companies also announced that PaxML is available immediately on the NVIDIA NGC container registry.
Generative AI Startups Abound
Today, there are over a thousand generative AI startups building next-generation applications, many using NVIDIA technology on Google Cloud. Some notable ones include Writer and Runway.
Writer uses transformer-based LLMs to enable marketing teams to quickly create copy for web pages, blogs, ads and more. To do this, the company harnesses NVIDIA NeMo, an application framework from NVIDIA AI Enterprise that helps companies curate their training datasets, build and customize LLMs, and run them in production at scale.
Using NeMo optimizations, Writer developers have gone from working with models with hundreds of millions of parameters to 40-billion parameter models. The startup’s customer list includes household names like Deloitte, L’Oreal, Intuit, Uber and many other Fortune 500 companies.
Runway uses AI to generate videos in any style. The AI model imitates specific styles prompted by given images or through a text prompt. Users can also use the model to create new video content using existing footage. This flexibility enables filmmakers and content creators to explore and design videos in a whole new way.
Google Cloud was the first CSP to bring the NVIDIA L4 GPU to the cloud. In addition, the companies have collaborated to enable Google’s Dataproc service to leverage the RAPIDS Accelerator for Apache Spark to provide significant performance boosts for ETL, available today with Dataproc on the Google Compute Engine and soon for Serverless Dataproc.
Editor’s note: This post is part of our weekly In the NVIDIA Studio series, which celebrates featured artists, offers creative tips and tricks and demonstrates how NVIDIA Studio technology improves creative workflows. We’re also deep-diving on new GeForce RTX 40 Series GPU features, technologies and resources and how they dramatically accelerate content creation.
As beautiful and extraordinary as art forms can be, it can be easy to forget the simple joy and comforting escapism that content creation can provide for artists across creative fields.
Janice K. Lee, a.k.a Janice.Journal — the subject of this week’s In the NVIDIA Studio installment — is a TikTok sensation using AI to accelerate her creative process, find inspiration and automate repetitive tasks.
Also this week, NVIDIA Studio technology is powering some of the most popular mobile and desktop apps — driving creative workflows of both aspiring artists and creative professionals.
TikTok and CapCut, Powered by NVIDIA and the Cloud
Week by week, AI becomes more ubiquitous within content creation.
Take the popular social media app TikTok. All of its mobile app features, including AI Green Screen, are accelerated by GeForce RTX GPUs in the cloud. Other parts of TikTok creator workflows are also accelerated — Descript AI, a popular generative AI-powered video editing app, runs 50% faster on the latest NVIDIA L4 Tensor Core GPUs versus T4 Tensor Core GPUs.
CapCut, the most widely used video editor by TikTok users, enables Simultaneous Scene Encoding, a functionality that sends independent groups of scenes to an NVIDIA Encoder (NVENC), contributing to shorter video export times without affecting image quality. This technology performs over 2x faster on NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 graphics cards versus on Apple’s M2 Ultra.
Tests were conducted by CapCut using CapCut v2.2.0 (beta) on desktops equipped with GeForce RTX 4090 to export 180s 4K 60fps H.264 video. Video exporting was accelerated.
Advanced users can move footage to their preferred desktop video editing app using native GPU-acceleration and RTX technology. This includes AV1 dual encoders (NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti graphics cards or higher required) for 40% better video quality for livestreamers, while video editors can slash export times nearly in half.
Janice.Journal Gets AI Art Blanche
Janice.Journal, a self-taught 3D creator, was motivated to learn new art skills as a way to cope with her busy schedule.
“I was going through a tough time during my junior year of college with classes and clubs,” she said. “With no time to hang out with friends or decompress, my only source of comfort was learning something new every night for 20 minutes.”
Her passion for 3D creation quickly became evident. While Janice.Journal does consulting work during the day, she deep-dives into 3D creation at night, creating stunning scenes and tutorials to help other artists get started.
One of her recent projects involved using the free NVIDIA Canvas beta app, which uses AI to interpret basic lines and shapes, translating them into realistic landscape images and textures.
In the above video, Janice.Journal aimed to create the “Eighth Wonder of the World,” a giant arch inspired by the natural sandstone formations in Arches National Park in Utah.
“I wanted to create something that looked familiar enough where you could conceive to see it on ‘National Geographic’ but would still seem fantastical, awe-inspiring and simultaneously make the viewer question if it was real or fake,” said Janice.Journal.
NVIDIA Canvas AI-assisted painting.
Using Canvas’s 20 material brushes and nine style images, each with 10 variations, Janice.Journal got to work.
She said she “got a bit carried away” on Canvas, resulting in an incredible masterpiece.
Janice.Journal then had the option to export her painting into either a PNG or layered PSD file format to import into graphic design apps like Adobe Photoshop.
“The Eighth Wonder of the World.”
Canvas is especially useful for concept artists looking to rapidly explore new ideas and for architects aiming to quickly draft backdrops and environments for buildings. With Canvas, Janice.Journal could rapidly paint a landscape without having to search for hours for the perfect stock photo, saving her valuable time to hone her 3D skills instead.
“I’m still blown away trying it out for myself,” said Janice.Journal. “Seeing my simple drawings turn into fully HD images is wild — it really reminds me that the future is now.”
Janice.Journal’s portfolio features bright, vibrant visuals with a soft touch. Her 3D scene “Gameboy” features two levels — no, not gaming levels, but living quarters built into a Gameboy, bringing to life every child’s dream.
Would you love to live here?
Most artists start with a rough physical sketch to get concepts on paper, then move to Blender to block out basic shapes and sculpt models in finer detail.
AI shines at this point in the workflow. Janice.Journal’s GeForce RTX 3090 GPU-powered system unlocks Blender’s Cycles RTX-accelerated OptiX ray tracing in the viewport, reducing noise and improving interactivity in the viewport for fluid movement with photorealistic visuals.
Work-in-progress ‘Gameboy’ render.
“Simply put, GPU acceleration and AI allow me to see renders in real time as they process modeling, lighting and the entire environment, enabling a preview as if I were to hit ‘render’ right away,” said Janice.Journal. “It makes life 10 times easier for me.”
Janice.Journal has also been experimenting with AI-generated images as a way to brainstorm concepts and push creative boundaries — in her opinion, the most optimal use of AI.
Once everything has been modeled, Janice.Journal adds textures by playing around in Blender, applying clay shaders or displacement modifiers for “bumpier” textures. Then, she adds lighting and finishing touches to complete the ambience of the scene.
Companies are discovering how accelerated computing can boost their bottom lines while making a positive impact on the planet.
The NVIDIA RAPIDS Accelerator for Apache Spark, software that speeds data analytics, not only raises performance and lowers costs, it increases energy efficiency, too. That means it can help companies meet goals for net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide.
A new benchmark shows that the RAPIDS Accelerator can reduce a company’s carbon footprint by as much as 80% while delivering 5x average speedups and 4x reductions in computing costs.
That’s a big win many can enjoy. Thousands of companies, including 80% of the Fortune 500, use Apache Spark to analyze their growing mountains of data.
In fact, if every Apache Spark user adopted the RAPIDS Accelerator, they could collectively reduce carbon dioxide emissions by a whopping 7.8 metric tons a year — or the amount of emissions a car produces on 878 gallons of gas. It’s a great example of how green computing can advance the fight against climate change.
A Challenge for Humankind
More than 70 countries have set a net-zero target for greenhouse gas emissions, according to the United Nations. It describes the transition to net-zero as “one of the greatest challenges humankind has faced.”
Companies are getting on board, too.
For example, NVIDIA is working with a large financial services company to test Apache Spark for real-time fraud protection. The company hopes to lower its carbon footprint with accelerated computing so it can align with groups like the Net-Zero Banking Alliance.
One of the world’s largest AI supercomputers validated the energy efficiency of accelerated computing in May.
Across four popular scientific applications, the Perlmutter system at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) reported energy efficiency gains of 5x on average, thanks to NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPUs. An application for weather forecasting logged speed-ups of 9.8x compared to CPUs.
NERSC apps got efficiency gains with accelerated computing.
AT&T Dials Up RAPIDS Accelerator
Organizations like AT&T, Adobe and the Internal Revenue Service have already discovered the performance and cost benefits of the RAPIDS Accelerator.
In a test last year, AT&T processed a month’s worth of mobile data — 2.8 trillion rows of information — in just five hours. That’s 3.3x faster at 60% lower cost than any prior test.
“It was a ‘wow’ moment because on CPU clusters, it takes more than 48 hours to process just seven days of data — in the past, we had the data but couldn’t use it because it took such a long time to process it,” said Abhay Dabholkar, an AI architect at AT&T, in a blog.
“We recommend that if a job is taking too long and you have a lot of data, turn on GPUs — with Spark, the same code that runs on CPUs runs on GPUs,” he added.
Adobe Speeds Services
Adobe used accelerated computing on its Intelligent Services platform, which helps marketing teams speed analytics with AI.
It found that, using the RAPIDS Accelerator, a single NVIDIA GPU node could outperform a 16-node CPU cluster by 33% while slashing computing costs by 70%.
In a separate test, GPU-accelerated RAPIDS libraries trained an AI model 7x faster, saving 90% of the cost of running the same job on CPUs.
“This is an amazing cost savings and speed-up,” said Lei Zhang, a machine learning engineer at Adobe in a talk at GTC (free with registration).
20x Gains on Spark
CPUs weren’t powerful enough to ingest the 3+ terabyte dataset it needed to analyze, so the IRS turned to the RAPIDS Accelerator.
A Spark cluster of GPU-powered servers processed the load and opened the door to tackling even bigger datasets.
“We’re currently implementing this integration and already seeing over 20x speed improvements at half the cost for our data engineering and data science workflows,” said Joe Ansaldi, technical branch chief of the research and applied analytics and statistics division at the IRS, in a blog.
The tool shows users what the RAPIDS Accelerator can deliver on their applications without any code changes. It also helps users tune GPU acceleration to get the best results on their workloads.
Once the RAPIDS Accelerator is boosting the bottom line, companies can calculate their energy savings and report their progress in protecting the planet.
Learn more in this solution brief. And watch the video below to see how the Cloudera Data Platform delivered a 44x speedup with the RAPIDS Accelerator for Apache Spark.
As part of NVIDIA and Microsoft’s collaboration to bring more choice to gamers, new Microsoft Store integration has been added to GeForce NOW that lets gamers stream select titles from the Xbox PC Game Pass catalog on GeForce NOW, starting today.
With the Microsoft Store integration, members will see a brand-new Xbox button on supported PC games and can seamlessly launch these titles across their devices, provided they either purchased the standalone games through the Microsoft Store or have an active Xbox Game Pass Ultimate or PC Game Pass subscription.
Hot off our recent Gamescom announcement, four blockbuster titles are coming to GeForce NOW this fall: Alan Wake 2, Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty expansion, Party Animals and PAYDAY 3.
Plus, head to the cloud and stream the 25 new titles joining the cloud this week, including DOOM 2016 from Bethesda.
Members have also been playing the GeForce NOW Ultimate KovaaK’s challenge, raising the bar with 240 frames per second streaming using an Ultimate membership. Check out the leaderboard to see how Ultimate members are stacking up against other GeForce NOW members — top scorers have a chance to win some ultimate prizes through Thursday, Sept. 21, including a six-month Xbox PC Game Pass.
Select PC Game Pass Titles Now Available
Hello, Xbox.
Give a warm welcome to the Microsoft Store on GeForce NOW. It joins digital platforms Steam, Epic Games Store, Ubisoft Connect and others in the cloud. Experience it today with hit Xbox PC games from Xbox Game Studios, Bethesda and other top publishers recently added to GeForce NOW, like Fatshark, Paradox and TaleWorld Entertainment.
With a GeForce NOW Ultimate membership, stream popular shooters Gears 5 and Deathloop with the highest graphical fidelity. Embark on a mini-adventure on the big screen by shrinking to the size of an ant in Grounded. Or enjoy the historical narrative Pentiment while on the go with a mobile device.
Take a deep dive into history with titles from the Age of Empires series on a Chromebook and a comfy throne of your own or experience an alternative version of history in the newly added Wolfenstein II: New Colossus and Wolfenstein: Youngblood titles with the power of 4K streaming on NVIDIA SHIELD.
Fight the dark tide with the power of the cloud.
Lead armies in TaleWorld Entertainment’s action role-playing game Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord, take on hordes of enemies in Fatshark’s action shooter Warhammer 40,000: Darktide or explore infinite worlds in Hello Game’s No Man’s Sky.
Keep an eye out for more games from Xbox’s PC Game Pass library to be added to GeForce NOW. Check out this article for more details on how Xbox PC Game Pass will work on GeForce NOW.
And this week only, on top of being able to win a six-month Ultimate membership and $100 Steam gift card for making it into the top three on the weekly leaderboard of the Ultimate KovaaK’s challenge, those who make it into the top 10 will get a six-month Xbox PC Game Pass. Keep an eye out on GeForce NOW’s Twitter and Facebook accounts for more details.
Straight Out of Gamescom
Top publishers Epic Games Publishing, CD Projekt Red and Deep Silver are all bringing their blockbuster titles to GeForce NOW at launch in the fall.
Wake up, it’s the second game in the “Alan Wake” franchise.
Uncover the newest mystery in the upcoming survival horror game Alan Wake 2, sequel to the award-winning game Alan Wake, from Remedy Entertainment and Epic Games Publishing. Survive as the best-selling horror writer Alan Wake — who’s trapped in a dark dimension and trying to write his way out — or as FBI agent Saga Anderson in a life-or-death race to solve a small-town murder that quickly spirals into a nightmare.
Play through two distinct stories set in two beautiful yet terrifying worlds and see events unfold from different perspectives. The characters must take on powerful supernatural enemies and use more than just a gun to survive: light is the ultimate weapon in the fight against darkness. Members can stream the game from the cloud when it launches on Tuesday, Oct. 27.
Welcome to the neon cloud.
Return as cyber-enhanced mercenary V in the upcoming spy-thriller expansion for the hit open-world action adventure Cyberpunk 2077 from CD Projekt Red. Phantom Liberty features the all-new district of Dogtown, infinitely replayable open-world activities, an exclusive skill tree and much more — including new weapons, cyberware, vehicles and gigs for players to discover. Embark on a high-stakes mission of espionage and intrigue to save the NUS President when the expansion launches in the cloud on Tuesday, Sept. 26.
It pays to be a GeForce NOW member.
Join the Payday Gang in the upcoming third installment of the PAYDAY franchise from Starbeeze Studios, Overkill Software and Deep Silver. In PAYDAY 3, play as notorious criminals who must face off against new enemies and challenges in an action-packed, high-octane experience. Invite your friends to the four-player online co-op mode to pull off the ultimate heist when the title launches on GeForce NOW on Thursday, Sept. 21.
These games are all headed to the cloud this fall. Upgrade to an Ultimate membership today to skip the waiting lines over free members and get access to powerful NVIDIA technology, including RTX ON and DLSS 3.5 technology for AI-powered graphics and peak-performance gaming.
Welcome to the Cloud
You won’t be able to resist the power of the cloud.
The next Bethesda game to heat up the cloud is DOOM 2016. Fight through hordes of demonic forces on Mars after waking up on a Union Aerospace Corporation energy-mining facility. Play as the Doom Slayer, an unnamed space marine from the DOOM franchise, and use a variety of weapons, gadgets and melee attacks in this fast-paced, first-person shooter. Plus, several online multiplayer modes are available, so members can grab some buddies to stream with.
Catch the full list of games joining the cloud this week:
This week’s Game On giveaway with SteelSeries includes Destiny 2 and three-day Priority membership codes. Check the giveaway page for details on how to enter.
What games are you looking forward to? Let us know on Twitter or in the comments below.
Editor’s note: This post is part of our weekly In the NVIDIA Studio series, which celebrates featured artists, offers creative tips and tricks, and demonstrates how NVIDIA Studio technology improves creative workflows. We’re also deep diving on new GeForce RTX 40 Series GPU features, technologies and resources, and how they dramatically accelerate content creation.
Gamescom, the biggest gaming event of the year, kicks off tomorrow in Cologne, Germany, but gamers and content creators can find some of the latest innovations, tools and AI-powered tech this week In the NVIDIA Studio.
On the eve of the show’s official opening, NVIDIA announced NVIDIA DLSS 3.5 featuring Ray Reconstruction — a new neural rendering AI model that creates more beautiful and realistic ray-traced visuals than traditional rendering methods — for real-time 3D creative apps and games.
NVIDIA RTX Remix, a free modding platform built on NVIDIA Omniverse and available now, gives people the tools to create and share #RTXON mods for classic games. We also announced Half-Life 2 RTX: An RTX Remix Project, a community remaster project of Valve’s Half-Life 2, one of the highest-rated games of all time.
This week’s In the NVIDIA Studio installment also features digital artist Diyor Makhmudov’s 3D work, inspired by the extraordinary gaming franchise The Witcher.
Reallusion software released an update to the iClone Omniverse Connector, including real-time synchronization of projects and enhanced import functionality for OpenUSD, enabling quicker, more efficient workflows. Learn more in the latest edition of the Into the Omniverse series.
Finally, calling all video editors to sign up for the premiere DaVinci Resolve event — ResolveCon — in Portland, Oregon, from Aug. 25-27. In-person attendees can win giveaways, including new GeForce RTX GPUs, while virtual attendees can view tutorials livestreamed by In the NVIDIA Studio artist Casey Faris.
Next-Level Graphical Fidelity With DLSS 3.5
NVIDIA DLSS 3.5 adds Ray Reconstruction, which improves ray-traced image quality for all GeForce RTX GPUs by replacing hand-tuned denoisers with an NVIDIA supercomputer-trained AI network that generates higher-quality pixels in between sampled rays.
Seeing is believing — watch the Tech Talk with NVIDIA Vice President of Applied Deep Learning Research Bryan Catanzaro to learn how DLSS 3.5 works.
Creative apps with ray-traced renderers face a wide variety of content that is difficult for traditional denoisers to handle, as they require hand-tuning for every scene. As a result, content previews return suboptimal image quality. With DLSS 3.5, the AI neural network recognizes a wide variety of scenes, producing high-quality images during preview and before committing hours to a final render.
D5 Render and Chaos Vantage, two popular professional-grade 3D apps for architects and designers, feature real-time preview modes with ray tracing. With DLSS 3.5, the AI neural network replaces the denoisers, inferring and producing higher-quality previews while building and iterating.
DLSS 3.5 will improve image quality in D5 Render.
Popular creative apps Chaos Vantage, D5 Render and NVIDIA Omniverse, as well as popular gaming titles Alan Wake 2, Cyberpunk 2077, Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty and Portal with RTX, are all adding support for NVIDIA DLSS 3.5 this fall.
Half-Life 2 RTX: An RTX Remix Project is being developed by four of Half-Life 2’s top mod teams, now known as Orbifold Studios.
Half-Life 2 RTX: An RTX Remix Project.
Using the latest version of RTX Remix, Orbifold Studios is rebuilding materials with physically based rendering properties, adding extra geometric detail with Valve’s Hammer editor and using the full range of NVIDIA technologies, including NVIDIA DLSS, NVIDIA RTX IO and NVIDIA Reflex, to breathe new life into the critically acclaimed title.
As with Portal with RTX, a high-fidelity reimagining of Valve’s timeless classic, and Portal: Prelude RTX, built by community modders, nearly every asset in Half-Life 2 RTX: An RTX Remix Project is being reconstructed in high fidelity and with full ray tracing (otherwise known as path tracing, enabling advanced rendering techniques. Compared to the original, some assets feature 20x the geometric detail.
Half-Life 2 RTX: An RTX Remix Project is early in development and is a community effort looking to galvanize talented modders and artists everywhere. To join the project, apply via the Orbifold Studios website.
Eat. Sleep. Game. Create. Repeat.
Already building 3D scenes in immaculate detail, 19-year-old digital creator and 3D lighting artist Diyorbek Makhmudov has the savvy skills of an industry veteran and a bright future ahead.
‘Tavern’ inspired by The Witcher 3.
Makhmudov has always had a deep-rooted passion for gaming, gaining inspiration from the 3D worlds of his favorite games. Most notably, The Witcher franchise has fueled him to create 3D worlds that showcase his own signature look and feel.
‘Calm’ inspired by The Witcher 3.
Unlike many content creators featured In the NVIDIA Studio, Makhmudov doesn’t like to bring his own life experience into the creative process, enjoying the escapism offered by world-building.
“I like to immerse myself in another universe,” said Makhmudov. “I don’t like to express my feelings, thoughts or emotions in my creations.”
‘Tavern’ inspired by The Witcher 3.
Makhmudov follows standard 3D creative workflow practices: gathering reference material, prepping materials, shaping environments and tinkering with materials, textures and colors. But it’s in 3D creation where he really shines.
Makhmudov uses his preferred 3D app — Cinema 4D — to achieve smooth interactivity while working with complex 3D models thanks to the NVIDIA GPU-accelerated viewport. It’s powered by a GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card, which offers considerable increases in efficiency while fueling creativity.
In the video above, Makhmudov is able to move within the scene, tinkering while the scene renders in real time.
Cinema 4D also supports several popular GPU-accelerated renderers such as Chaos V-Ray, OTOY OctaneRender and Maxon’s Redshift. This flexibility allows Makhmudov to use whichever best suits his needs.
Too many great rendering choices.
“Redshift is fast, has a good light-linking system and I have almost full control over everything,” said Makhmudov. He prefers OctaneRender for exporting ultra-realistic renders quickly. The built-in Cinema 4D render is also a speedy option. The only thing he can’t do is work on a CPU alone because, to quote Makhmudov, “It’s very slow.”
Perfectly lit.
“When you do personal work, it pushes you more to achieve a good result,” said Makhmudov. “As a bonus, that big portfolio will be a major advantage in your job search.”
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