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04:26PM EDT – And here’s Blackwell. “A very, very big GPU”
04:26PM EDT – “We’re going to have to build even bigger GPUs”
04:24PM EDT – “We need even larger models”
04:23PM EDT – To help the world build these bigger systems, NVIDIA has to build them first
04:23PM EDT – As well as developing technologies like NVLink and tensor cores
04:22PM EDT – The answer is to put a whole bunch of GPUs together
04:22PM EDT – “What we need are bigger GPUs” “Much much bigger GPUs”
04:22PM EDT – Even a PetaFLOP GPU would take 30 billion seconds to train that model. That’s 1000 years
04:21PM EDT – 1.8T parameters is the current largest model. This requires several billion tokens to train
04:21PM EDT – Doubling the parameter count requires increasing the token count
04:20PM EDT – Now recapping the history of large language models, and the hardware driving them
04:20PM EDT – Omniverse will be the fundamental operating system for digital twins
04:20PM EDT – Going to connect Cadence’s digital twin platform to Omniverse
04:19PM EDT – Cadence, the EDA tool maker, is joining Club GPU as well
04:18PM EDT – TSMC is announcing today that they’re going into production with cuLitho
04:18PM EDT – Accelerating computational lithography
04:18PM EDT – Sysopsys. NVIDIA’s very first software partner. Literally
04:17PM EDT – Ansys
04:17PM EDT – Jensen will be announcing several important partnerships
04:17PM EDT – NVIDIA will have partners joining them today
04:16PM EDT – Jensen would like to simulate everything they do in digital twin virtual environments
04:16PM EDT – It’s not about driving down the cost, it’s about driving up the scale
04:15PM EDT – Need new ways to keep growing computing. Keep consuming computing
04:15PM EDT – “General purpose computing has run out of steam”
04:15PM EDT – NVIDIA’s GPUs are only worth using because of the software written for them. So NVIDIA has always made it a point to showcase what the software development community has been up to
04:14PM EDT – (I’m told the capacity of SAP Arena for concerts is 18,500 people. With this floor layout, there’s probably more than that here)
04:13PM EDT – Warp, PhysX Flow, Photoshop, and more
04:13PM EDT – Rolling a demo reel of GPU-accelerated applications
04:12PM EDT – “Everything is homemade”
04:12PM EDT – “It’s being animated with robotics. It’s being animated with artificial intelligence”
04:11PM EDT – Everything we’ll be shown today is a simulation, not an animation
04:11PM EDT – As well as software and applications in this industry. And how to start preparing for what’s next
04:11PM EDT – “We’re going to talk about how we’re doing computing next”
04:10PM EDT – Comparing generative AI to the industrial revolution and the age of energy
04:09PM EDT – “The software never existed before, it is a brand new category”
04:09PM EDT – 2023: Generative AI emerged, and a new industry begins
04:09PM EDT – CUDA became a success… eventually. A bit later than Jensen would have liked
04:07PM EDT – How did we get here? Jensen drew a comic flow chart
04:07PM EDT – “The computer is the single most important instrument in society today”
04:06PM EDT – Showing off a iist of exhibitors. It’s a very big list of names
04:05PM EDT – Jensen is recapping the many technologies to be seen here. “Even artificial intelligence”
04:04PM EDT – “I sense a very heavy weight in the room all of a sudden”
04:04PM EDT – “This is not a concert. You have arrived at a developers conference”
04:04PM EDT – So without further ado, here’s Jensen
04:04PM EDT – This is Ryan. Apologies for the late start here folks, it’s been an interesting time getting everyone down to the floor and settled
We’re here in sunny San Jose California for the return of an event that’s been a long-time coming: NVIDIA’s in-person GTC. The Spring 2024 event, NVIDIA’s marquee event for the year, promises to be a big one for NVIDIA, as the company is due to deliver updates on its all-important datacenter accelerator products – the successor to the GH100 GPU and its Hopper architecture – along with NVIDIA’s other professional/enterprise hardware, networking gear, and, of course, a slew of software stack updates.
In the 5 years since NVIDIA was last able to hold a Spring GTC in person, a great deal has changed for the company. They’re now the third biggest company in the world, thanks to explosive sales growth (and even further growth expectations) due in large part to the combination of GPT-3/4 and other transformer models, and NVIDIA’s transformer-optimized H100 accelerator. As a result, NVIDIA is riding high in Silicon Valley, but to keep doing so they also will need to deliver the next big thing to push the envelope on performance, and keep a number of hungry competitors off their turf.
Headlining today’s keynote is, of course, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, whose kick-off address has finally outgrown the San Jose Convention Center. As a result, Huang is filling up the local SAP Center arena instead. Suffice it to say, it’s a bigger venue for a bigger audience for a [i]much[/i] bigger company.
So come join the AnandTech crew for our live blog coverage of NVIDIA’s biggest enterprise keynote in years. The presentation kicks off at 1pm Pacific, 4pm Eastern, 20:00 UTC.
