Last week, March 1st and 2nd, I was invited at the inaugural NVIDIA GRID Days at NVIDIA HQ, Santa Clare, CA. Together with 12 other ‘lucky ones’ I was selected to participate in this very first get together of people who are actively working with NVIDIA GRID. For me as a solution architect at PQR working on GRID enabled virtualization projects this was a huge opportunity to meet the NVIDIA GRID team and to learn from there insights as well as providing feedback from the field. Take the GRID 2.0 licensing for example. A lot of our existing GRID 1.0 (K1 & K2) are upset with this new licensing model which was introduced with GRID 2.0.
This blog will cover some of my experiences at these two GRID days at NVIDIA. There is lots of information disclosed by the GRID team these two days. I’m not going to cover it all unfortunately. Enjoy reading en if you have any questions, feel free to ask.
For those you are new to GRID and do not have a clear understandings of the differences between GRID 1.0 and 2.0, I’ll be writing a blog on this shortly, just keep an eye out on this blog site.
The Toys
The first day stared with a real treat. Rachel Berry invited Mark Templeton, the retired CEO of Citrix. He paid us a visit and shared his cool toys. He brought his Vintage Electric Bike (http://vintageelectricbikes.com) and his Tesla Model S P85D to have a spin around the parking lot. The design of the bike is extraordinary and riding it was an awesome experience. For Mark, sharing his toys is, as he sad, a fundamental truth.
“Sharing is a fundamental truth”
Super Uber Sensor
After getting a ride to NVIDIA headquarters in Mark’s Tesla he showed us a Super Uber Sensor which was a prototype. The sensor has it all (e.g. infrared, thermal, sonar, radar, audio, video etc.). It’s able to track ‘flight time’, so it gets to know the distance of objects and it can track all knows devices, say like your smartphone. Image the use cases with such a sensor. A store for example. It is able to track all movements of customers and you can analyze the pattern people walk inside the store, which products are selected at the shelves and eventually are bought. Or use it at home, or Airbnb, to make it a really smart building.
Mark provided a quick demo with the The Super Uber Sensor and I have to say it’s a great piece of technique and opens up lots of opportunities but isn’t there yet. Great demo though.
After all these fancy toys it was time for the real deal, the green stuff, the NVIDIA stuff!
NVIDIA
NVIDIA is a company we all know for its presence in the world of gaming. Delivering high graphics to get the best gaming experience. Besides the huge presence they also play a huge role in professional visualization, datacenter and automotive markets. NVIDIA is involved in almost any automotive brand such as Audi, BMW, Mercedes, Volvo and Tesla. You can imagine the GPU power required to drive a car autonomously, understanding it’s surrounding and possible obstacles. Take a look at NVIDIA DRIVE Automotive Technology here for more information.
The GRID Days where all about the Multi GPU Technology in the Professional Visualization and Virtualization. In this space Quadro is the main brand people know. NVIDIA has combined the graphics capabilities of Quadro GPU’s and the high performance computing power of Tesla GPU’s. With Quadro and Tesla GPU’s its all about Performance, Reliability and Support.
NVIDA was founded in 1993 by Jen-Hsun Huang, Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem. Today Jen-Hsun is the CEO, quite a big achievement!
