Nvidia and the Future of Everything Everywhere: Analysis

I’m still working on hardware from Nvidia’s GTC conference last month, and two announcements that didn’t get much coverage jumped out at me.

One was how Nvidia’s AI achieved a world record for route optimization. The other was to create the third-generation OVX computer system that is the basis of the industrial metaverse.

Together they will help automate everything around us, including our Amazon deliveries, and make drone delivery more likely.

Let’s talk about this Nvidia-focused future, and we’ll end with my product of the week, Medibus, a joint project between Cisco and Germany to provide health care to those living in rural areas with limited access to health.

Route Optimization – Why It Matters

Last-mile delivery is where much of the cost of shipping a product is incurred — around 40%, according to Pitney Bowes. But it’s a bigger problem for drone delivery since drones have a limited range, and we’re a long way from having a critical mass of them in service.

Particularly as we begin to transition from humans to AIs doing last mile delivery, the ability to better manage routes – taking into account factors such as prevailing winds, weather events, potential bird strikes and other obstacles – becomes essential to ensure you receive your package in a timely manner. and relatively intact. =

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If you add to this the range limitations of drones, land and air, the problem becomes even more critical as solving it reduces lost drones and late packages. Nvidia has created a massive amount of traffic data by becoming the leader in self-driving technology, and that knowledge is being put to use with its route optimization solution.

A technology developed by Nvidia called cuOpt can analyze billions of movements per second and take into account multiple environmental issues to help ensure the on-time delivery of a package, whether it’s a toy for your child or a pizza for your dinner.

Using Nvidia’s supercomputer-like A100 Sensor Core GPUs, cuOpt can analyze massive amounts of real-time data to generate the most efficient route – which is why it won the world record.

OVX Computer System Makes Industrial Metaverse Real

The other GTC show announcement that didn’t get much coverage was the release of the massive third-generation OVX platform that will host Nvidia’s metaverse product, Omniverse.

Unlike Facebook’s largely failed consumer effort, the Industrial Metaverse is far more complex and already in production at large factory sites under design and management. Every piece of equipment has a fully instrumented digital twin, and even humans in the factory can have full digital twins to keep them safe and improve efficiency.

Done right, the machines’ digital twins are so complete that even their internals are digitized through sensors synced with their digital twins in the metaverse.

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Using various cutting-edge technologies, including BlueField 3 DPUs, Nvidia L40 GPUs, ConnectX-7 smart network cards, and its Spectrum Ethernet platform, Nvidia has created the Metaverse Computer for those who want an on-premises Metaverse solution.

This effort also ties in somewhat to Nvidia’s self-driving efforts, as it potentially connects and digitizes robots and trains that deliver to a site where the technology is already implemented. In partnership with Dell Technologies, Nvidia plans to make this technology available later this year.

Wrap

Nvidia announced two undercover technologies at its GTC conference this year. One focused on delivering things cheaply and efficiently, and that anticipates drone delivery. The other automates the creation of a large installation. The two technologies work together to make the result viable and much more effective.

Some of these technologies are already in use by Digitale Schiene Deutschland and Pepsi Co. While fully automated metaverse-coupled factories and drone delivery are not yet in full production, they are on the way. Nvidia is shipping and will ship the platforms that will make all of this work.

Medibus

One of the most fascinating endeavors of any company is Cisco’s Country Digital Acceleration (CDA) program, which is led by Guy Diedrich.

Cisco created the CDA program to help countries digitize. It came into play during the pandemic, allowing governments and schools to collaborate as politicians, bureaucrats, teachers and students shifted to working from home. Cisco’s ADC efforts have been instrumental in helping children go to school and politicians governing from a distance.

CDA’s latest project, Medibus, is equally fascinating. Working with the German government to address the lack of medical care in remote and often financially challenged locations, the two entities acquired a few buses and converted them into mobile health care clinics.

When the war in Ukraine started, Cisco convinced Germany to lend some of these buses to the refugee crisis happening on Ukraine’s borders to provide the refugees with the health care they needed.

Although this service was initially created to help German citizens who live in remote areas where there are few medical professionals (Germany has a severe shortage of rural medical clinics), it has been useful for relief in disaster relief, corporate health care efforts and, more recently, to help Ukrainian refugees.

Built on Cisco’s networking and communications technology, each bus has three people: a driver, a nurse, and a doctor connected to numerous remote resources who can be brought in to consult or assist with a procedure as needed.

This effort anticipates a future where these vehicles could be fully automated and could use Nvidia Route Optimization and Metaverse solutions to ensure their timely arrival. The next step is to empower them and help them circumvent staffing constraints by fully automating them.

Medibus not only showcases the potential future of medical care in rural areas, disaster recovery and other remote medical needs, such as vaccine injections, but it could also bring to life autonomous and automated roving medical systems that will better ensure our health care even though doctors are in short supply. Accordingly, Cisco Medibus is my product of the week.