Nvidia and Intel are collaborating on chips for metaverse workstations

Nvidia and Intel are teaming up to deliver processors and graphics chips for a new generation maker workstations. You could think of them as metaverse workstations.

Those workstations will launch with anywhere from one Nvidia graphics processing unit (GPU) to four in a system powered by Intel’s latest Xeon W and Intel Xeon Scalable processors, said Bob Pette, vice president of Nvidia’s professional visualization company in an interview with GamesBeat.

“I think this will really unlock the number of GPUs in a workstation because we can now fully drive multiple GPUs,” said Pette.

At a time when Nvidia is pitching Omniverse as a tool for building virtual worlds, enterprise digital twins, and eventually the metaverse, these workstations are likely to be in high demand. Intel said more than 50 designs with Xeon processors are coming to market.

AI-augmented applications, photorealistic rendering, simulation and other technologies help professionals achieve business-critical results from multi-app workflows faster than ever, the companies said.

Running these data-intensive, complex workflows, sharing data and collaborating across geographically dispersed teams requires workstations with advanced CPUs, GPUs and advanced networking.

The Intel Xeon processors are paired with Nvidia RTX 6000 Ada generation GPUs, as well as Nvidia
ConnectX-6 SmartNICs. The last network card will have a cooling system — a sign of the times when heat can be in a system, Pette said.

“We have a number of customers who are testing it. And wherever and whenever you move gigabytes or terabytes of data, it will have a huge impact. So we spent the money because we think there’s a high chance of reinstalling this with an actively cooled card,” Pette said.

These new workstations bring together the highest levels of AI computing, rendering and simulation
horsepower to handle demanding workloads in data science, manufacturing, broadcast, media, and
entertainment, healthcare and more, Nvidia said.

“Professionals need advanced power and performance to handle the most intensive workflows, such as usage
AI, real-time rendering or running multiple applications at the same time,” says Pette. “The new Intel and Nvidia-Ada powered workstations deliver unprecedented speed, power and efficiency, enabling professionals around the world to handle the most complex workflows across all industries.”

“The latest Intel Xeon W processors — featuring a groundbreaking new computing architecture — are
uniquely designed to help professional users tackle the most challenging workloads of today and tomorrow.”
said Roger Chandler, vice president and general manager of creator and workstation solutions in the
client computing group at Intel, in a statement. “Combining our new Intel Xeon workstation processors with the latest Nvidia GPUs will unleash the innovation and creativity of professional creators, artists, engineers, designers, data scientists and power users around the world.”

Serving new workloads

Metaverse applications and the rise of generative AI require a new level of computing power
underlying hardware.

“These are built specifically for things like Nvidia Omniverse and Nvidia AI,” Pette said.

Creating digital twins in a simulated photorealistic environment that conforms to the laws of physics and planning factories are just two examples of workflows enabled by Nvidia Omniverse Enterprise, a platform for creating and operating metaverse applications.

For example, BMW Group uses Nvidia Omniverse Enterprise to design an end-to-end digital twin of an entire plant. This includes collaborating with thousands of planners, product engineers and facility managers in a single virtual environment to design, plan, simulate and optimize highly complex manufacturing systems before actually building a factory or integrating a new product into the real world.

(I’ll be moderating a session on the enterprise metaverse at Nvidia’s GTC event on March 22).

The need for accelerated computation is growing exponentially with the explosion of AI augmented workflows, from traditional R&D and data science workloads, to edge devices on factory floors or in security offices, to generative AI solutions for text conversations and text-to-image applications. the companies.

Extended reality (XR) collaboration solutions also require significant computing resources. Examples of XR applications include design reviews, product design validation, maintenance and support training, rehearsals, interactive digital twins, and location-based entertainment. All of these call for high-resolution photo-realistic images to create the most intuitive and immersive immersive experiences, whether available locally or streamed to wireless devices.

Next generation platform features

With a breakthrough new compute architecture for faster individual CPU cores and new embedded multi-die interconnect bridge packaging, the Xeon W-3400 and Xeon W-2400 series processors enable scalability for better workload performance. The top-of-the-range Intel Xeon w9-3495X processor is available with up to 56 cores in a single socket and features a redesigned memory controller and larger L3 cache, delivering up to 28% more single-threaded and 120% more multi-threaded performance than the Previous generation Xeon W processors.

Based on the Nvidia Ada Lovelace GPU architecture, the latest Nvidia RTX 6000 brings power efficiency and performance to the new workstations. It features 142 third-generation RT cores, 568 fourth-generation Tensor cores, and 18,176 latest-generation CUDA cores, combined with 48GB of high-performance graphics memory to support up to 2x ray-tracing, AI, graphics, and computing performance. to offer compared to the previous generation.

And Nvidia’s ConnectX-6 Dx SmartNICs enable professionals to handle demanding high-bandwidth 3D
rendering and computer-aided design tasks, as well as traditional line-speed network office work
connectivity support based on two 25Gbps ports and GPUDirect technology for 10X greater GPU bandwidth over standard NICs. Its high-speed, low-latency networking and streaming capabilities enable teams to move and ingest large data sets or enable remote individuals to collaborate on design and visualization applications.

The new workstations will be available in the coming months and you can pre-order from Boxx and HP starting today.

While it’s unusual to see competitors like Intel and Nvidia teaming up, Nvidia is also teaming up with AMD around its CPU families, Pette said.

“We tend to try to focus on what the customer experience is going to be,” Pette said. “Even though we may be competing with someone on the GPU side, the best experience is putting in a Sapphire Rapids (Intel) or Threadripper (AMD), and then we want to make sure those workloads are aligned.”