In an interview with the Analytics India Magazine, Vishal Dhupar, managing director, South Asia at NVIDIA Graphics Pvt Ltd, talked about empowering developers and building a pool of India-based artificial intelligence developers through the Developer Connect Program. He also discussed NVIDIA’s role in driving autonomous future and how the chip giant is working with over 350 companies across the auto ecosystem to help them deploy AI. In fact, NVIDIA draws a major chunk of business from gaming, self-driving and AI processing. According to a report from Motley Fool, the company in its recent fiscal year made $5.51 billion in gaming revenue, with around $4.6 billion of that coming from graphics cards for personal computers.

GPU Computing Businesses Helps Businesses Achieve High-Performance Computing

Talking about the GPU computing business, Dhupar reveals that it helps businesses and research institutions with the ability to work on a multitude of parallel computing frameworks of neural networks. “Add to this, the layer of NVIDIA GPU Cloud (NGC) and a software repository provided by NVIDIA that provides access to a comprehensive catalogue of GPU-optimised software tools. These softwares form the backbone of GPU-based deep learning and high-performance computing,” says Dhupar.

NVIDIA launched its DGX portfolio and its software are powerful instruments for advancing the work of world-class AI research and realising the promise of this new era of computing. “Inspired by the demands of DL and analytics, NVIDIA DGX Systems are built on the new, revolutionary NVIDIA Volta GPU platform. Combined with innovative GPU-optimised software and simplified management tools, these fully-integrated solutions deliver groundbreaking performance,” Dhupar shared.

One of the key highlights of NVIDIA DGX-1 is that it fast-tracks the initiative with a solution that works right out of the box, providing insights in hours instead of weeks or months. “The power provided by GPUs can be looked at as a way forward for organisations and institutions to efficiently achieve high-performance computing,” shared Dhupar.

Creating A Deep Learning Talent Pool In India

NVIDIA is in the process of building a huge pool of India-based AI developers, data scientists, researchers and academicians to analyse and understand AI trends, technology and use cases.

The NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute (DLI) offers hands-on training for developers, data scientists, and researchers looking to solve challenging problems with DL and accelerated computing. “Through built-in assessments, participants can earn certifications that prove subject matter competency and can be leveraged for professional career growth,” he shared.

From a developer engagement standpoint, the NVIDIA Developer Program is an important part of its commitment to the community. “We are witnessing a constant rise in the sign-ups to the program, since its inception. This program enables the delivery of an extensive range of NVIDIA software and technologies to the developer community and two-way communication about issues, enhancements, usage and future needs,” he said.

Developers get access to the latest NVIDIA SDK components and tools. Another key activity — the Developer Connect Program in India empowers developers with skills needed to solve some of the most challenging deep learning problems in the areas of image recognition, text classification and speech modelling. “The right kind of talent with adequate skill sets is imperative to build a holistic AI ecosystem. It is our endeavour at NVIDIA to equip our Indian tech talent to take a leading role in the AI revolution and we stay committed to this task,” he shared.

Can Autonomous Cars Be A Reality In India

NVIDIA’s thought leadership in self-driving technology is well-known and they are uniquely positioned to play a central role in the driving autonomous tech forward. In fact, NVIDIA’s technology platform spans the entire process.

• Autonomous driving is an incredibly compute-intense process, both in terms of datacenter-based training for the neural networks which form the software brains of autonomous vehicles, and the on-board inferencing that takes place within the vehicle itself.
• NVIDIA’s in-vehicle configurations range from a passively cooled mobile processor operating at 10 watts, to a multi-chip configuration with four high-performance AI processors, with the capability to deliver 320 trillion deep learning operations per second (TOPS).
• From AI in the vehicle that helps the driver, such as natural language processing and computer vision, to full Level 5 automation, NVIDIA is working with over 350 companies across the auto ecosystem to help them deploy AI.

India also offers an enormous scope for autonomous vehicle deployment. Dhupar believes India has a unique role to play in the development of autonomous technologies that feed into the automotive industry. Research efforts from premier engineering institutes like the IITs and NITs along with technology companies are already making important contributions in this area. For example, NetraDyne maps the quality of driving while improving commercial fleet and driver safety.  “Connected, smart technologies can help in amplifying our country’s unique strengths while Indian innovation can help solve problems like managing traffic, reducing pollution from petrol or diesel fuel powered vehicles, increasing parking efficiency and pedestrian safety,” Dhupar concludes.