Nvidia is stepping into other business areas as of late, and the newest is the area of artificial intelligence and drones. No, the company is not working on its own drones or artificial intelligence system, but it is working on ways to make them smarter.
Hardware makers are always looking for a quick way to add machine learning to their smart devices. Nvidia has stepped in to make things easier with its latest supercomputer, the Jetson TX1. The new computer could lower the lead time machines rely on for dynamic input and computations.
These devices include facial recognition systems, autonomous drones among other things or most things that require machine learning. The new hardware will replace the Nvidia TK1 SDK, which was launched back in 2014.
The TX1 SDK is interesting because it is capable of pushing one teraflop where performance is concerned, it does this in just under 10 watts and comes with Linux installed. One more thing, users, should they need to, can play Doom on this machine.
Jetson TX1 will enable a new generation of incredibly capable autonomous devices," says Deepu Tallia, vice president and general manager of the Tegra business at Nvidia. "They will navigate on their own, recognize objects and faces, and become increasingly intelligent through machine learning. It will enable developers to create industry-changing products."
Nvidia hopes its new product will power millions of smart devices in the future. CEO of the company Jen-Hsun Huang believes that machine learning will bring us into the most exciting times in computing yet, and he's not alone in this thinking.
Both Microsoft and Google are working on supercomputers and cloud platforms that can deliver machine learning services to businesses that require it. However, there's still a long way to go before machine learning becomes the norm.
The Nvidia Jetson TX1 will cost interested parties $599 in the United States. Availability in other regions will come in the next few weeks, according to the company.
