NVIDIA GTC kicks off with announcement of new Blackwell GPUs for AI uses

NVIDIA GTC, the company’s annual AI conference, just kicked off with CEO Jensen Huang taking the stage to reveal new updates from the company. 

One of the main announcements that Huang made was the Blackwell platform, which is a GPU architecture for running generative AI. According to the company, it can run “real-time generative AI on trillion-parameter large language models at up to 25x less cost and energy consumption than its predecessor,” Hopper. 

Blackwell consists of six technologies: a 208 billion transistor chip, a second-gen transformer engine, fifth-generation NLink, RAS engine, decompression engine, and support for new native interface encryption protocols. 

The company believes that Blackwell will enable breakthroughs in areas like data processing, engineering simulation, electronic design automation, computer-aided drug design, quantum computing and generative AI. 

A number of companies are expected to adopt Blackwell, including AWS, Dell, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle, Tesla, and xAI. 

“For three decades we’ve pursued accelerated computing, with the goal of enabling transformative breakthroughs like deep learning and AI,” said Huang. “Generative AI is the defining technology of our time. Blackwell is the engine to power this new industrial revolution. Working with the most dynamic companies in the world, we will realize the promise of AI for every industry.”

The company also announced a new supercomputer, DGX SuperPOD, that is powered by the Blackwell chips. The systems include 36 GB200 Superchips (which each contain 36 NVIDIA Grace CPUs and 72 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs). According to NVIDIA, these Superchips each deliver a 30x performance increase for LLM inference compared to NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs.  

It can also scale up to tens of thousands of Superchips using NVIDIA’s Quantum InfiniBand.

SuperPOD also provides predictive-management capabilities to help cut down on downtime and inefficiency, and also identifies areas of concern so that it can suggest maintenance steps, adjust compute resources, and save and resume jobs. 

“NVIDIA DGX AI supercomputers are the factories of the AI industrial revolution,” said Huang. “The new DGX SuperPOD combines the latest advancements in NVIDIA accelerated computing, networking and software to enable every company, industry and country to refine and generate their own AI.”