In March 2024, NVIDIA unveiled the Blackwell platform, a game-changer for organizations eager to harness real-time generative AI and tap into trillion-parameter large language models.
This innovative architecture operates at an incredible 25 times lower cost and energy consumption compared to its predecessor, making it an exciting prospect for a sustainable future.
The Blackwell GPU architecture features six groundbreaking technologies designed for accelerated computing, unlocking a world of opportunities in fields like data processing, engineering simulation, electronic design automation, computer-aided drug design, quantum computing, and generative AI.
Jensen Huang, NVIDIA's visionary founder and CEO, stated, "For three decades, we've pursued accelerated computing to empower transformative breakthroughs like deep learning and AI. Generative AI is the defining technology of our time. Blackwell is the engine that will launch this new industrial revolution. By collaborating with some of the most dynamic companies globally, we are dedicated to realizing AI's potential across every industry."
Prominent organizations such as Amazon Web Services, Dell Technologies, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle, Tesla, and xAI have embraced the Blackwell platform.
The choice to name the Blackwell architecture after the brilliant mathematician David Blackwell is a nod to his incredible contributions to game theory, probability theory, information theory, and statistics, which have shaped the design of transformer-based generative AI models.
Notably, Blackwell was also the first African American elected to the National Academy of Sciences—a true trailblazer!
Furthermore, NVIDIA's "Grace" CPU pays tribute to the pioneering computer scientist Grace Hopper, a U.S. Navy rear admiral whose work revolutionized programming languages.
With the Grace Blackwell architecture, enterprises and researchers can easily prototype, fine-tune, and test models on local Project DIGITS systems running the Linux-based NVIDIA DGX OS.
Then, they have the seamless capability to deploy their models on NVIDIA DGX Cloud™ accelerated cloud instances or data center infrastructure.
This integrated approach allows developers to innovate with Project DIGITS and scale their solutions effortlessly using the powerful Grace Blackwell architecture and the NVIDIA AI Enterprise software platform.