As artificial intelligence infrastructure expands at an unprecedented pace, one of the biggest challenges facing the industry is not computing power — but electricity. A new collaboration between engineering firm AtkinsRéalis and NVIDIA highlights how nuclear energy could play a major role in powering the next generation of AI data centers.

The companies are exploring how nuclear power infrastructure, digital twins, and accelerated computing could be combined to support the development of large-scale AI facilities, sometimes referred to as AI factories.

The growing energy problem behind AI

The rapid growth of artificial intelligence, data centers, and high-performance computing is driving massive increases in global electricity demand. Training and running large AI models requires enormous computing power, which in turn requires reliable and continuous energy supply.

This is why governments and infrastructure developers are increasingly exploring nuclear energy as a low-carbon, baseload power source for future AI infrastructure.

AtkinsRéalis, a major engineering and nuclear company, is working with NVIDIA to explore how nuclear-powered infrastructure could support next-generation AI facilities. The collaboration will look at how AI-ready facilities could be designed, optimized, and deployed using digital twin technology and high-performance simulation tools.

Digital twins and AI infrastructure design

One of the key technologies involved in the collaboration is NVIDIA Omniverse, which allows companies to create detailed digital twins of infrastructure projects before construction begins.

Using digital twins, engineers can simulate infrastructure systems in a virtual environment, test different configurations, optimize performance, and identify potential issues before building in the real world. This can reduce costs, accelerate construction timelines, and improve safety and efficiency.

The companies are exploring how these tools could be used to design integrated infrastructure systems combining nuclear energy, power distribution, cooling systems, and large-scale AI computing facilities.

Nuclear power and AI factories

The concept of “AI factories” refers to large-scale data centers dedicated specifically to artificial intelligence workloads. These facilities require massive amounts of continuous electricity, making nuclear power an attractive option due to its reliability and low carbon emissions.

The collaboration will explore several areas including:

• Integrating nuclear power with AI data center infrastructure
• Using digital twins and simulation for infrastructure planning
• Improving engineering workflows with AI tools
• Accelerating construction and project delivery
• Optimizing power distribution and cooling systems

The partnership reflects a broader trend across the technology industry, where energy infrastructure is becoming a critical factor in the future of artificial intelligence development.

Energy becoming the limiting factor for AI growth

As AI models continue to grow in size and complexity, energy availability is increasingly becoming one of the biggest constraints on AI expansion.

Large technology companies, infrastructure providers, and governments are now exploring nuclear energy, renewable energy, and new power infrastructure solutions to support future data center growth.

The collaboration between AtkinsRéalis and NVIDIA shows how the future of artificial intelligence may depend not only on chips and software, but on power generation, infrastructure engineering, and energy strategy.

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From animal anatomy to digital twinning and mining simulations, this Canadian company is bringing game development know-how to immersive experiences

After meeting Charles Lavigne and Kevin Oke at the BCTECH Summit last month, we were enticed to visit their headquarters in the beautiful island of Victoria and try out their latest VR demos. But it wasn’t just the prospect of the beautiful seaplane ride from Vancouver that hooked us, but the fact that the Oke and Lavigne, after working for over a decade in the videogame industry with companies such as Microsoft, EA, and Ubisoft founded LlamaZOO to apply that experience to producing what sounded like an incredibly eclectic range of VR applications.

MineLife VR, for example, manages to synthesize large, complex, and vast spatial data into a life-sized, interactive, virtual reality experience. The platform fuses complex geospatial and mine planning data into an interactive, 1:1 scale virtual reality replica of the planned, current, and future states of a mine site.

MineLife VR manages to synthesize large, complex, and vast spatial data into a life-sized, interactive, virtual reality experience
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“It enables mining companies’ engineers, executives, and external stakeholders to immerse themselves in a mine plan, and interact with it through all the years of its life cycle from any angle, whether thousands of feet up in the air, or down on the ground, virtually walking through the mine site,” explains Lavigne.

This mining VR tools is fantastically flexible and enables you to fly and move around an accurately mapped countryside while adding and removing layers of info like roads, waterways, mining trucks, current installations and geographic data, letting you see the actual size and position of underground mineral deposits to enable the planning of surface infrastructure as well as below ground extraction techniques.

This mining VR tools is fantastically flexible and enables you to fly and move around an accurately mapped countryside while adding and removing layers of info like roads and waterways
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“By making this information easier and more efficient to access, transporting the data into high resolution 3D, and unifying it all into a seamless experience, it can be used in a variety of applications across community relations, resource management, mine planning and reclamation, and business development,” adds Oke.

By making this information easier and more efficient to access, transporting the data into high resolution 3D, and unifying it all into a seamless experience, it can be used in a variety of applications
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The sheer scale of it felt extremely impressive, as was their management of the VR sickness factor as I flew around into the air to drop down a mine hundreds of feet below. This was done by a nifty trick where as you flew around, your peripheral field of view moved in and blacked out a little, much like blinkers on a horse. It worked surprisingly well.

Key to this functionality is the concept of 3D “digital twinning” which turns companies’ existing data into a highly visual, remotely accessible, and real-time visualization. Digital twins are ideal for overseeing and optimizing machine, equipment, personnel, and site-wide operations. With Clarity 3D LlamaZoo can provide a wide range of their mining clients with centralized real-time tracking of equipment and vehicle positioning, health, and productivity, as well as planned vs. actual dig progress.

Key to this functionality is the concept of 3D digital twinning
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“They can avoid unplanned maintenance by remotely monitoring machine and equipment health and data and gain centralized data oversight by integrating any number of datasets into one centralized interface,” says Oke. The platform enables users to visualize the digital twin’s real-time and historic data, drill-down for detailed information on any part, machine, or process, and provide immersive cost-saving training.”

But as a pet owner the most fascinating experience they showed off was EasyAnatomy, an award-winning 3D canine anatomy study & reference app with Apple ARKit Augmented Reality functionality. It was built in partnership with leading universities and anatomists using MRI and CT data as source files, it features incredibly accurate and complete 3D canine anatomy linked to over 750 adaptive quiz questions. It has so far been adopted by veterinary students, professors, and professionals in over 120 countries.

“While textbooks present anatomical structures in 2D images, the VR app enables users to visualize the anatomy in lifelike 3D. EasyAnatomy enables endlessly repeatable dissection practice unlike cadaver dissection, which is complicated by ethical challenges, significant costs to universities, and limits students’ opportunities for study,” explains Lavigne.

As a pet owner the most fascinating experience they showed off was EasyAnatomy, a 3D canine anatomy study & reference app
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The veterinary app has been so successful, in fact, that the company is now working on a human anatomy version, as more medical schools are embracing immersive training in recognition of its greater effectiveness, specially in fields such as surgery and healthcare training.

This article was originally published on VRScout

Ever Wonder What The Inside Of A Dog Looks Like? There’s An AR App For That via @alicebonasio https://t.co/j5BmOwIrr8 pic.twitter.com/xgIMFxIkHL

— VRScout (@VRScout) June 20, 2018

For companies looking to leverage Immersive technologies such as VR/AR/MR/XR Tech Trends offers a comprehensive range of Virtual Reality Consultancy Services.

Alice Bonasio is a VR and Digital Transformation Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

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