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.

The post Powering AI With Nuclear Energy appeared first on Tech Trends.

At the start of 2020 (remember those giddy, carefree times before the pandemic struck?) Unity asked more than a dozen industry experts – including yours truly – to share their thoughts on how immersive technologies would be embraced for a report entitled Top 2020 Trends: Enterprise AR & VR.

All signs were pointing to 2020 being a breakout year for immersive tech, and, as it turned out, this was one of the few things not to have been derailed by COVID-19.

With the widespread need for social distancing and shift towards remote work, companies turned to immersive technology tools such as real-time 3D, AR, and VR to connect employees for remote collaboration, replace events and exhibitions, and allow teams to work in offices, labs, and sites from afar. As the need to support employees remotely grew more urgent, this was reflected in the accelerated adoption of XR across the board.

Microsoft, for example, has seen a 13x increase in remote assistance usage over the past 12 months, and Unity believes that this general trend is likely to continue in 2021.

All signs were pointing to 2020 being a breakout year for immersive tech, and, as it turned out, this was one of the few things not to have been derailed by COVID-19
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Some of the key findings from the report include:

The use of mixed reality will expand to enable more human connections

Mixed reality has traditionally been used to aid in task completion, however, the pandemic has sparked the need for tools that mimic human connection and proximity to create more productive work environments and collaboration.

Cross-functional collaboration across immersive media will grow

2020 has seen more users looking for ways to collaborate remotely from multiple geographic locations, using media that mimic real life. Expect that to continue into 2021.

VR will prove even more useful in the workplace

The disruptions of COVID-19 have led many to look for creative ways to solve new and old problems across the workplace, such as keeping skills fresh, engaging learners without in-person training, improving employee productivity, and fostering collaboration and connection among teams.

Jeremy Dalton, Head of AR/VR PwC believes that in 2021 and beyond we will see a wider range of businesses across numerous industries become more comfortable with emerging technologies that they would otherwise have left on the sideline until pressured to innovate.

While computers will never fully replace the value of in-person connection, Fleckenstein believes there is a tremendous opportunity for more immersive collaboration, and 2021 will see mixed reality evolve beyond task completion and emerge as the ideal medium for human connection.

As the need to support employees remotely grew more urgent, this was reflected in the accelerated adoption of XR across the board
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Futurist and author Cathy Hackl, predicts volumetric video will be a key factor in sustaining this evolution and widespread adoption.

Volumetric video, she explains, can help companies overcome pain points caused by the sudden shift to remote work, since the technology makes it possible to record employees, projects, or scenarios in three dimensions, instead of digitally rebuilding them from scratch for virtual reality simulations.

“The digital video can then be edited and manipulated to be viewed on everything from flat screens to virtual reality simulations,” she explains, adding that experiencing something in 3D with real-life physical movement is shown to increase viewers’ retention of the information being taught.

According to Matt Fleckenstein Senior Director, Mixed Reality at Microsoft, the ROI for firstline workers when adopting mixed reality in enterprise has been significant:

“We’ve seen 90% of touch labor eliminated, errors reduced to zero, and increased employee satisfaction.”

Elizabeth Baron, Enterprise Solutions Executive at Unity Technologies, says “Immersive realities provide probability spaces for enterprises to study any potential reality, or the art of the (im)possible,” with a host of relevant data that is brought to life and experienced rather than merely presented.

“Storytelling with immersive XR can simultaneously bring a spreadsheet to life for an artist and bring a design to life for an engineer,” she explains.

You can access the e-book for free here

For companies looking to get into Immersive technologies our VR Consultancy service offers comprehensive support in strategic deployment of Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality

Alice Bonasio is a VR 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.

The post 2021 Immersive Tech Trends appeared first on Tech Trends.

Like Deckard in Blade Runner; I am in love with a machine and I just don’t care!

It was love at first sight when I unpacked the top spec Dell Precision 7720 last week. Cupid’s bow twanged and his poison arrow thudded deep into the meat of my heart, I was a gonna. She was over £7k of laptop and I was a drooling geek, palms sweaty at the prospect of an Intel Xeon E3-1535M v6 server processor, Nvidia Quadro P5000 and a Samsung SM961 M.2 SSD. My shaking hands slowly peeled off her cardboard clothes, plugged her straight into the mains and turned myself on 😉 So how was it? Well, it was sweet while it lasted but she soon left me and drove away with the same cheeky UPS driver!

It was love at first sight when I unpacked the top spec Dell Precision 7720 last week. Cupid’s bow twanged and his poison arrow thudded deep into the meat of my heart, I was a gonna
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Check out the Specs below:

• Windows 10 Professional (x64)
• 17.3″ UHD IPS Narrow Border (3840×2160) Wide View with Web Camera and Mic
• Intel Xeon E3-1545M v5 (Quad Core Xeon 2.90GHz, 3.80GHz Turbo, 8MB 45W, w/Iris Pro Graphics P580)
• 512GB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD Class 40 MPWS
• 64GB, 4x16GB, 2400MHz DDR4 Non-ECC SDRAM
• NVIDIA Quadro P5000 w/16GB GDDR5 + Onboard Intel(R) HD Graphics P630
• Palm Rest with touch fingerprint reader, smart card and NFC
• 6 Cell (91 Whr) Long Life Cycle Lithium Ion Polymer Battery

It is large and heavy but still, much more portable and versatile than a PC tower while every bit as powerful
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Obviously, any laptop packing this kind of heat is going to be rather big and not a ‘pop in your bag and take to a meeting’ kind of computer:

Height: (front) 1.12″ (28.5mm) Height: (rear) 1.36″ (34.49mm) | 2. Width: 16.42″ (417.04mm) | 3. Depth: 11.08″ (281.44mm) Weight: (starts at) 7.55lbs (3.42kg) You can see that it is large and heavy but still, much more portable and versatile than a PC tower while every bit as powerful. Should you take it out and about though, the soft-touch, tough-looking carbon fibre shell is very sturdy and as Dell claims,

The brilliantly designed chassis is subjected to and passes MIL-STD 810G testing, ensuring durability and reliability for wherever your job takes you.

Anyone spending this much on a Laptop will be using some serious software for the kind of creative jobs that make the UltraSharp UHD (3840×2160) screen on my test unit an essential option, but for when 4K is not enough there is an HDMI 1.4 out and mini DisplayPort 1.4 out that supports third-party screens of up to 8K!

Anyone spending this much on a Laptop will be using some serious software for the kind of creative jobs that make the Ultra Sharp UHD (3840x2160) screen on my test unit an essential option
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The keyboard is really quite nice to use, with a pleasingly soft key feel and minimal travel, but I don’t think it will see much action as this is not a machine for writing. Disappointingly the touchpad is a miserable flash back to the 90’s and is basically useless, truly awful! However this would only be a real issue if users planned to move the 7720 around like a notebook on a daily basis, but it’s just not that kind of machine. Creative power users working on video, graphics or VR dev jobs will most probably plug in a mouse or pen and tablet for controlled cursor control and happily bypass the build-in touchpad altogether.

As you would expect on a gargantuan beast like the 7720 connectivity is excellent. Four USB 3.0 A ports with PowerShare technology for charging peripherals, one super fast Thunderbolt 3 port and a Gigabit Ethernet socket. 802.11ac dual-band Wi-Fi plus Bluetooth 4.2 will get you further connected and a side-mounted SD/SDHC/SDXC UHS-II port will gobble up all your digital media. The 7720 also sports dual, integrated, noise-cancelling, digital array microphones, and stereo speakers powered by Waves MaxxAudio Pro plus has a good old headphone jack to boot!

Four USB 3.0 A ports with PowerShare technology, one super fast Thunderbolt 3 port and a Gigabit Ethernet socket, plus an SDXC UHS-II port, 802.11ac dual-band Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.2 will get you connected
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As usual, there are a few bundled pieces of software, some useless like Candy Crush Soda Saga (why?!) but the Dell Optimizer 4.0 app might actually be one of the rare useful ones.

The Dell Precision Optimizer 4.0 takes the guesswork out of customizing settings and automatically adjusts them. It automatically tunes your workstation to run the most popular Independent Software Vendor (ISV) applications at the fastest speeds possible for the fastest results. Featuring enterprise smart alerts for processor, storage, memory, and graphics utilization all in an elegant, new UI.

Seven hours, real-world battery life is a very useful feature and the 7720 lasted longer than any other workstation-level laptop I have used
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When not on mains power the 6 Cell (91 Whr) Long Life Cycle Lithium Ion Polymer Battery kept me going for a solid seven hours of video editing and a little light rendering. This is a very useful feature and the 7720 lasted longer than any other workstation level laptop I have used. I would normally expect no more than four hours of serious use on battery power, but I’d recommend staying glued to the mains for any serious rendering as the 7720 is a real monster and gets pretty hot under load. As workstation classification demands cooling is taken seriously and Dell have done a good job, the fans are not too loud and are quite effective at cooling it down during render-heavy tasks.

Dell’s patented 5th generation dual cooling fans provide a brilliant approach to thermal cooling, taking performance and comfort to levels never before seen on a task-intensive laptop. No matter how high-powered your project, your processing and graphical applications will work within turbo frequencies and your system will stay cool.

Security is another plus point for the 7720 and it comes as standard with a smart card reader with TMP encryption but an optional fingerprint reader and NFC sensor offer more options for keeping international spooks out of your machine. I didn’t test the fingerprint reader on my sample but it looks the business and is placed nicely, out of the way in the right corner.

Security is another plus point for the 7720 and it comes as standard with a smart card reader with TMP encryption but an optional fingerprint reader and NFC sensor offer more options for keeping international spooks out
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VR is our specialist area here at Tech Trends so I was very happy to see the 7720 claims to be VR-ready. That is quite a claim so I plugged in Dell’s own excellent Windows Mixed Reality Visor Headset, hooked up the accompanying Bluetooth handsets and gave it a spin. I was very impressed and after Windows updated a few of its MR components I was straight into the Cliff House, teleporting around, using apps and having fun. There was no lag or judder and the hand controls were super fast. Yes, I was using the top spec version of the 7720 and am sure that less well-speced versions might not be as slick with VR so users would need to make sure they choose the appropriate VR-capable options for maximum graphics and processor power.

I was very impressed and after Windows updated a few of its MR components I was straight into VR, standing in the Cliff House, teleporting around, using apps and having fun
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Get the best of work and play. Dell’s first VR-ready mobile workstation is optimized for gaming and content creation in addition to all your mainstream professional ISV applications. It’s so powerful it can handle complex VR work flows—so you can game or create in immersive virtual reality.

The Nvidia Quadro P5000 is an awesome GPU built on NVIDIA Pascal GPU technology and with 2560 CUDA Cores and 16 GB GDDR5 memory, it does an incredible job with VR and pretty much any resource-heavy, VR, 3D graphics or 4K video editing jobs you throw at it. It gave a smooth and faultless user experience and lent its considerable muscle to CUDA compatible applications.

The Nvidia Quadro P5000 is an awesome GPU with 2560 CUDA Cores and 16 GB GDDR5 memory. It does an incredible job with VR, giving a smooth and faultless experience and lent its considerable muscle to CUDA compatible applications
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Now we come to the negative, as yes, there was one thing that caused me serious annoyance with the 7720. It was slow. What!! I hear you scream, how can a machine with specs like these be slow? Well, I wondered this too, and can only place the blame on the slow speed, low cost, Samsung M.2 SSD and its drivers. Windows 10 was just sluggish, opening browsers, folders and utilities took two to three seconds and I felt like I was wading through treacle.

Try as I could, I couldn’t find newer M.2 drivers online to test my theory so I can’t really be sure what the problem was and the bundled Dell Precision Optimizer 4.0 was no help. This issue didn’t totally undermine the power and usability of the 7720 and didn’t affect VR at all but irritated me to the point of screaming at it while I waited for new windows to open and Win10 to do basic tasks. I am sure a service call to Dell and some fiddling around with drivers would fix this but for £7k+ I expected lightning speed out of the box and I didn’t get it. I am sure this is just a glitch so can’t hold it against the 7720 which overall is an incredible workstation and well worth the price tag for creative professionals working in cutting-edge Graphics, Video or VR.

RRP: £7263 on Dell UK

Tom Atkinson is a Digital Producer & Photographer at R3Digital and Reviews & Dept. Editor at Tech Trends. Connect on LinkedIn and follow him on Twitter @R3Digital

The post Product Review: Dell Precision 7720 Mobile Workstation appeared first on Tech Trends.

Connected data and devices are set to transform city living, but what exacly will that look like?

Tech Trends was invited to an event in London exploring the future of Smart Cities and the role Data will have in making them run smoothly. And the experts gathered to discuss these themes at One Canary Wharf were well placed to comment on the challenges ahead, as they’re working on the front line of the data revolution.

The IDC forecasts that by 2025 the Global Datashphere will grow to 163 zettabytes - a trillion gigabytes
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Data storage solutions company Seagate hosted Stuart Higgins, Head of Smart Cities UK&I at Cisco and Eddie Seymour, European Technical Director at Nvidia, Thinkingcities.com Editor in Chief Kevin Borras and Assistant Professor Carlos Moreno, from the Pantheon-Sorbonne University who is also Envoy to the Mayor of Paris, a city keen to embrace its Smart City status.

Data storage solutions company Seagate hosted experts from companies such as Cisco and Nvidia to discuss the future of Smart Cities
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This concept of Smart Cities is certainly something we’ve keenly interested in at Tech Trends – we’ve recently covered topics such as automation and intelligent mobility on the blog – but it’s actually incredibly difficult to grasp what that actually means. The implications of having a truly smart, networked city – in terms of how it could change our lives for the better, how it might impinge on our privacy or how it will certainly drive changes to the law and society – are truly momentous. Some of these were detailed in the white paper released at the event, Data Age 2025 which outlined some interesting findings:

The implications of having a truly smart, networked city are momentous
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“Cities across Europe are gradually becoming more digitalised and connected, and subsequently being flooded with an overwhelming amount of data.” explained Kate Scolnick, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Treasury at Seagate, “In fact, our Data Age 2025 whitepaper revealed that in less than 10 years’ time, the average person anywhere in the world will interact with connected devices nearly 4,800 times per day – that’s one interaction every 18 seconds.”

Cities across Europe are gradually becoming more digitalised and connected
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The advent of real-time data has brought with it a clear shift from past decades where data was used in a more academic, retrospective way to analyse the past, to the present where instant information is consumed not only to inform but to determine our actions in the moment, often in life-enhancing and life-critical ways. It is the lifeblood of our rapidly growing global economy. Our very digital existence, as defined by the sum of all data created, captured and replicated on our planet in any given year, is growing rapidly, and this white paper defines it as the ‘Global Datasphere’.

The IDC estimates that by 2025 almost 20% of data will be critical to daily life and nearly 10% of it will be hypercritical
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The IDC forecasts that by 2025 the Global Datashphere will grow to 163 zettabytes (a trillion gigabytes). That’s ten times the 16.1ZB generated in 2016. The IDC also estimates that by 2025 almost 20% of data will be critical to daily life and nearly 10% of it will be hypercritical. Yet flipping through at the Data Age 2025 report I get the impression these numbers are on the low side of what is possible.

“With such an increasing amount of data available, it becomes apparent just how big a role data storage will have to play in developing smart cities. Data storage mobility, latency and reliability will all be key and being able to turn data into something actionable and of real benefit to citizens will be of critical importance to enable the smart cities of tomorrow to thrive.” concludes Scolnick.

In the past few decades society has witnessed a transition from analogue to digital. What the next decade will bring in terms of our demands on systems of data storage and connectivity is literally unimaginable. From power grids and water systems to hospitals, public transportation and road networks, the growth in real-time data is remarkable both for its volume and its critical significance. Today it is a vital element in the smooth operation of all aspects of daily life for consumers, government, the military and businesses alike. And that trend will only continue to ramp up, so we’d best get ready.

In the past few decades society has witnessed a transition from analogue to digital. What the next decade will bring in terms of our demands on systems of data storage and connectivity are literally unimaginable
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Tom Atkinson is a Digital Producer & Photographer at R3Digital and Reviews & Dept. Editor at Tech Trends. Follow him on Twitter @R3Digital

The post Powering Smarter Cities with Data appeared first on Tech Trends.