Monash University has long been an advocate of GPU computing technologies, and has recently formed a formal partnership with NVIDIA. As part of this partnership NVIDIA have provided SensiLab with next-generation hardware for deep learning and advanced visual simulation.
Vinh Nguyen, Deep Learning Solutions Architect for NVIDIA, said, ‘SensiLab has established itself as an excellent interdisciplinary research center, focusing on AI in creative art, but also other areas like robotics and visualization. As part of the growing collaboration with Monash, NVIDIA will be contributing staff time and equipment to joint research projects at SensiLab.’
The NVIDIA systems contributed will be used as part of research efforts in Creative AI and visualisation. SensiLab is the only research laboratory in Australia with a dedicated DGX-1 Deep Learning supercomputer for this purpose. This, along with other NVIDIA systems, will be used to design new creative AI systems that assist human creatives expand the possibilities for their practices.
‘Our partnership with NVIDIA gives us access to leading-edge hardware that allows us to train bigger models faster and produce systems ready for the next generation of computer devices, said Patrick Hutchings, research assistant in Creative AI in SensiLab.
SensiLab’s resident robot, Dave, is powered by a Jetson TX-2 mobile computer supplied by NVIDIA. Dave utilises the low power consumption GPU on the Jetson to perform real-time neural speech synthesis, machine vision for object detection and natural language processing on-board. Using a laptop battery Dave navigates his way around SensiLab and is able to give tours of the research space as well as acting as a research platform for rapidly testing state-of-the-art AI algorithms on mobile hardware.
‘SensiLab welcomes collaborations with industry partners such as NVIDIA who are interested in advancing the state-of-the-art in creative AI’, explained Prof Jon McCormack, SensiLab director.
In September SensiLab will present at the NVIDIA AI conference on how cutting-edge AI techniques can be applied to creative applications, including music generation, image synthesis and creative ideation.