Nvidia’s Metropolis Paves The Path To AI Cities

On the first day of the four-day GPU Technology Conference (GTC) in San Jose, California, Nvidia announced that it's rolling out a new platform dubbed "Metropolis" that will apply deep learning to video streams for smart city applications such as public safety, traffic management, and resource optimization.

The idea is that because humans are capable of monitoring only a tiny fraction of the captured video from hundreds of millions of video cameras deployed in areas such as government property, public transit, and roadways, AI can be used instead to process the massive amounts of video data almost instantaneously. The company claimed that more than 50 Nvidia AI city partners such as Avigilon, Dahua, Hanwha Techwin, Hikvision, and Milestone are already helping customers using deep learning on Nvidia GPUs.

Deepu Talla, vice president and general manager of the Tegra business at Nvidia, said:

Deep learning is enabling powerful intelligent video analytics that turn anonymized video into real-time valuable insights, enhancing safety and improving lives. The Nvidia Metropolis platform enables customers to put AI behind every video stream to create smarter cities.

According to Nvidia, Metropolis is an amalgamation of multiple products operating on a unified architecture. High-performance deep learning inferencing happens at the edge with the Nvidia Jetson embedded computing platform, and through servers and data centers with Nvidia Tesla GPU accelerators. Data visualization is powered by Nvidia Quadro professional graphics, and the entire platform is supported by Nvidia's SDKs, including DeepStream, JetPack, and TensorRT.

The Nvidia Metropolis platform is currently on display at GTC 2017 through May 11 at the San Jose Convention Center.