Tencent Cloud Taps Nvidia Tesla GPU Accelerators For AI

Nvidia announced that its Tesla P100, P40, and M40 GPU accelerators will soon be used by Tencent Cloud to offer a variety of AI-powered services.

The announcement comes as tech companies small and large turn to AI for increasingly "smart" products and services. Building the AI behind those offerings is no easy feat--that's why Nvidia has introduced hardware and software that makes it easier for companies to use AI however they see fit. Tencent Cloud will use Nvidia's tech in its public cloud computing platform, which should in turn make it easier still for companies to experiment with AI.

"Organizations across many industries are seeking greater access to the core AI technologies required to develop advanced applications," Nvidia said in a press release, "such as facial recognition, natural language processing, traffic analysis, intelligent customer service, and machine learning." All of those applications require a lot of power. Tencent Cloud--and, by extension, Nvidia--will help them harness that power for profit. (Ideally on everyone's part.)

Nvidia said in the release that Tencent Cloud plans to introduce servers with up to eight GPU accelerators in the first half of 2017. Those servers are supposed to offer end users "superior performance while meeting the requirements for deep learning, and algorithms that involve ultra-high data volume and ultra-sized equipment." The P100, P40, and M40 are the heart of those servers; Nvidia's NVLink tech and deep learning software are the brains.

All of this furthers Nvidia's goal of putting its tech at the center of future AI. The company's already been tapped for the world's fastest AI supercomputer, partnered up with auto companies for self-driving vehicles, and collaborated with IBM on more powerful and efficient servers. Those efforts are enabled by chips like the P40, the Jetson TX2, the P100, and the M10, as well as the software used to harness their power.

As the company said in its release:

“Companies around the world are harnessing their data with our AI computing technology to create breakthrough products and services,” said Ian Buck, general manager of Accelerated Computing at Nvidia. “Through Tencent Cloud, more companies will have access to Nvidia’s deep learning platform, the world’s most broadly adopted AI platform.”

The "first half of this year" was the only guidance Nvidia offered about Tencent Cloud's plans to make these servers accessible to its customers. We expect the company to share more when these AI-enabled applications go online; every feather in its cap helps Nvidia on its AI-focused efforts.