Nvidia Partners with Alibaba and Huawei for Smart City Platform
Nvidia Metropolis is an AI platform that leverages GPUs for intelligent monitoring. It can help address urban issues such as traffic, allocation of city services, and even finding missing individuals. Nvidia recently partnered with two Chinese technology giants, Alibaba and Huawei, for this platform.
Nvidia also announced that it’s including its DeepStream software development kit in the generally available version of Metropolis. Metropolis utilizes video and over 1 billion connected cameras projected to be installed in cities worldwide by the end of 2020 to run a variety of AI-powered analytics applications. This can assist with everything from law enforcement to urban planning.
Nvidia is also showcasing some applications of the technology at GTC in Beijing today, including a project from China’s Hikvision Research Institute. This project uses a combination of Jetson, Tesla P4, and DGX-1 to achieve 90 percent recall rates for its face ID and matching techniques.
While there is a “Big Brother” element of omnipresent surveillance to this, it’s also likely a key step in getting things like automated or at least semi-automated city-based transportation networks in place. Alibaba is using the tech to improve the city governance service capabilities of urban planners, for instance. But Huawei and others are definitely focused on law enforcement applications, which could strike some as more of a mixed bag.
