CARY – SAS is working with global chip and processor leader NVIDIA to enhance artificial intelligence and related offerings with enhanced graphical capabilities and faster processing.
The firms disclosed their partnership to include NVIDIA graphic processor units, or GPUs, with a variety of SAS under its Viva AI-related programs.
PC Magazine defines a GPU as “a programmable logic chip (processor) specialized for display functions. The GPU renders images, animations and video for the computer’s screen. GPUs are located on plug-in cards, in a chipset on the motherboard or in the same chip as the CPU.”
Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
SAS also will be utilizing CUDA-AI acceleration libraries which NVIDIA says speeds up complex machine learning processing and is being used by Microsoft.
The company defines CUDA-X AI as “a collection of software-acceleration libraries built on top of CUDA, NVIDIA’s groundbreaking parallel programming model, that provide essential optimizations for deep learning, machine learning, and high-performance computing (HPC).”
Working with NVIDIA will enable SAS to deliver more accurate and faster data to clients, the companies said.
SAS also plans to work with NVIDIA to extend AT capabilities to more devices, thus further enable the Internet of Things with smarter capabilities, such as drones, at the so-called edge of networks.
SAS to invest $1 billion in artificial intelligence over 3 years
The technology deal will help SAS boost “image classification, object detection, speech-to-text, image recognition and sentiment detection,” the software giant said.
The news comes shortly after SAS announced it would be investing $1 billion in AI research, development and services.
“AI is transforming business across industries,” said Gavin Day, SAS Senior Vice President of Technology, in the Tuesday announcement. “At the heart of AI-based transformation is advanced analytics. Powerful GPUs help speed the analysis and impact of AI by processing millions of mathematical operations very quickly. By partnering with NVIDIA, we combine our strengths to augment human intelligence and realize the true potential of AI.”
The companies cited how AI can help a variety of clients:
● “Health care providers using object recognition to identify malignant versus benign cancer cells.
● “Manufacturers using computer vision to find defects before products leave production lines.
● “Financial institutions saving trillions of dollars with fraud detection.”
Privately held, SAS is based in Cary.
