Las Vegas Sphere uses NVIDIA hardware

NVIDIA revealed today that their hardware powers the iconic Sphere, one of Las Vegas’ most talked-about entertainment venues. Completed in 2023, the Sphere offers an immersive video and audio experience with its 16x16K interior LED screen and exterior screens featuring 1.2 million programmable LEDs.

The video content for the Sphere isn’t created on-site but in a Californian studio called Sphere Studios who are using RTX A6000 GPUs. This content is converted to “three layers of 16K resolution at 60 FPS.” While the Sphere doesn’t use 150 graphics cards to display the content, such GPU power is needed for content generation.

Sphere Studios creates video content in its Burbank, Calif., facility, then transfers it digitally to Sphere in Las Vegas. The content is then streamed in real time to rack-mounted workstations equipped with NVIDIA RTX A6000 GPUs, achieving unprecedented performance capable of delivering three layers of 16K resolution at 60 frames per second.

The Sphere, costing $2.3 billion, stands as one of the most expensive and innovative venues; however, the graphics card alone were only worth $1 million at their launch.

It’s worth mentioning that the RTX A6000 is not NVIDIA’s latest GPU. This professional visualization graphics card uses the GA102 GPU based on the Ampere architecture, featuring 10,752 CUDA cores and 48GB of VRAM each. In comparison, the RTX 6000 ADA has 7,424 more cores. An ADA-based system would require only 88 cards but would have significantly less memory (4.2TB instead of 7.2TB).

In 2017, NVIDIA announced the NVIDIA Spot, a product developed for Google Home AI, which was ultimately never released. While unrelated to the Sphere, it might have fulfilled Jensen’s vision to keep an eye on everything and everyone around.

NVIDIA Spot, Source: Engadget

Source: NVIDIA