2.1 Billion Pixels in Las Vegas Sphere are Powered by 150 NVIDIA RTX A6000 GPUs

[AleksandarK]

The city of Las Vegas late last year added another attraction to its town: the Sphere. The Sphere is a 1.2 million pixel outdoor display venue famous for its massive size and inner 18,600-seat auditorium. The auditorium space is a feat of its own with features like a 16x16 resolution wraparound interior LED screen, speakers with beamforming and wave field synthesis technologies, and 4D physical effects. However, we have recently found out that NVIDIA GPUs power the Sphere. And not only a handful of them, as 150 NVIDIA RTX A6000 power the Sphere and its 1.2 million outside pixels spread on 54,000 m², as well as 16 of 16K inner displays with a total output of 2.1 billion pixels. Interestingly, the 150 NVIDIA RTX A6000 have a combined output cable number of 600 DisplayPort 1.4a ports.

With each card having 48 GB of memory, that equals to 7.2 TB of GDDR6 ECC memory in the total system. With the Sphere being a $2.3 billion project, it is expected to have an infotainment system capable of driving the massive venue. And it certainly delivers on that. Only a handful of cards powers most massive media projects, but this scale is something we see for the first time in non-AI processing systems. The only scale we are used to today is massive thousand-GPU clusters used for AI processing, so seeing a different and interesting application is refreshing.



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[natr0n]

I just read this on videocardz. On the bottom of the story it shows nvidia spot was not released probably cause the governments gonna use it to spy on us.

 

[thesmokingman]

But it is cool beans.

 

[64K]

Must be quite a spectacle.
+1 for Sin City I guess.

 

[bug]

What a lame title, 1.2Mpixels is less than a FHD monitor.

Edit: nvm, it's fixed.

 

[Scircura]

I assume 149 of those 150 A6000's are dedicated to running the 256 million pixel interior display. (16K by 16K, which isn't 2.1 billion pixels last I checked)

 

[HBSound]

I'm interested in touring the GPU/Network room to understand its setup better. I'm curious if the room is located underground to mitigate the impact of the high temperatures in Las Vegas. Additionally, I'd like to know whether the cooling system in use is air-based or water-based. This information would help us understand the infrastructure.

 

[AleksandarK]

I assume 149 of those 150 A6000's are dedicated to running the 256 million pixel interior display. (16K by 16K, which isn't 2.1 billion pixels last I checked)

16K display has 15360 × 8640 pixels. That is 132.7 million pixels. 16 displays with 132 million pixels equals 2.1 billion.

 

[DudeBeFishing]

I want to see the cable spaghetti behind that thing.

 

[Solaris17]

16K display has 15360 × 8640 pixels. That is 132.7 million pixels. 16 displays with 132 million pixels equals 2.1 billion.

ohhh your trying to trick us with math huh? wack.

 

[kondamin]

So the project could have cost half if they had gone for a radeon solution

 

[redeye]

So I’m gonna pay admission to the sphere to just say “oh look at all the pretty stars”… oh wait… why did i pay admission?

you paid WHAT for THAT?

 

[thesmokingman]

So I’m gonna pay admission to the sphere to just say “oh look at all the pretty stars”… oh wait… why did i pay admission?

you paid WHAT for THAT?

The funny thing is that most ppl in that vid above are watching thru their phones lol.

 

[FoulOnWhite]

The screen is actually only 3.3 pixels per inch. The distance makes it look so good. Still mighty impressive though.

 

[Neo_Morpheus]

So the project could have cost half if they had gone for a radeon solution

I mean, its only pixels, without RT, so your point its valid.

 

[phints]

My first instinct says that someone at Nvidia sales got a massive bonus for selling this snakeoil. Isn't this all prerendered and could have been done a fraction of the cost? Then again maybe longterm they plan on upgrading the software for interesting/interactivity, AI, ray tracing, etc, who knows.

 

[wolf]

So the project could have cost half if they had gone for a radeon solution

You get what you pay for, in the scheme of the sphere where the visual experience is everything, and the cost difference between what they bought and competing AMD products relative to cost of the entire project, it's easy to see why they went with the market leader.

 

[bug]

I mean, its only pixels, without RT, so your point its valid.

Idk, at least some shows say they're interactive, so at least partly rendered in real time. In that case, I'd be really surprised if they went for anything less than path tracing after spending that kind of money. Then again, considering how savvy the average user is, maybe not.

 

[SOAREVERSOR]

So the project could have cost half if they had gone for a radeon solution

Radeon is largely avoided for major stuff like this. Mentioning it can, should, and will get you fired.

 

[Neo_Morpheus]

Idk, at least some shows say they're interactive, so at least partly rendered in real time. In that case, I'd be really surprised if they went for anything less than path tracing after spending that kind of money. Then again, considering how savvy the average user is, maybe not.

I was jesting but you have a good point and personally, I doubt that anything will be rendered/animated on the spot since in productions, they don't really like anything "spontaneous".
They check the final product/animation/etc way before the show is live.

The only reason that I can think of is that they needed multiple gpus and the only Ngreedia models that can be linked are the professional ones.
But that also applies to AMD.

Radeon is largely avoided for major stuff like this. Mentioning it can, should, and will get you fired.

The sad reality is I observed this at Paramount (did a project there).

Stupid IT manager was only familiar with Intel/Ngreedia and one of his tech suggested to have some AMD CPUs during the Spectre days, so not all systems were affected in the future of something similar.

Yeah that tech was let go.

 

[ymdhis]

According to newegg, a A6000 costs 4500$, at 150x A6000 that's 675000$ to power... a smiley display on a dome building.

Truly the way we are meant to be played.

 

[ElectrO]

Obviously there is no energy crisis in America...
Just make sure everyone turns their AC up to 80F so shit like this can be built and AI can create a 3 tittied alien.

 

[nguyen]

Another satisfied customer of "it just works" .
I wonder if Japan would build a waifu version of this

 

[mechtech]

$2.3 bill for 2.1 bill pixels............over a dollar a pixel

 

[Easy Rhino]

But can it run Crysis?