Nvidia, Google join hands to launch AI hardware virtual machines

SAN FRANCISCO : At its annual GPU Technology Conference, chip maker Nvidia announced its partnership with Google Cloud, which will be integrating the newly launched L4 GPU and Vertex AI to accelerate the work of companies building a rapidly expanding number of generative AI applications.

According to Nvidia, the L4 platform, which is currently available in private preview on Google Cloud via Google's G2 virtual machines, is designed to accelerate "AI-powered" video performance.

L4 is a general-purpose GPU that can perform video decoding, transcoding, and video streaming.

"We are working with Google Cloud to help ensure that the capabilities they require are easily available and able to help fuel the incredible new tools and applications they will create," Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia, said in a statement.

Moreover, the company said that the Nvidia L4 GPU is a universal GPU for every workload, with enhanced AI video capabilities that can deliver 120x more AI-powered video performance than CPUs, combined with 99 per cent better energy efficiency.

"As our customers begin to explore the possibilities of generative AI, we're proud to offer them Nvidia's latest L4 GPU innovation as part of our workload-optimised Compute Engine portfolio," Amin Vahdat, vice president of Systems & Services Infrastructure at Google Cloud, said in a statement.