Nvidia and SAS have teamed up to connect businesses with AI technologies through Nvidia GPUs and CUDA-X AI acceleration libraries, combined with SAS's machine learning and data streaming technologies.
For example, SAS's Viya software can work with Nvidia's GPUs to help businesses identify objects and classify images, run speech-to-text applications and detect sentiment in communications, whether written or voice.
The tie-up is focused on the healthcare, life science, manufacturing and financial service sectors, helping those industries to connect better with their customers and ensure they deliver fault-free products to end-users.
"Analytics is the core of AI," said Laurie Miles, director of analytics at SAS UK and Ireland. "SAS is constantly looking at ways to improve its customers' analytics capabilities for successful AI deployments.
"This partnership with Nvidia combines our software expertise with their powerful GPUs, creating world-class engines for rapid, accurate AI operations. AI is opening up huge possibilities for organisations of all varieties, and SAS is at the forefront of innovation in this important field."
The partnership will also allow the firms to jointly develop new applications for their hardware and software that could be applied by tech companies in future. One example is equipping a drone with AI technology to monitor infrastructure and predict when machinery will need to go in to be serviced.
Because the analytics engine and the GPU are both implanted in the drone, the data can be analysed wherever the drone is, rather than sending the data back to another device to be analysed.
"Our collaboration with SAS will help enterprise customers extract the true value of AI for their company," said Ian Buck, vice president and general manager of Accelerated Computing at Nvidia. "With Nvidia technology, businesses will be able to accelerate their entire data science workflow to innovate, add new services and increase profitability."
SAS isn't the only company that Nvidia has partnered with in this area; the company has also announced this week that it has teamed up with major hardware vendors including Dell, HP and Lenovo to create purpose-built, high-powered workstations for data scientists also using Quadro RTX GPUs and CUDA-X AI libraries.
