The Las Vegas Sphere became an iconic landmark overnight, in large part due to its giant public display and the marketing opportunities it presents. Now, Nvidia confirmed it is responsible for powering the display with the help of its RTX GPUs.
While Nvidia is also behind some of the best graphics cards for gaming, no such GPU is part of the system that makes up the Sphere’s display. Instead, it uses 150 Nvidia RTX A6000 workstation GPUs to power this creative endeavor.
For such a monumental display, the fact that only 150 GPUs power it is actually impressive, but when you see the numbers behind these workhorse cards, it gets even better.
Each RTX A6000 features 10,752 cores and 48GB of memory while having a 300W TDP. In total, that’s 1,612,800 cores and 7,200GB of memory alongside a 45,000W power draw. Hat tip to Wccftech for the numbers.
I can only assume the cooling solution they have in place must be cutting-edge because even your everyday gaming GPU can run pretty hot at the best of times, let alone 150 of these beasts in the same space.
Nvidia’s involvement goes much deeper than just the GPUs. Whatever is shown on the Sphere is streamed from an external facility using Nvidia BlueField DPUs and ConnectX-6 SX NICs via Nvidia Rivermax software. This all ensures a lag-free result, crucial for advertisers who are using the Sphere which costs $450,000 for a four-hour slot.
The display currently uses around 28 megawatts at full capacity, enough to power 21,000 homes in the surrounding area. This is why talks are ongoing to ensure that 70% of the energy needed will be produced via solar sources while the remaining 30% will need to be offset through renewable energy credits, according to the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors.
My colleague, Edward Chester, got to experience the Sphere’s current main attraction, Darren Aronofsky’s Postcard From Earth, and found the screen to be jaw-droppingly impressive but lacklustre as a show. If the Sphere is to keep consuming that amount of power, it could probably do with a few more enticing shows to justify its consumption.
As cool as it is to see some of the ideas brought to life on the Sphere, we can’t help but wonder how the best PC games would look running on that 16K display.