Gamers, brace yourselves: AI development could lead to another GPU shortage

The rise in AI tools and chatbots may be exciting for many, but gamers and enthusiasts could soon be getting cryptomining flashbacks. A few years ago the crypto-mining craze gobbled up gaming GPUs, and it looks like history could be (sort of) repeating as businesses begin buying up consumer GPUs to manufacture their artificial intelligence tools.

According to Tom’s Hardware, people are taking to social media to complain about cloud-based GPU resources (essentially using GPUs, like Nvidia GeForce, in a ‘service farm’) being fully booked and hardware supplies being entirely reserved for the rest of the year.

Of course, gamers are going to be more than a little worried about the news, given the recent impact of that crypto-ming rush. And there are good reasons to believe that Nvidia's AI dominance, based on its development of the tensor core, could ultimately be worse for gamers than crypto.

So… is it time to panic? 

Entrepreneur George Holtz provides some insight into the issue via a tweet (below). Hotz is currently assisting a business called Comma AI, and speaks about buying up boxes and boxes of AMD gaming GPUs.

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The boxes in the photo clearly read ‘AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX’, a brilliant graphics card that scored five stars in our review and earned our Editors Choice award. This is clearly a GPU that many PC gamers would want to buy – and it would be frustrating to see them mainly used for non-gaming purposes.

The rise of AI could widely be considered a net positive in a lot of ways – from boosting our productivity to giving us new creative tools like Adobe Firefly. But we can expect the intense demand for AI products to place a lot of pressure on compute-focused GPUs. 

The greater demand for the GPUs could potentially lead to a drop in stock, making it harder for gamers to actually buy a new GPU and probably inflate prices. It may be a matter of time before we see the demand seep into the world of gaming GPUs, so brace yourselves.

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Nvidia’s latest AI model could revolutionize games development

AI could be about to make 3D modeling in a whole lot quicker and easier, if Nvidia has its way. 

Fresh from the company’s research lab, Neuralangelo is an AI model that transforms 2D video clips into “extremely high fidelity” 3D structures. 

“Creative professionals can then import these 3D objects into design applications, editing them further for use in art, video game development, robotics, and industrial digital twins,” the company explained in its latest paper.

Real-world high-fidelity 

Using videos as reference points is hardly anything new – even when you do throw relatively new and experimental AI into the mix. But, as Nvidia notes in its latest paper, “current methods struggle to recover detailed structures of real-world scenes.” In other words, they can replicate objects and scenes, but it won't feel lifelike. 

And it’s that high fidelity Neuralangelo is promising to deliver. According to Nvidia Research, the minds behind the model, it's able to vividly recreate the textures of different materials, like glass, marble, and even roof shingling. The model has also proved capable of reconstructing building interiors and exteriors.

“The 3D reconstruction capabilities Neuralangelo offers will be a huge benefit to creators, helping them recreate the real world in the digital world,” said Ming-Yu Liu, senior director of research and one of the paper's co-authors.

Neuralangelo’s applications in art and games development are already clear: think of the vast cityscapes of Grand Theft Auto, the real-world historical setting of Assassin’s Creed. Whole virtual towns could soon be realized based on videos recorded on a smartphone. But it’s only a matter of time before AI models like these also form a core part of all the best architecture software and best landscape design software, if it really can streamline real-life reconstructions.

In a demo released by the company, results were admittedly impressive: highly detailed AI renderings of Michelangelo's David based on video footage that lived up to boasts of “detailed large-scale scene reconstruction from RGB video.” But we're still a way off from dropping AI 3D models straight into projects without requiring some finishing touches.

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Cyber Polygon 2021: Towards Secure Development of Digital Ecosystems

Cybersecurity is one of the most important topics on the global agenda, boosted by the pandemic. As the global digitalisation is further accelerating, the world is becoming ever more interconnected. Digital ecosystems are being created all around us: countries, corporations and individuals are taking advantage of the rapid spread of the Internet and smart devices. In this context, a single vulnerable link is enough to bring down the entire system, just like the domino effect.
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