The Sphere in Las Vegas is reportedly powered by 150 of Nvidia's RTX A6000 GPUs.
The Vegas Sphere, known for its globe shape and LED displays that cover 750,000 sq ft (69,677 sqm) inside and out, are powered by Nvidia GPUs according to a blog post.
The RTX A6000 GPUs have 48GB of memory and a maximum power consumption of 300W.
The LED screens inside have a resolution of 16x16k, while the exterior is comprised of 1.2 million programmable LED pucks and is the world's largest LED screen.
The interior screen is three-layered. According to Tom's Hardware, this likely means that three LEDs power each screen pixel.
"Layered displays like these (and it seems the Sphere) boost pixel brightness while majorly conserving power, a significant need for an almost four-acre screen," the publication said. "And the monster triple-layer 16K screen can do it all at a maximum of 60fps and a five millisecond or less latency."
Along with the 150 A6000 GPUs powering the screens, Nvidia provides network connectivity for the venue via BlueField DPUs and Nvidia ConnectX-6 Dx NICS. In addition, media streaming is handled by Nvidia's DOCA Firefly service and Rivermax software.
The 150 A6000 GPUs are distributed across 27 nodes, each containing four petabytes of flash memory, capable of 300 GBps of transfer speeds.
“Sphere is captivating audiences not only in Las Vegas, but also around the world on social media, with immersive LED content delivered at a scale and clarity that has never been done before,” said Alex Luthwaite, senior vice president of show systems technology at Sphere Entertainment. “This would not be possible without the expertise and innovation of companies such as Nvidia that are critical to helping power our vision, working closely with our team to redefine what is possible with cutting-edge display technology."
Sphere Studios creates the video content for the Sphere at a facility in Burbank, California, where it is then transferred to Las Vegas. This is then streamed in real-time to rack-mounted workstations with the Nvidia GPUs.
“The integration of Nvidia RTX GPUs, BlueField DPUs, and Rivermax software creates a powerful trifecta of advantages for modern accelerated computing, supporting the unique high-resolution video streams and strict timing requirements needed at Sphere and setting a new standard for media processing capabilities,” said Nir Nitzani, senior product director for networking software at NVIDIA. “This collaboration results in remarkable performance gains, culminating in the extraordinary experiences guests have at Sphere.”
The Sphere Studios campus has development facilities, a quarter-sized version of the Sphere screen which is known as Big Dome, as well as a production facility and lab.
Sphere Studios also developed its 'Big Sky camera system,' which captures uncompressed 18K images from a single camera meaning that the studio can film content without stitching multiple camera feeds together. According to the Tom's Hardware report, this camera is shooting at 120 fps with its 77.5mm x 75.6mm sensor and fish eye lens, and will fill up a 32TB storage card in 17 minutes at 60fps.
The studio’s custom image processing software runs on Lenovo servers powered by Nvidia A40 GPUs.
