Finnish Center for Artificial Intelligence and NVIDIA to establish a joint NVIDIA AI Technology Center

The Finnish Center for Artificial Intelligence FCAI and NVIDIA’s joint NVIDIA AI Technology Center (NVAITC) will  accelerate AI research, education and adoption in Finland. Thanks to the  new collaboration, researchers will be better equipped to develop  computationally demanding artificial intelligence applications for  research and industry use.

The joint research center starts its operations in June 2020. Thanks to the centre, artificial intelligence researchers will be able to benefit from  NVIDIA’s expertise in utilizing graphics processing units (GPUs) and AI  software in AI applications. NVIDIA can also actively contribute to  research carried out at FCAI. The Finnish IT Centre for Science, CSC, is also contributing to the collaboration by supplying a considerable  amount of computing power for AI researchers at its data centre located in Kajaani, central Finland.

NVIDIA’s graphics processing units are used especially for AI model  training and inference. The new NVAITC will be able to support research  projects that require exceptional amounts of computing power, such as AI  solutions for healthcare or smart cities.

“Artificial intelligence can be applied to almost any industry or  area of research. However, achieving scientific breakthroughs may  require processing of such large datasets that, without the support  offered by the NVAITC, researchers would be unable to complete their  work. As a hardware provider, NVIDIA has in-depth expertise in GPU-based  systems”, which all AI researchers have not yet access to, says  Professor Keijo Heljanko from FCAI.

“Scientists, researchers and businesses worldwide rely on NVIDIA’s AI computing platform to harness the power of artificial intelligence.  Through this cooperation with FCAI, we are able to boost AI research in  Finland and better support local scientists already doing great work in  the field”,  says Simon See, Senior Director of NVAITC at NVIDIA.

“CSC plays an important role in the operation of the NVAITC, as we are able to provide researchers with significant GPU capacity and expert  support for the utilization of artificial intelligence-based high-performance computing environments. The project can be used to  increase Finnish artificial intelligence skills and develop new  software. At the same time, cooperation between the technology supplier  and researchers will be increased. This will improve research resources  and train more artificial intelligence experts”, says Kimmo Koski, CEO of CSC.