SLB and NVIDIA Join Forces to Revolutionize Energy Sector with AI
The Hague, Friday, 20 September 2024.
Global energy tech firm SLB partners with NVIDIA to develop cutting-edge generative AI solutions for the energy industry. This collaboration aims to enhance efficiency and sustainability in energy operations, leveraging NVIDIA’s NeMo platform for custom AI development across various environments.
Aiming for Efficiency and Sustainability
The collaboration between SLB and NVIDIA is set to significantly impact the energy sector by enhancing operational efficiency and sustainability. By leveraging NVIDIA’s NeMo platform, a part of the NVIDIA AI Enterprise software suite, SLB intends to develop custom generative AI models that can be deployed in data centers, cloud environments, or at the edge. This flexibility ensures that energy companies can optimize their workflows irrespective of their operational setup.
Technological Backbone
NVIDIA’s advanced technologies, including the NVIDIA GH200 Grace Hopper Superchip and the Blackwell platform, provide the computational power necessary to handle the massive datasets typical in the energy sector. These technologies are crucial for developing large language models and industry-specific foundation models that can streamline various operations, from subsurface exploration to production management.
Historical Collaboration and Future Prospects
SLB and NVIDIA have a long-standing partnership dating back to 2008, focusing on high-performance computing (HPC) and data visualization. Initial projects included integrating NVIDIA GPUs to accelerate HPC workflows in subsurface imaging, processing terabytes of data for more accurate geological interpretations. This history of collaboration provides a strong foundation for their current endeavors in generative AI.
Advanced Applications
One of the key applications of this partnership is the development of digital twins for energy operations. These digital replicas simulate real-world scenarios, allowing companies to optimize workflows and make data-driven decisions in real time. Such innovations are expected to revolutionize reservoir simulations and seismic imaging, significantly reducing the time and cost involved in identifying potential reservoirs.
Industry Impact
The integration of NVIDIA GPUs has already shown promising results in the energy sector. For instance, SLB’s use of NVIDIA A100 80GB Tensor Core GPUs has increased simulation throughput by up to 11 times for smaller models and 7.5 times for larger models. This substantial performance improvement demonstrates the potential for significant cost savings and efficiency gains across the industry.
Future Developments
Looking ahead, SLB and NVIDIA plan to expand their collaboration to include additional NeMo microservices, making generative AI tools more accessible to a broader range of energy companies. This expansion aims to cover more areas such as seismic imaging and reservoir simulation, optimizing them for better performance and efficiency.