The old hardcore PC gamer joke, "Can it run Crysis?" continues to be used by certain companies to show that their PCs, their GPUs, or their CPUs, are extremely powerful. It was used again by NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang today during his Computex keynote to introduce the company"s new AI supercomputer.
That computer is the DGX GH200, and it really does have some exceptional specs. It uses NVIDIA"s GH200 Grace Hopper chips, which NVIDIA also announced today is going into full production. Alone, it has a whopping 72 ARM CPUs, and a total of 576GB of GPU memory.
The new GHX HG200 supercomputer puts in 256 of these Grace Hopper chips and combines them to generate 1 exaFLOPS of performance and 144 terabytes of shared memory. It"s basically one big and powerful GPU.
During his keynote speech, which is available on YouTube, Huang stood next to a life-size image of the DGX GH200 to show how huge it is in real life. He then states, "I wonder if this can play Crysis?". He got some laughs before quickly saying, "Only gamers know that joke." (You can fast forward to the 1:19:25 mark to hear his Crysis joke).
Previously, only eight GPUs could be connected to act as one big graphics chip. NVIDIA says that it is using a new switch system, the NVIDIA NVLink, to connect all these Grace Hopper chips to act as one GPU with the DGX GH200 supercomputer.
The DGX GH200 also uses 150 miles of optical fiber cable. It also has 2,112 60mm fans to keep everything cool and can move air at the rate of 70,000 cubic feet per minute. The entire supercomputer weighs 40,000 pounds.
In other words: Yes, it can run Crysis.
Today"s keynote comes just a few days after NVIDIA revealed its latest financial numbers, in which the company stated it was in a good position to keep up with the demand for its chips for generative AI systems. That caused the company"s stock price to soar.22 percent the next day.