CINI President Ernesto Damiani and NVIDIA Director of AI Nation EMEA Frédéric Parienté inaugurated the CINI-NVIDIA AI Nation program for a three-year structured collaboration between CINI researchers in AI and NVIDIA researchers, especially in Deep Learning and HPC. The AI Nation program includes several initiatives with NVIDIA in Italy (e.g., tutorials, workshops, etc.) and the opening of NVAITC - NVIDIA AI Technology Center - to work on specific research projects with CINI AIIS Lab Nodes.
The NVIDIA-CINI AI Nation agreement does not provide funding in cash or hardware but the sharing of resources (estimated at approximately € 2 million over three years), mainly software tools and personnel to facilitate joint research in topics like Machine/Deep Learning to make the best use of Italian HPC resources.
NVIDIA chose Italy as its scientific partner for several reasons, among which:
- the presence of the CINI AIIS Lab: we are one of the few countries in the world with a structured and widespread scientific excellence network in AI research;
- the presence of CINECA with its current and future NVIDIA-based computing resources for EU and Italian investment for Pre-Exascale HPC. Some of CINECA's computational resources will be dedicated to the AI Nation and NVAITC program, also thanks to a long-standing MoU between CINI and CINECA.
How to establish an NVIDIA AI Technology Center
For a local NVAITC joint Lab it is necessary:
a) make a request to NVIDIA;
b) NVIDIA will review the proposal, visit locations and share targets (initially one or two per location) on which to collaborate togheter;
c) if positive, NVAITC Lab is activated through an implementation contract between the Local CINI Node (University, Research Center, etc.) and the CINI, in which the Local Node declares to provide at least one year of research personnel and to adhere to the clauses of the MoU that the CINI has signed with NVIDIA.
The selection of projects and Nodes is the responsibility of NVIDIA with the support of the Advisory Board established for this purpose.
At the moment the CINI AIIS Lab gathers 55 different nodes in Italy, so we suggest a coordination within the AIIS Node with the Node Director.
To make the NVAITC proposal, NVIDIA has defined a form to fill in and send to Giuseppe Fiameni, head of the NVAITC program in Italy (gfiameni@nvidia.com), and to segreteria.aiis@consorzio-cini.it.
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