US Postal Service deploys Nvidia GPU servers for AI-powered mail processing at scale.

Nvidia announced Tuesday at its GTC conference in Washington, D.C. that the U.S. Postal Service will purchase GPU-accelerated servers from Hewlett Packard Enterprise for a spring 2020 deployment. The project is expected to accelerate package data processing by a magnitude of 10, with GPU-accelerated infrastructure designed to improve the Postal Service's mail processing and sorting workflows. An earlier version of Nvidia's press release mentioned Dell EMC as the project's other server vendor, but the company was removed in the final version; however, a Dell EMC spokesperson confirmed to CRN that the company is participating in the project without providing further details.

The infrastructure will consist of HPE's Apollo 6500 servers, which come with up to eight Nvidia GPUs for deep learning and high-performance computing workloads, along with Nvidia's EGX edge computing systems deployed at nearly 200 of the Postal Service's processing locations in the U.S. In its data centers, the Postal Service will use servers powered by Nvidia's V100 Tensor Core GPUs and deep learning software to train multiple AI algorithms, which will then be deployed in EGX systems at the package processing sites. One of the first use cases will involve improving the speed and accuracy of recognizing package labels, which will improve delivery speed and reduce the need for human involvement.

Anthony Robbins, vice president of Nvidia's federal sector business, highlighted the scale of the Postal Service's operations, noting that the agency processes as much as 485 million pieces of mail a day and 146 billion a year. "They believe that by using GPUs from Nvidia, by using software we have enabled over the last 10 years, and [by using] servers from both HPE and Dell, they're going to be able to process data 10 times faster and with higher accuracy," Robbins said. He also noted that the Postal Service's decision to use GPU-based acceleration underscores how Moore's law is "creating challenges for the ability of CPUs to keep up with processing the worlds data."

Robbins emphasized that the project reflects the federal government's broader push for AI solutions across multiple agencies and departments, stating, "What we see now across the entire federal government is a move to try to accelerate the development and deployment of AI for citizen services." With the Postal Service planning to utilize on-premises servers and edge servers, the project demonstrates how enterprises are taking a hybrid approach to modern IT infrastructure. "The enterprise of the future will balance between cloud, on-prem and edge processing and Nvidia is making GPUs available in our software stack in all areas," Robbins said.

Edge processing in particular represents a major growth opportunity in the near future, an area Nvidia expects will boost sales of its EGX platform. "Those edge processing requirements are growing dramatically and will grow substantially once we get to 5G," Robbins noted. Although HPE and Dell are deploying the new on-premises and edge servers directly, Robbins indicated the deal will create significant services opportunities for channel partners because of how the infrastructure will need to be managed, potentially including value-added resellers within the Nvidia Partner Network.