NVIDIA GPUs worth $1 million are needed to run the Las Vegas Sphere's massive LED display

The Sphere, located in Las Vegas, is an impressive feat of engineering-a massive circular dome that is also the world's largest display. The Sphere's LCDs cover 750,000 square feet inside and outside the entertainment venue. Not only that but with a resolution of 16,000 × 16,000 pixels for the interior display, it's the highest-resolution screen in the world. So then, what sort of hardware do you need just to 'press play' on a video with that resolution?

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According to NVIDIA, the 16K x 16K 60 frames per second display for the Sphere's interior is powered by 150 NVIDIA RTX A6000 GPUs - valued at around $1 million. The NVIDIA RTX A6000 is a powerful workstation card with 48GB of GDDR6 memory, 10,752 CUDA Cores, 336 Tensor Cores, and 84 RT Cores. Put 150 of these together, and you've got some serious GPU horsepower, enough that they also power the 1.2 million programmable LED pucks on the Shere's exterior.

In addition to the hardware, the Sphere also uses NVIDIA's network connectivity technology to ensure that all GPUs work together with minimal latency, plus the NVIDIA Rivermax SDK framework for media streaming. However, with this level of hardware and 7.2 TB of VRAM, we'd love to see some PC games running on the Sphere.

Cyberpunk 2077 with full ray tracing would look incredible; maybe they could screen some Let's Plays in addition to films like Darren Aronofsky's Postcard From Earth documentary.

"The integration of NVIDIA RTX GPUs, BlueField DPUs, and Rivermax software creates a powerful trifecta of advantages for modern accelerated computing, supporting the unique high-resolution video streams and strict timing requirements needed at Sphere and setting a new standard for media processing capabilities," said Nir Nitzani, senior product director for networking software at NVIDIA. "This collaboration results in remarkable performance gains, culminating in the extraordinary experiences guests have at Sphere."

"Sphere is captivating audiences not only in Las Vegas but also worldwide on social media, with immersive LED content delivered at a scale and clarity that has never been done before," said Alex Luthwaite, senior vice president of show systems technology at Sphere Entertainment. "This would not be possible without the expertise and innovation of companies such as NVIDIA that are critical to helping power our vision, working closely with our team to redefine what is possible with cutting-edge display technology."