NVIDIA Provides U.S. Postal Service AI Technology to Improve Delivery Service

[btarunr]

NVIDIA today announced that the United States Postal Service - the world's largest postal service, with 485 million mail pieces processed and delivered daily - is adopting end-to-end AI technology from NVIDIA to improve its package data processing efficiency. The new system starts with high-performance servers powered by NVIDIA V100 Tensor Core GPUs and deep learning software to train multiple AI algorithms. The trained models are then deployed to NVIDIA EGX edge computing systems at close to 200 Postal Service facilities throughout the U.S. to enable more efficient package data processing. The NVIDIA-powered systems are being purchased by the Postal Service under contract with Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

"AI is transforming multiple industries, enabling processes, accuracy and efficiency not possible before," said Anthony Robbins, vice president of the Federal Sector Business at NVIDIA. "The U.S. Postal Service's adoption of AI demonstrates how this powerful technology can improve an excellent service that we rely on every day. Benjamin Franklin would be proud." The Postal Service operates the world's highest volume logistics operation, processing and delivering some 146 billion pieces of mail annually, including more than 6 billion packages. The new AI system will process package data 10x faster and with higher accuracy.



Engineering teams from the Postal Service and NVIDIA have been collaborating for several months to develop AI models, using NVIDIA software including TensorRT for high-throughput, low-latency inference optimization; automatic mixed precision in PyTorch to accelerate training while maintaining model accuracy; NGC containers, which are GPU-optimized for streamlining software deployment; and DeepOps tools for optimizing GPU clusters.

Delivery and testing of the system will start this year and it is expected to be fully operational by spring of 2020.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[the54thvoid]

Delivery failures for AMD GPUs may increase.

 

[Tsukiyomi91]

good one XD

 

[enxo218]

Very little substance and a lot of buzzwords in the article for "it will work better and faster"

reads like an advert

 

[Bones]

Delivery failures for AMD GPUs may increase.

That would account for all the times via tracking I've seen stuff arrive at the local mail hub, then go waaaaaaaay across the country only to come back again and overshoot the hub once more before it finally gets here.
More opportunities for the USPS gorillas to do their thing.

 

[Space Lynx]

I think the post office works really well already. Very cheap with flat rate boxes and almost everything I ship is there within two days to the other person. I sell a lot of headphone stuff buy used and sell used over on Head-Fi. Never had a single issue with USPS, not sure why they felt the need to upgrade anything, but hey are tax payer dollars hard at work helping Nvidia now I guess. I wonder who got invited to whos yacht club with this contract.

That would account for all the times via tracking I've seen stuff arrive at the local mail hub, then go waaaaaaaay across the country only to come back again and overshoot the hub once more before it finally gets here.
More opportunities for the USPS gorillas to do their thing.

I have never had this happen to me a single time, wow... lol

 

[fancucker]

Once again contributing to meaningful pursuits with their tech, don't forget the radiology AI too. Other companies should take note, a particular one which believes printing the CEO name on uncompetitive products represent excellent outreach

 

[ONEoo7]

Why is there a cat in the picture? is the cat a postal service employee? is she just visiting? or is the person who made the image obsessed/in love with cats?

 

[Tsukiyomi91]

could be...

 

[bonehead123]

Now if they could also fix the slow ass computers, credit card readers & printers at the counters, which makes going into a physical post office a real nightmare.....

As for the cat, she is the resident postal inspector/supervisor, who is merely waiting around to collect her pension, just like most of the other nursing home escapees that work there, making all the AI assistance in the world a totally moot point......

 

[neatfeatguy]

I think the post office works really well already. Very cheap with flat rate boxes and almost everything I ship is there within two days to the other person. I sell a lot of headphone stuff buy used and sell used over on Head-Fi. Never had a single issue with USPS, not sure why they felt the need to upgrade anything, but hey are tax payer dollars hard at work helping Nvidia now I guess. I wonder who got invited to whos yacht club with this contract.



I have never had this happen to me a single time, wow... lol

USPS is not Government owned and to my understanding our taxes do not pay for it.

USPS in my experience, they do pretty good holding their own against UPS/FedEx for ground packages. I generally find it cheaper and just as effective to ship USPS over UPS/FedEx.

 

[Deathy]

USPS doesn't get tax dollars but it is an independent agency of the US government, it is not privately owned.

 

[eidairaman1]

USPS went to crap in 2008.

Technology is not needed, but expedient and reliable workers are, balanced work loads too.

 

[TheGuruStud]

Well, there's more money wasted.

I don't need spam mailed faster to me.

 

[Steevo]

Nvidia is going postal.

 

[danbert2000]

USPS went to crap in 2008.

Technology is not needed, but expedient and reliable workers are, balanced work loads too.

I'm curious why you think it went to crap. My impression is that the mail gets delivered like it always did, and prices are always competitive. Most people are very satisfied with the USPS, even though some politicians continually try to kill it by requiring they prepay for retirement for an employee before they're even hired. UPS and Fedex don't even have pensions, and some in our government decided that USPS has to compete with an arm behind its back.

This is good news for Nvidia and HPE. I'm guessing it's going to be millions of dollars for all the equipment and support. I wish there was more info on the size of the deal. As for whether it's good for the USPS, well, if they don't cut costs greater than the amount they spent on this fancy AI stuff, then it doesn't make much sense. I wonder how much slack there is in the operational budget where fancy neural networks will find the efficiencies.

 

[R-T-B]

reads like an advert

Maybe because that's pretty much what you're reading.

It's a corporate press release.

I'm curious why you think it went to crap

Me too. It's by far the best service available (and cheapest) here on the west coast.