The Las Vegas Sphere has Nvidia GPUs and tech to thank for powering its largest and highest-resolution LED screens in the world.
The Las Vegas Sphere has been dazzling the city skyline of the entertainment capital of the world since 2023. In that time it’s played host to not only gigs by the likes of U2, but it’s even been a-light with official homages to One Piece and SpongeBob SquarePants.
There’s no question a monumental amount of high-powered tech is behind the 750,000-square-foot display. However, now Nvidia has detailed that around 150 Nvidia RTX A6000 GPUs are used to power the technological marvel.
In a post on the official Nvidia blog, Isha Salian, part of Nvidia’s corporate communications team, explains that these graphics cards power the entire structure, from the 16×16 displays across the inside of the sphere as well as the 1.2 million programmable LEDs found on the outside.
Unlike graphics cards like the upcoming RTX 50 Series, the RTX A6000 isn’t intended for gaming. Instead, the Ampere architecture-based GPU is specifically intended to be used in professional work settings.
This makes sense, as its 48 GB of GDDR6 memory and eye-watering $6800 MSRP is a tad overkill for most games. Since there are over 150 of these GPUs, the total cost of them at MSRP pricing would be $1,020,000 USD.
According to Nvidia, the RTX A6000 GPUs are mounted to workstations, which stream the video content created by Sphere Studios. The high-powered graphics cards can then deliver that content in three layers of 16k resolution at 60 FPS.
Even the Las Vegas Sphere can be prone to latency issues, so to prevent this, Nvidia’s Rivermax software is also used for media streaming. This software also helps transfer any data directly to the graphics cards and fights back against any jittering on the multitude of displays.
“The integration of NVIDIA RTX GPUs, BlueField DPUs, and Rivermax software creates a powerful trifecta of advantages for modern accelerated computing” explains Nir Nitzani, Senior product director for networking software for Nvidia.
“This collaboration results in remarkable performance gains, culminating in the extraordinary experiences guests have at Sphere.”
While Nvidia RTX A6000 GPUs may power the sphere visuals, they aren’t the only Nvidia graphics cards involved with its dazzling displays. Nvidia further outlines on its official blog that Nvidia A40 GPUs are used to power Sphere Studio’s image-processing software.
With A40 graphics cards in tow, the studio behind the creative displays itself can capture uncompressed 18k images from just one camera, forgoing the need for multiple camera feeds. The A50 GPUs even bring ray tracing into the mix, using yet another piece of Nvidia tech to the Las Vegas Sphere.
