{"id":2495,"date":"2022-08-10T16:54:57","date_gmt":"2022-08-10T16:54:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/salarydistribution.com\/machine-learning\/2022\/08\/10\/design-in-the-age-of-digital-twins-a-conversation-with-graphics-pioneer-donald-greenberg\/"},"modified":"2022-08-10T16:54:57","modified_gmt":"2022-08-10T16:54:57","slug":"design-in-the-age-of-digital-twins-a-conversation-with-graphics-pioneer-donald-greenberg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/salarydistribution.com\/machine-learning\/2022\/08\/10\/design-in-the-age-of-digital-twins-a-conversation-with-graphics-pioneer-donald-greenberg\/","title":{"rendered":"Design in the Age of Digital Twins: A Conversation With Graphics-Pioneer Donald Greenberg"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Asked about the future of design, Donald Greenberg holds up a model of a human aorta.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter my son became an intravascular heart surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic, he hired one of my students to use CAT scans and create digital 3D models of an aortic aneurysm,\u201d said the computer graphics pioneer in a video interview from his office at Cornell University.<\/p>\n

The models enabled custom stents that fit so well patients could leave the hospital soon after they\u2019re inserted. It\u2019s one example Greenberg gives of how computer graphics are becoming part of every human enterprise.<\/p>\n

A Whole New Chapter<\/b><\/h2>\n

Expanding the frontier, he\u2019s creating new tools for an architecture design course based on today\u2019s capabilities for building realistic 3D worlds and digital twins<\/a>. It will define a holistic process so everyone from engineers to city planners can participate in a design.<\/p>\n

The courseware is still at the concept stage, but his passion for it is palpable. \u201cThis is my next big project, and I\u2019m very excited about it,\u201d said the computer graphics professor of the work, which is sponsored by NVIDIA.<\/p>\n

\u201cNVIDIA is superb at the hardware and the software algorithms, and for a long time its biggest advantage is in how it fits them together,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Greenberg imagines a design process open enough to include urban planners concerned with affordable housing, environmental activists mindful of sustainable living and neighbors who want to know the impact a new structure might have on their access to sunlight.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to put people from different disciplines in the same foxhole so they can see things from different points of view at the same time,\u201d said Greenberg, whose courses have spanned Cornell\u2019s architecture, art, computer science, engineering and business departments.<\/p>\n

Teaching With Omniverse<\/b><\/h2>\n

A multidisciplinary approach has fueled Greenberg\u2019s work since 1968, when he started teaching at both Cornell\u2019s colleges of engineering and architecture. And he\u2019s always been rooted in the latest technology.<\/p>\n

Today, that means inspiring designers and construction experts to enter the virtual worlds built with photorealistic graphics, simulations and AI in NVIDIA Omniverse<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cOmniverse expands, to multiple domains, the work done with Universal Scene Description<\/a>, developed by some of the brightest graphics people at places like Pixar \u2014 it\u2019s a superb environment for modern collaboration,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a capability that couldn\u2019t have existed without the million-X advances in computing Greenberg has witnessed in his 54-year career.<\/p>\n

He recalls his excitement in 1979 when he bought a VAX-11\/780 minicomputer, his first system capable of a million instructions per second. In one of his many SIGGRAPH<\/a> talks, he said designers would someday have personal workstations capable of 100 MIPS.<\/p>\n

Seeing Million-X Advances<\/b><\/h2>\n

The prediction proved almost embarrassingly conservative.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow I have a machine that\u2019s 1012 times more powerful than my first computer \u2014 I feel like a surfer riding a tidal wave, and that\u2019s one reason I\u2019m still teaching,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Don<\/p>\n

<\/a>

Greenberg with some of his students trying out the latest design tools.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It\u2019s a long way from the system at General Electric\u2019s Visual Simulation Laboratory in Syracuse, New York, where in the late 1960s he programmed on punch cards to help create one of the first videos generated solely with computer graphics. The 18-minute animation<\/a> wowed audiences and took him and 14 of his architecture students two years to create.<\/p>\n

NASA used the same GE system to train astronauts how to dock the Apollo module with the lunar lander. And the space agency was one of the early adopters of digital twins, he notes, a fact that saved the lives of the Apollo 13 crew after a system malfunction two days into their trip to the moon.<\/p>\n

From Sketches to Digital Twins<\/b><\/h2>\n

For Greenberg, it all comes down to the power of computer graphics.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love to draw, 99% of intellectual intake comes through our eyes and my recent projects are about how to go from a sketch or idea to a digital twin,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Among his few regrets, he said he\u2019ll miss attending SIGGRAPH in person this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt became an academic home for my closest friends and collaborators, a community of mavericks and the only place I found creative people with both huge imaginations and great technical skills, but it\u2019s hard to travel at my age,\u201d said the 88-year-old, whose pioneering continues in front of his computer screen.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have a whole bunch of stuff I\u2019m working on that I call techniques in search of a problem, like trying to model how the retina sees an image \u2014 I\u2019m just getting started on that one,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n

Learn More About Omniverse at SIGGRAPH<\/b><\/h2>\n

Anyone can get started working on digital twins with Omniverse by taking a free, self-paced online course<\/a> at the NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute<\/a>. And individuals can download Omniverse<\/a> free.<\/p>\n

Educators can request early access to the \u201cGraphics & Omniverse\u201d teaching kit<\/a>. SIGGRAPH attendees can join a session on \u201cThe Metaverse for International Educators\u201d or one of four hands-on training labs<\/a> on Omniverse.<\/p>\n

To learn more, watch NVIDIA\u2019s CEO Jensen Huang and others in a special address at SIGGRAPH on-demand<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

https:\/\/blogs.nvidia.com\/blog\/2022\/08\/10\/greenberg-siggraph-omniverse\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":2496,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/salarydistribution.com\/machine-learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2495"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/salarydistribution.com\/machine-learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/salarydistribution.com\/machine-learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salarydistribution.com\/machine-learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/salarydistribution.com\/machine-learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2495\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salarydistribution.com\/machine-learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/salarydistribution.com\/machine-learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salarydistribution.com\/machine-learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salarydistribution.com\/machine-learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}