In an industry-first move, technology heavyweight Siemens announced today at the NVIDIA GTC conference that they are deepening their collaboration with NVIDIA. They will adopt the cutting-edge NVIDIA Omniverse Cloud APIs, which are a series of application programming interfaces, to significantly enhance their Siemens Xcelerator platform. This partnership will kick-start with Teamcenter X, known as a cloud-based product lifecycle management (PLM) software relied upon by enterprises of all scales to develop and deliver products.

NVIDIA Omniverse, built on the Universal Scene Description (OpenUSD), is a platform of APIs and services that enable developers to create generative AI-powered applications, tools and services for industrial digital twins and automation. By incorporating NVIDIA Omniverse with Teamcenter X in the Siemens Xcelerator platform, Siemens will provide engineering teams with the ability to render their digital twin models more photorealistic and immersive, eliminating workflow waste and minimising errors.

Once the Omniverse API set is integrated, such workflows like material application, supporting scenery creation and lighting in physically-based renderings will be significantly accelerated using generative AI. This enhanced AI integration allows for the contextualisation of engineering data as it appears in the real-world scenario— equipping stakeholders ranging from decision makers and marketers to customers, with a deeper understanding of a product's real-world outlook.

To date, large-scale industrial projects and intricate products have largely relied on physical prototypes and costly alterations. Not only is this process riddled with potential errors and excessive expenditure, but it also hinders time-efficient market launch and innovation. By extending Omniverse Cloud APIs to the Xcelerator platform, Siemens users can enhance their digital twins with physics-based renderings to fast-track large-scale design and manufacturing —especially with the ability to effortlessly generate 3D objects or high definition image backgrounds for in-context asset viewing.

Siemens and NVIDIA's partnership provides companies like HD Hyundai, recognised for its sustainable ship manufacturing, the capacity to unify and visualise complex engineering projects within Teamcenter X. A demonstration at NVIDIA GTC showed that HD Hyundai could employ this software to visualise digital twins of liquified natural gas carriers. These carriers, which can comprise more than seven million distinct parts, can be validated before moving into production with this software.

Digital twins that are photoreal, physics-based and interoperable, like those demonstrated, can boost engineering collaborations, cut down on workflow wastage, save time and costs, and reduce the risk of manufacturing defects. By further empowering industrial-scale design and manufacturing projects with data interoperability and physics-based rendering, Omniverse Cloud APIs facilitate real-time, interactive navigation, edits, and iterations on a shared model of their live data for Teamcenter X users.

Looking forward, Siemens intends to incorporate accelerated computing, generative AI and Omniverse from NVIDIA into more of its Siemens Xcelerator portfolio to sharpen technological innovation in the industry.