en.Wedoany.com Reported - bp (British Petroleum) is collaborating with AI infrastructure provider Penguin Solutions and GPU giant NVIDIA to deploy a next-generation computing platform based on the NVIDIA Blackwell B200 GPU at its high-performance computing (HPC) center in Houston. Optimized for energy workloads, the platform is said to accelerate seismic imaging and analysis by 80 times, aiding high-value drilling decisions in upstream oil and gas exploration.
Seismic imaging directly impacts the efficiency of well location selection. The new system uses liquid-cooled Blackwell GPUs and Penguin SMART Memory 3840 DIMMs (dual in-line memory modules), with Penguin providing on-site deployment and integration support. According to Penguin, when geoscientists can interpret data faster and generate high-fidelity subsurface predictions, confidence in optimizing well location decisions is significantly enhanced. NVIDIA stated that the AI processing performance of the Blackwell B200 is five times that of the previous-generation H100, with higher energy efficiency.
According to bp, its HPC center has a computing capacity of 21 quadrillion operations per second (21 quads), with storage equivalent to 90,000 512GB iPhones. Leveraging this facility, bp geophysicist Joe Dellinger developed a seismic imaging method based on low and ultra-low frequencies, earning the 2021 Virgil Kauffman Gold Medal from the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG). bp also uses the center to collaborate with national laboratories of the U.S. Department of Energy. This technology helped bp discover an additional 400 million barrels and 1 billion barrels of oil reserves at the Atlantis and Thunder Horse fields in the Gulf of Mexico, respectively.
On the business front, bp currently produces nearly 2 million barrels of oil equivalent per day, supporting an annual capital budget of approximately $10 billion. Despite reducing investments in renewable energy under investor pressure and refocusing on fossil fuels, bp still plans to invest nearly $2 billion annually in alternative energy development. NVIDIA CEO and co-founder Jensen Huang has stated that accelerated computing has reached a tipping point, with general-purpose computing falling short, and that the new generation of processors is designed for the generative AI era.
