Nvidia

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The graphics processing units (GPUs) that have made Nvidia one of Silicon Valley’s fastest- growing companies have also become the engines powering a host of medical advances. In 2017, Nvidia chips helped scientists win a Nobel Prize for their work creating 3D views of viruses, a critical tool for producing new vaccines. Its GPUs also enable scientists to use images like the one below to virtually screen more than a billion drug-candidate compounds and molecules in 24 hours—a process that would take five to 10 years of “wet lab” work. Its software expertise is fighting today’s pandemic as well: Nvidia and the National Institutes of Health recently codeveloped algorithms that can quickly identify COVID-19 in CT scans.