Greetings NVIDIA Team and Community,
My name is Saxton Sider, and I’m an electronics student at Venango Technology Center with a deep passion for AI and robotics. I’m on an independent journey to build something truly unique: an AI-based “lab partner.” My vision is for a conversational, intelligent AI that can learn, ask questions, and eventually live inside a robot to be available outside of a workstation and internet access if it comes to such.
My journey into AI is fueled by intense passion and grit. While I have a foundational understanding of electronics, everything I know about AI software - from understanding complex frameworks to piecing together models - I’ve learned entirely on my own. My current “AI server” is assembled from repurposed and readily available hardware: a Ryzen 5 5600X, 16GB of old DDR4 RAM, and salvaged laptop hard drives. My evolving journey, including earlier hardware configurations and setup struggles, is documented on my TikTok account: @ev4biz, where my latest video clarifies my current AMD-based setup.
I’ve recently fine-tuned an intent recognition model on the CLINC150 dataset. This training took several hours of continuous CPU processing on my current setup. For performance validation, I ran a comprehensive evaluation, which yielded a test accuracy of 85.95 percent and an F1 score of 85.38 percent on a dataset with 150 diverse intents. Even this evaluation, just verifying performance, took over two minutes on my CPU.
This performance, achieved under significant hardware constraints, vividly highlights my biggest challenge: my old AMD Juniper graphics card. It’s only for basic video output, with no VRAM or parallel processing power suitable for AI. This means my CPU is shouldering all the heavy lifting, creating a major bottleneck that’s directly preventing me from advancing the AI’s core capabilities and reaching the interactive stages. My ultimate goal is to deploy this AI on an NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano for its robotics capabilities.
Given that I am a self-funded student, I have limited financial resources for acquiring the dedicated hardware needed for advanced AI development. Sponsorship or assistance from companies like NVIDIA would significantly accelerate my project’s development. Hence, I am respectfully requesting your support in the form of discounted NVIDIA GPU components or complete sponsorship if there is scope. My most immediate need is for a dedicated NVIDIA desktop graphics card with VRAM, even a more modest one, to begin offloading AI training from my CPU and gain crucial experience with the NVIDIA ecosystem before transitioning to Jetson.
I believe my project, born from sheer determination and built from scratch, can serve as an inspiring story for other self-taught students and vocational learners within the NVIDIA community. I am committed to documenting my progress on these forums and my TikTok, showcasing how NVIDIA hardware empowers ambitious independent projects of mine.
Thank you for considering my request. I look forward to any guidance or support your team can offer.
Sincerely,
Saxton D. Sider
Electronics Student, Venango Technology Center