As the world begins the shift to a new normal, NVIDIA is gearing up to host the first digital keynote of the coronavirus era – the GTC 2020. The address, by CEO and founder Jensen Huang, will take place on May 14 at 06:00 Pacific Time (14:00 BST).
The pre-recorded keynote will be streamed on YouTube for everyone to watch. This year, NVIDIA will highlight their “latest innovations in AI, high-performance computing, data science, autonomous machines, healthcare and graphics,” as per the official press release.
The keynote was originally scheduled for March 23, but like all other events since the Mobile World Congress, was cancelled after the coronavirus pandemic. NVIDIA is one of the first companies to announce it will be going full digital. So far, only Apple has committed to a digital-only conference for WWDC 2020, its annual developer conference. Google’s I/O 2020 has also been replaced with an “Android 11: the Beta Launch Show” scheduled for June 3.
GTC Digital
The keynote is just a small part of NVIDIA’s GTC Digital, a digital-only version of the conference. As part of the effort, the company has pre-recorded over 300 presentations and demos that will be available for registered attendees to stream. Registration is free, and attendees have the ability to browse the vast array of content at their leisure. So far, GTC Digital has already attracted more than 45,000 registered attendees.
Following the keynote on May 14, there will be 689 live sessions for attendees to participate in. These sessions are spread between May 19 and May 28. Attendees can choose from podcasts, webinars, posters, demos and instructor-led workshops.
Get Amped
In the press release, NVIDIA said fans should “get amped” for the keynote, a strong hint towards the company’s Ampere GPU. As the successor to the RTX-20 GPU’s, the Ampere will be based on the Turning architecture and is expected to be fabricated using the 7nm process. While the GPU is almost certainly going to make an appearance, it is very unlikely that it will be available in the market before Q3 or Q4 of this year, due to global manufacturing shutdowns.
Taiwanese publication DigiTimes reported that NVIDIA will use Samsung over TSMC as the manufacturer for the Ampere GPU’s, due to their lower production cost. Reportedly, Samsung will manufacture all low-end products of the Ampere family, while the mid and high models will be made by TSMC.
Based on a leak from the YouTube channel ‘Moore’s Law Is Dead’, some details about the Ampere architecture have been revealed. It is likely that the Ampere will be applied to both gaming and professional GPU’s, a shift from the traditional bifurcation both NVIDIA and AMD have used. The Ampere series is also expected to push the performance of ray-tracing, a big boost for professional software like Adobe Dimension, Autodesk and Solidworks.
Announcements, as they happen, will be posted on NVIDIA’s newsroom. Apart from Ampere, it is unclear what else NVIDIA will unveil, but if we are to believe Huang’s words in February when he said GTC 2020 “would not disappoint”, then we are in for a real treat.
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