The GPU Technology Conference has had some occasional gems over the last few years, if you’re hoping for fresh GPU news. Nvidia often users the conference to highlight upcoming features, partnerships or various research projects.
But none of those will be coming out of GTC this year. After changing to a webcast because of concerns around the coronavirus, Nvidia this morning announced that even that is being cancelled.
A post on the Nvidia site says the GPU maker will “instead issue … news announcements that had been scheduled to be shared in the keynote”. Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang was going to give a digital keynote, replacing the in-person keynote he offers every year. Around 10,000 people turn up to San Jose for the technology conference, but conventions are difficult to hold given the state of emergency that’s spreading throughout the United States and most of the world.
But even organising an online-only event was too much of a challenge, with Nvidia saying “continuing public health uncertainties would challenge its ability to produce and deliver a digital keynote”. Nonetheless, Nvidia is still planning to release the various training, research papers, pre-recorded talks and panels digitally. The investor call will still go ahead on 2:00am AEDT, March 25.
Last year’s GTC was largely focused on AI and machine learning, but the conference has focused more on core GPU releases whenever Nvidia is close to a new launch. 2018’s GTC had a large focus on real-time ray tracing, which would become possible with the release of the RTX graphics cards later that year. GTC is also a popular venue for Nvidia to talk about their most powerful Volta GPUs, which would be the perfect time to unveil that 32GB monster that popped up on Geekbench the other day. And given the increased value of AI in regular gaming, it wouldn’t be a bad time to talk more publicly about the work that’s going on with neural network-powered improvements for graphics, like what’s happening with DLSS.
[referenced url=”https://www.kotaku.com.au/2020/03/nvidia-next-gen-gpu-benchmarks-appear/” thumb=”https://www.kotaku.com.au/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2018/05/nvidia_dieshot-410×231.jpg” title=”Some Wild Nvidia GPU Benchmarks Appear” excerpt=”It’s still a good few months away from the prospect of new graphics cards being announced. Still, we know they’re coming: AMD have been talking up “Big Navi,” their card with real-time ray tracing support, while Nvidia’s line has been due for a process shrink for a couple of years. And while rumours have been floating around ahead of AMD’s Investor Day, two new Nvidia cards have popped up on the Geekbench database.”]
[referenced url=”https://www.kotaku.com.au/2020/02/nvidia-rtx-dlss-quietly-got-a-hell-of-a-lot-better/” thumb=”https://www.kotaku.com.au/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2019/08/control-final-4-410×231.jpg” title=”Nvidia Very Quietly Made DLSS A Hell Of A Lot Better” excerpt=”When Nvidia launched their RTX GPUs, the cards shipped with a wealth of potential to leverage AI in different scenarios. One of those was deep learning super sampling (DLSS), an AI-powered anti-aliasing technique that was designed to improve frame rates at higher resolutions by using neural network upscaling. The technique worked in practice, but the hit to image quality varied from game to game. And there were other limitations, like only being able to use DLSS at certain resolutions. It all made up for a feature that sounded nice but was super limited, because Nvidia had to individually train their neural networks for every single game they wanted to support.”]
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