Today, Logitech debuted Rally Speaker 2 Pro and Rally Speaker 2 Max, audio systems engineered to bring highly-precise sound targeting to extra-large conference rooms and training environments. Rally Speaker 2 Pro and Max house Logitech's proprietary Sound Shape technology and mark Logitech's entry into the Pro AV market.

Acoustics are particularly tricky in high-value spaces such as executive boardrooms and divisible rooms. Ceiling speakers—the usual fix—are costly to install, involve complex wiring, and result in voices coming from unnatural directions while sound waves crash into each other, creating echo and cognitive fatigue. Rally Speaker 2 Pro and Max—speakers at the front of the room only—present a less expensive, simpler way to guarantee uniform sound coverage throughout these spaces.

Our favorite time of the year is nearly upon us: the annual (and newly renamed) GDC Festival of Gaming is next month! We're looking forward to seeing old friends, making new ones, and sharing our vision for empowering developers today and into the future. This year, GDC takes place from March 9-13 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, California. We'll host partner meetings, participate in conference sessions, and sponsor events like the IGF Awards and the ESA Foundation's Nite to Unite. Attendees that come by the Xbox Lounge in Moscone South Lobby can journey through our exhibit featuring key moments across 25 years of Xbox history, meet Xbox Subject Matter Experts, learn what steps they can take to begin building for the future, and sign up for our newsletter to receive a community pin.

At GDC, we'll share how we're giving developers the freedom to create and play on any device, with anyone, anywhere. We want to make it easier for developers to build and ship games, provide more ways to reach players, and offer more freedom to bring their bold creative ideas to life. Our goal is to empower creators of every size by providing cutting-edge tools, services, and opportunities that accelerate innovation, reduce barriers, and help developers bring their games to players everywhere. This year, for the first time, we are hosting the Xbox Dev Summit, where we'll be presenting six sponsored sessions to help prepare attendees to build for what's next. The Xbox Dev Summit is in West Hall Room 3001/3003 and will be kicking off with Jason Ronald, VP of Next Gen, at 10:10am on Wednesday, March 11.

BenQ, a global leader in display and collaboration solutions, today announced the InstaShow VS25, a wireless conferencing system built to make hybrid meetings easier and smoother. Designed for corporate meeting rooms and executive spaces, the VS25 delivers app-free, hardware-based wireless conferencing with ultra-low-latency performance for easy in-room and remote collaboration.

As more organizations adopt hybrid work, modern conference rooms must support easy in-room collaboration and reliable participation for remote attendees. While wireless presentation has become standard, many wireless conferencing solutions still rely on CPU-intensive Bring Your Own Meeting (BYOM) apps layered on top of popular video conferencing platforms. This creates performance bottlenecks, security exposure, and friction for guests.

Intel did not include coverage of its lesser known "Wildcat Lake" mobile processor family during a main stage presentation of new-gen Core Ultra Series products. Despite talk of various "Ultra Low Power" solutions, the main focus on day one was "Panther Lake." Following the conclusion of Team Blue's big conference, a few news outlets noticed an interesting Core Series 3 "Die Package Configuration" slide; seemingly not deemed worthy of being placed alongside nearby larger "Panther Lake" chip designs (consisting of three configs). According to the loose slide, Intel's smaller "Wildcat Lake" package makes do with six processor cores (2P+4LPE) and two Xe3 iGPU cores. This information matches leaks from last year; with a next-gen chip design destined for eventual deployment in entry-level notebooks.

Surprisingly, a physical sample was handed over to HardwareLuxx.de on the Las Vegas showroom floor. Photos show a tile layout that does not completely align with the chipmaker's official product render. According to Andreas Schilling's news article, Intel representatives have confirmed the existence of their "Wildcat Lake" family—going under "Core Series 3" guises. The Blue Team anticipates a second quarter launch, with "Wildcat Lake" heading to edge systems and embedded platforms. In a separate report, Abhishek Yadav claims that the upcoming "Core Series 3" processor series will replace "older Alder Lake-N lineup." Going into further detail, HardwareLuxx was informed about specific "Core Ultra 5 332" and "Core Ultra 5 322" SKUs being designated as the smallest of "Panther Lake" packages (4P+4LPE & 4 Xe3 cores). Very late last year, rumors of refreshed "Wildcat Lake" products turned up on the internet—finalized examples are likely some distance from release.

Moore Threads, a growing force within China's domestic graphics card development industry, has scheduled its very first MUSA Developer Conference (MDC 2025). The Beijing-based event will kick of on December 19, and wrap up a day later. Earlier today, Zhang Jianzhong—the company's founder, chairman and CEO—issued a pre-game primer. Primarily, his upcoming keynote presentation will focus on full-stack development strategy—utilizing Moore Threads Unified System Architecture (MUSA). The former NVIDIA China executive also mentioned an imminent unveiling of his firm's next-generation GPU design. This teased future technology is set to succeed previous attempts, mostly launched three years ago—TechPowerUp has covered previous-gen "Chunxiao" MTT S80 16 GB (mainstream desktop) and MTT S4000 48 GB (AI workstation-grade) card models in the recent past.

Moore Threads leadership is likely keen ride a large wave of momentum—mostly generated by a $1.1 billion listing, following the company's early December debut IPO. Last week, this valuation buzz generated lofty headlines, with a couple of titles dubbing Moore Threads as the "Chinese NVIDIA." This month's MUSA Developer Conference seems to be aimed at the enterprise market segment, so desktop gaming products are not expected to feature prominently (if at all) during a run through of the Moore Threads hardware roadmap. According to local news reports, Chinese GPU specialists are expected to rapidly respond to NVIDIA's newly-awarded export license—clearing the way for a major injection of H200 data center accelerators into the region.

NVIDIA yesterday had a GTC conference in Washington D.C., showing its latest "Vera Rubin" Superchip symbiote. Pictured for the first time is the combination of two "Rubin" GPU paired with a single "Vera" CPU carrying 88 custom NVIDIA cores and 176 threads in a single package. NVIDIA quoted performance targets of roughly 50 PetaFLOPS of FP4 compute per Rubin GPU, which yields about 100 PetaFLOPS FP4 for the two-GPU Superchip. The company said engineering samples are already moving through labs and set mass production goals for 2026 with broader shipments and deployments into 2027.

Each Rubin GPU appears to integrate two reticle-sized compute chiplets (2x830mm²?) paired with eight HBM4 stacks, delivering about 288 GB of HBM4 per GPU and roughly 576 GB of HBM4 on the full Superchip. NVIDIA also populated the board with SOCAMM2 LPDDR5X modules to provide large, low-latency system memory, with some older briefings indicating around 1.5 TB of LPDDR5X per Vera CPU on typical trays. The Vera CPU itself uses an 88-core, 176-thread Arm-based custom design and shows signs of a multi-chiplet layout with a distinct I/O chiplet nearby. With "Grace," NVIDIA relied on Arm's Neoverse design, but with Vera, the design team brought this CPU core in the house to extract maximum performance. Additionally, NVLink bandwidth climbs to approximately 1.8 TB/s to sustain heavy CPU-to-GPU traffic in system-demanding workloads such as AI inference and training.

Logitech International today announced financial results for the second quarter of Fiscal Year 2026.

• Sales were $1.19 billion, up 6 percent in US dollars and 4 percent in constant currency compared to Q2 of the prior year.
• GAAP gross margin was 43.4 percent, down 20 basis points compared to Q2 of the prior year. Non-GAAP gross margin was 43.8 percent, down 30 basis points compared to Q2 of the prior year.
• GAAP operating income was $191 million, up 19 percent compared to Q2 of the prior year. Non-GAAP operating income was $230 million, up 19 percent compared to Q2 of the prior year.
• GAAP earnings per share (EPS) was $1.15, up 21 percent compared to Q2 of the prior year. Non-GAAP EPS was $1.45, up 21 percent compared to Q2 of the prior year.
• Cash flow from operations was $229 million. The quarter-ending cash balance was $1.4 billion.
• The Company returned $340 million to shareholders through its annual dividend payment and share repurchases.

Samsung Display hosted its second annual OLED IT Summit in Taipei, where more than 400 representatives from leading technology firms—including Intel, Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, and Lenovo—were in attendance. The conference focused on accelerating OLED adoption in notebooks and desktop monitors. At the event, Samsung Display unveiled more affordable OLED products engineered for broader market adoption. These panels consolidate several driving elements into a unified IC, reducing costs without sacrificing performance. The company further presented its "UT One" low-power OLED solution, the first of its kind to support a 1 Hz variable refresh rate using Oxide TFT technology. In testing, laptops equipped with UT One panels delivered up to three additional hours of battery life over standard OLED panels. Samsung Display also presented its SmartPower HDR power-saving technology, developed jointly with Intel.

According to Omdia research, OLED displays represented 3% of laptop and monitor shipments in 2024 but are projected to reach 13% by 2029. Samsung Display disclosed that its OLED shipments reached 4.9 million units in the first half of 2024, a 50% year-on-year growth and reached 74% of the market in Q2 2024. Commenting on adoption trends, Executive Vice President Jonghyuk Lee noted that widespread integration of emerging technologies hinges on three elements: innovative user experiences, competitive pricing, and robust ecosystem alliances. The company summarized its strategy as a combination of cost optimization, low-power design innovations, and close cooperation with OEM partners to push OLED further into the mainstream. For end-users, this could result in a wider range of reasonably priced OLED products with better specs and functionality.

In an almost uncanny case of recent history repeating itself, AMD has kicked off another RDNA 4 new product teaser campaign. Today's reminder—regarding Jack Huynh's upcoming Computex presentation—included a promotional render of a stubbier dual-fan Radeon RX 9000 Series card design. Casting our memories back to late January (2025), Team Red rolled out an ill-timed advertisement—not long after the official delay of Radeon RX 9070 XT and non-XT cards. Despite denying the existence of "Made-By-AMD" (MBA) reference designs, AMD staffers were likely enraged by Chinese black market channel offerings of alleged "real deal examples." Days after first wave RDNA 4's March 6 global launch, a triple-fan specimen was outed.

Throughout early Q2, insiders and members of the Chiphell forum have played around with Radeon RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 MBA cards. The latter unit (see photo below) seems to utilize a dual-fan configuration in a fairly long enclosure format. Team Red's latest promo post likely points to a forthcoming unveiling of Radeon RX 9060 XT partner models, but curious industry observers will be wondering whether the shorter reference design actually exists in real life. As per usual, a tiny disclaimer claims otherwise: "Artistic Render. Not Available For Purchase." So far, leaks have suggested the presence of Acer, ASUS, GIGABYTE, and XFX custom options during introductory proceedings. Today's refresher outlined upcoming new product categories and partner contributions: "join AMD on May 21 as we reveal what's next in gaming, AI PCs, and more. (Our) SVP and GM of Computing and Graphics Group, along with industry leaders and partners showcase what is built to power the next level."

As enterprises increasingly adopt AI, securing AI factories—where complex, agentic workflows are executed—has never been more critical. NVIDIA is bringing runtime cybersecurity to every AI factory with a new NVIDIA DOCA software framework, part of the NVIDIA cybersecurity AI platform. Running on the NVIDIA BlueField networking platform, NVIDIA DOCA Argus operates on every node to immediately detect and respond to attacks on AI workloads, integrating seamlessly with enterprise security systems to deliver instant threat insights. The DOCA Argus framework provides runtime threat detection by using advanced memory forensics to monitor threats in real time, delivering detection speeds up to 1,000x faster than existing agentless solutions—without impacting system performance.

Unlike conventional tools, Argus runs independently of the host, requiring no agents, integration or reliance on host-based resources. This agentless, zero-overhead design enhances system efficiency and ensures resilient security in any AI compute environment, including containerized and multi-tenant infrastructures. By operating outside the host, Argus remains invisible to attackers—even in the event of a system compromise. Cybersecurity professionals can seamlessly integrate the framework with their SIEM, SOAR and XDR security platforms, enabling continuous monitoring and automated threat mitigation and extending their existing cybersecurity capabilities for AI infrastructure.

AMD today announced that it will be hosting a press conference during Computex 2025. The in-person and livestreamed press conference will take place on Wednesday, May 21, 2025, at 11 a.m. UTC+8, Taipei, at the Grand Hyatt, Taipei. The event will showcase the advancements AMD has driven with AI in gaming, PCs and professional workloads.

AMD senior vice president and general manager of the Computing and Graphics Group Jack Huynh, along with industry partners, will discuss how AMD is expanding its leadership across gaming, workstations, and AI PCs, and highlight the breadth of the company's high-performance computing and AI product portfolio. The livestream will start at 8 p.m. PT/11 p.m. ET on Tuesday, May 20 on AMD.com, with replay available after the conclusion of the livestream event.

Late last week, the Chinese ASUS branch started to tease a forthcoming ROG and TUF Gaming x Hatsune Miku collection. Eagle-eyed PC gaming hardware watchdogs spotted an intriguing custom GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB graphics card model within a messy pile of colorful brand-new products. The manufacturer has teamed up with Crypton Future Media; this collaboration is advertised as bringing "a cybernetic fusion to gaming." Initial announcements focused on peripherals, but shortly thereafter the partners unveiled a Hatsune Miku-themed pre-built system. VideoCardz spent its weekend investigating the mysterious new "RTX 5060 Ti O8G" design. A follow-up article pulled information and imagery from Tony Wu's "world premiere" bilibili video—the general manager of ASUS China showcased various upcoming products, including a relevant white triple-fan graphics card.

According to reports, Wu did not disclose an exact model name—NVIDIA and board partners are expected to make new entrants "official" at some point this week. Wu's demonstration unit was visually matched up to the teased "RTX 5060 Ti O8G" card. Additionally, Wu and colleagues presented the entire Hatsune Miku product line during a major press conference; last Saturday (April 12) in Changsha. Many items have already launched to market, through JD.com. Naturally, pricing and availability details were not mentioned during their "GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB OC" segment. The factory overclocked "RTX 50-series" card's unique white design is outfitted with a single 8-pin power connector; suggesting a tentative entry level price bracket. The backplate is decorated with mascot illustrations—TechPowerUp and other media outlets have noticed an uptick in "cute girl" drawings turning up on housings and retail packaging. ZOTAC joined in on the fun very recently; as reported last week.

Samsung Electronics and Logitech celebrate five years of partnership in video conferencing, combining their industry-leading solutions to enhance workplace collaboration and productivity. The integration of Samsung high-definition displays with Logitech's video conferencing solutions creates immersive, connected experiences ready to meet the needs of today's employees.

With the rise of flexible work environments, organizations require meeting spaces equipped with advanced video conferencing technology to enable seamless collaboration for distributed teams. Businesses can now leverage Samsung's high-definition displays with Logitech's conference cameras, webcams and audio systems to achieve crystal-clear video and sound, helping remote and in-person participants feel like they are in the same room. Samsung Interactive Displays also enable teams to connect, share ideas and whiteboard on a single screen. These meeting solutions make every participant feel equally engaged regardless of location.

NVIDIA today announced GTC 2025, the world's premier AI conference, will return March 17-21 to San Jose, California—bringing together the brightest minds in AI to showcase breakthroughs happening now in physical AI, agentic AI and scientific discovery. GTC will bring together 25,000 attendees in person—and 300,000 attendees virtually—for an in-depth look at the technologies shaping the future. NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang will deliver the keynote from SAP Center on Tuesday, March 18, at 10 a.m. PT focused on AI and accelerated computing technologies changing the world. It will be livestreamed and available on demand at nvidia.com. Registration is not required to view the keynote online.

Onsite attendees can arrive at SAP Center early to enjoy a live pregame show hosted by the "Acquired" podcast and other surprise festivities. Virtual attendees can catch the pregame show live online. "AI is pushing the limits of what's possible—turning yesterday's dreams into today's reality," Huang said. "GTC brings together the brightest scientists, engineers, developers and creators to imagine and build a better future. Come and be first to see the new advances in NVIDIA computing and breakthroughs in AI, robotics, science and the arts that will transform industries and society."

Damo Academy—a research and development wing of Alibaba—launched its debut "server-grade processor" design late last week, in Beijing. According to a South China Morning Post (SCMP) news article, the C930 model is a brand-new addition to the e-commerce platform's XuanTie RISC-V CPU series. Company representatives stated that their latest product is designed as a server-level and high-performance computing (HPC) solution. Going back to March 2024, TechPowerUp and other Western hardware news outlets picked up on Alibaba's teasing of the Xuantie C930 SoC, and a related Xuantie 907 matrix processing unit. Fast-forward to the present day; Damo Academy has disclosed that initial shipments—of finalized C930 units—will be sent out to customers this month.

The newly released open-source RISC-V architecture-based HPC chip is an unknown quantity in terms of technical specifications. Damo Academy reps did not provide any detailed information during last Friday's conference (February 28). SCMP's report noted the R&D division's emphasizing of "its role in advancing RISC-V adoption" within various high-end fields. Apparently, the XuanTie engineering team has: "supported the implementation of more than thirty percent of RISC-V high-performance processors." Upcoming additions will arrive in the form of the C908X for AI acceleration, R908A for automotive processing solutions, and an XL200 model for high-speed interconnection. These XuanTie projects are reportedly still deep in development.

Atelier games have been around since the late '90s, with more than two dozen titles shipped in that time - but you're forgiven some unfamiliarity the series, as Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories and the Envisioned Land will be the very first to arrive on Xbox. After playing through the first few hours of the game and speaking with producer Junzo Hosoi, it's becoming clear that the first Atelier title on Xbox isn't simply the latest in the series, it's the most ambitious entry yet.

"As a huge Xbox fan, I'm thrilled to finally bring the series to the system," Hosoi told me via email, "But when I look at the game as a whole, I don't describe Atelier Yumia as the next Atelier game. I describe it as a completely new JRPG series that has Atelier features." My preview session bore that out; players will find familiar RPG elements aplenty - strategic, real-time battles, crafting, exploration - but they come together in way that feels altogether different from others in the genre. The secret ingredient, if you will, lies in the super deep crafting system.

The rapid evolution of generative AI has created countless opportunities for innovation across industry and research. As is often the case with state-of-the-art technology, this evolution has also shifted the landscape of cybersecurity threats, creating new security requirements. Critical infrastructure cybersecurity is advancing to thwart the next wave of emerging threats in the AI era. Leading operational technology (OT) providers today showcased at the S4 conference for industrial control systems (ICS) and OT cybersecurity how they're adopting the NVIDIA cybersecurity AI platform to deliver real-time threat detection and critical infrastructure protection.

Armis, Check Point, CrowdStrike, Deloitte and World Wide Technology (WWT) are integrating the platform to help customers bolster critical infrastructure, such as energy, utilities and manufacturing facilities, against cyber threats. Critical infrastructure operates in highly complex environments, where the convergence of IT and OT, often accelerated by digital transformation, creates a perfect storm of vulnerabilities. Traditional cybersecurity measures are no longer sufficient to address these emerging threats. By harnessing NVIDIA's cybersecurity AI platform, these partners can provide exceptional visibility into critical infrastructure environments, achieving robust and adaptive security while delivering operational continuity.

AMD debuted its first wave of RDNA 4 graphics cards—consisting of Radeon RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 (non-XT) models—at the beginning of January. At the time, press outlets and PC gaming hardware enthusiasts were equally flummoxed by Team Red's confusing presentation strategy. Invited attendees of CES 2025 were allowed to handle demonstration samples, but board partners appeared to be sworn to secrecy regarding technical specifications or performance figures. Miscellaneous leaks and rumors have seeped out since then—according to insiders, AMD was prepping its new Radeon product line for launch late last month. A re-scheduled rollout is seemingly in the works, possibly on next month's calendar entry. Benchlife (via VideoCardz) believes that a pre-launch showcase event is lined up for late February.

Following publication of the latest RDNA 4-related leaks, a brave soul engaged with AMD's Frank Azor on social media. Dee Batch, a loyal and long-term supporter of Radeon gaming hardware, sent a query to Team Red's chief architect of gaming solutions: "can we see the RDNA 4 full presentation? I honestly feel you can prevent many gamers from getting a GeForce RTX 5070 or RTX 5070 Ti GPU...Please, do not miss this opportunity to gain gamer mind share." Azor replied with a short sentence: "yes, full details are coming soon." This brief interaction attracted additional participants—VideoCardz noted that the Team Red executive was taking on board feedback about expectations surrounding RDNA 4 MSRPs. Late last month, Azor refuted rumors of the Radeon RX 9070 XT pricing starting at a baseline of $899. NVIDIA has officially disclosed price points of $549 (RTX 5070) and $749 (RTX 5070 Ti)—AMD enthusiasts have their fingers crossed in hope of TBA competitive numbers.

AMD (NASDAQ:AMD) today announced revenue for the first quarter of 2024 of $5.5 billion, gross margin of 47%, operating income of $36 million, net income of $123 million and diluted earnings per share of $0.07. On a non-GAAP basis, gross margin was 52%, operating income was $1.1 billion, net income was $1.0 billion and diluted earnings per share was $0.62.

"We delivered strong first quarter results with our Data Center and Client segments each growing more than 80% year-over-year driven by the ramp of MI300 AI accelerator shipments and the adoption of our Ryzen and EPYC processors," said AMD Chair and CEO Dr. Lisa Su. "This is an incredibly exciting time for the industry as widespread deployment of AI is driving demand for significantly more compute across a broad range of markets. We are executing very well as we ramp our data center business and enable AI capabilities across our product portfolio."

Leaked Samsung PBSSD presentation material popped up online a couple of days prior to the kick-off day of NVIDIA's GTC 2024 conference (March 18)—reports (at the time) jumped on the potential introduction of a "petabyte (PB)-level SSD solution," alongside an enterprise subscription service for the US market. Tom's Hardware took the time to investigate this matter—in-person—on the showroom floor up in San Jose, California. It turns out that interpretations of pre-event information were slightly off—according to on-site investigations: "despite the name, PBSSD is not a petabyte-scale solid-state drive (Samsung's highest-capacity drive can store circa 240 TB), but rather a 'petascale' storage system that can scale-out all-flash storage capacity to petabytes."

Samsung showcased a Supermicro Petascale server design, but a lone unit is nowhere near capable of providing a petabyte of storage—the Tom's Hardware reporter found out that the demonstration model housed: "sixteen 15.36 TB SSDs, so for now the whole 1U unit can only pack up to 245.76 TB of 3D NAND storage (which is pretty far from a petabyte), so four of such units will be needed to store a petabyte of data." Company representatives also had another Supermicro product at their booth: "(an) H13 all-flash petascale system with CXL support that can house eight E3.S SSDs (with) four front-loading E3.S CXL bays for memory expansion."

Imagine a world where you can whisper your digital wishes into your device, and poof, it happens. That world may be coming sooner than you think. But if you're worried about AI doing your thinking for you, you might be waiting for a while. In a fireside chat Wednesday (March 20) at NVIDIA GTC, the global AI conference, Kanjun Qiu, CEO of Imbue, and Bryan Catanzaro, VP of applied deep learning research at NVIDIA, challenged many of the clichés that have long dominated conversations about AI. Launched in October 2022, Imbue made headlines with its Series B fundraiser last year, raising over $200 million at a $1 billion valuation.

The Future of Personal Computing
Qiu and Catanzaro discussed the role that virtual worlds will play in this, and how they could serve as interfaces for human-technology interaction. "I think it's pretty clear that AI is going to help build virtual worlds," said Catanzaro. "I think the maybe more controversial part is virtual worlds are going to be necessary for humans to interact with AI." People have an almost primal fear of being displaced, Catanzaro said, but what's much more likely is that our capabilities will be amplified as the technology fades into the background. Catanzaro compared it to the adoption of electricity. A century ago, people talked a lot about electricity. Now that it's ubiquitous, it's no longer the focus of broader conversations, even as it makes our day-to-day lives better.

Jensen Huang has been talking to media outlets following the conclusion of his keynote presentation at NVIDIA's GTC 2024 conference—an NBC TV "exclusive" interview with the Team Green boss has caused a stir in tech circles. Jim Cramer's long-running "Squawk on the Street" trade segment hosted Huang for just under five minutes—NBC's presenter labelled the latest edition of GTC the "Woodstock of AI." NVIDIA's leader reckoned that around $1 trillion of industry was in attendance at this year's event—folks turned up to witness the unveiling of "Blackwell" B200 and GB200 AI GPUs. In the interview, Huang estimated that his company had invested around $10 billion into the research and development of its latest architecture: "we had to invent some new technology to make it possible."

Industry watchdogs have seized on a major revelation—as disclosed during the televised NBC report—Huang revealed that his next-gen AI GPUs "will cost between $30,000 and $40,000 per unit." NVIDIA (and its rivals) are not known to publicly announce price ranges for AI and HPC chips—leaks from hardware partners and individuals within industry supply chains are the "usual" sources. An investment banking company has already delved into alleged Blackwell production costs—as shared by Tae Kim/firstadopter: "Raymond James estimates it will cost NVIDIA more than $6000 to make a B200 and they will price the GPU at a 50-60% premium to H100...(the bank) estimates it costs NVIDIA $3320 to make the H100, which is then sold to customers for $25,000 to $30,000." Huang's disclosure should be treated as an approximation, since his company (normally) deals with the supply of basic building blocks.

Samsung Electronics is all set to discuss the future of AI, alongside Jensen Huang, at NVIDIA's upcoming GTC 2024 conference. South Korean insiders have leaked the company's intentions, only days before the event's March 18 kickoff time. Their recently unveiled 36 GB HBM3E 12H DRAM product is expected to be the main focus of official presentations—additionally, a new storage subscription service is marked down for a possible live introduction. An overall "Redefining AI Infrastructure" presentation could include—according to BusinessKorea—a planned launch of: "petabyte (PB)-level SSD solution, dubbed 'PBSSD,' along with a subscription service in the US market within the second quarter (of 2024) to address the era of ultra-high-capacity data."

A Samsung statement—likely sourced from leaked material—summarized this business model: "the subscription service will help reduce initial investment costs in storage infrastructure for our customers and cut down on maintenance expenses." Under agreed upon conditions, customers are not required to purchasing ultra-high-capacity SSD solutions outright: "enterprises using the service can flexibly utilize SSD storage without the need to build separate infrastructure, while simultaneously receiving various services from Samsung Electronics related to storage management, security, and upgrades." A special session—"The Value of Storage as a Service for AI/ML and Data Analysis"—is alleged to be on the company's GTC schedule.

San Francisco's annual Game Developers Conference (GDC) returns next week, bringing game devs together to share stories, experiences, and advice on everything from lighting scenes to writing resumes. Electronic Arts speakers will be participating in more than 25 in-person sessions this year, including multiple talks touching on innovative technologies driving the creation of next-gen games at EA.

This year's tech-focused sessions dig into the details of several successes, including Frostbite's non-interruptive expansion to new gaming platforms, SEED's work generating photorealistic facial rigs, and techniques for high-fidelity cloth simulation in Frostbite for EA SPORTS FC 24. There's also a fantastic talk from Respawn's Christopher Pierse and Samy Duc that explores the evolution of matchmaking techniques in Apex Legends, going all the way back to 2019.

NVIDIA's GTC 2024 AI conference will set the stage for another leap forward in AI. At the heart of this highly anticipated event: the opening keynote by Jensen Huang, NVIDIA's visionary founder and CEO, who speaks on Monday, March 18, at 1 p.m. Pacific, at the SAP Center in San Jose, California.

Planning Your GTC Experience
There are two ways to watch. Register to attend GTC in person to secure a spot for an immersive experience at the SAP Center. The center is a short walk from the San Jose Convention Center, where the rest of the conference takes place. Doors open at 11 a.m., and badge pickup starts at 10:30 a.m. The keynote will also be livestreamed at www.nvidia.com/gtc/keynote/.