“In six weeks, I am going to tell everybody about a whole bunch of things we are working on – the next generation of AI,” said NVIDIA chief Jensen Huang, last month at the World Governments Summit 2024, referring to the upcoming GTC 2024, that will be held from March 17 to 21 at San Jose, California.
Showcasing AI Artwork and the Future of Work
The futuristic theme of NVIDIA GTC 2024 will touch upon the amalgamation of AI and art. Turkish-born, globally acclaimed media artist and pioneer in the aesthetics of machine learning, Refik Anadol, will display his art in a large generative AI installation called ‘Large Nature Model’. The art pioneer recently showcased his work at the World Economic Forum in Davos and even had it splattered across the Las Vegas Sphere.
A ‘Poster Gallery’ will showcase over 80 research posters across myriad topics focusing on how accelerated computing and AI are transforming the way they work. People will have the opportunity to chat with the authors of these posters.
The event will have close to 1,000 sessions, 300+ exhibits and 20+ technical workshops, with something for everybody. The sessions, led by prominent leaders, cater to 20 industries, including agriculture, aerospace, construction, gaming, retail, semiconductor telecommunications, robotics, and many more.
In addition to the compelling reasons mentioned above, which should have already convinced you to attend the conference, the opportunity to meet NVIDIA’s witty and highly active X user and ML engineer, Bojan Tunguz, should seal this deal for you.
Source: X
Riveting Sessions in the Pipeline
In his keynote, Huang will talk about how NVIDIA’s accelerated computing platform is driving the next wave in AI, cloud technologies and sustainable computing.
The CEO will also host a panel session on ‘Transforming AI’ with some of the emerging AI startup leaders, including Aidan Gomez, co-founder and CEO of Cohere; Ashish Vaswani, co-founder and CEO of Essential AI; Niki Parmar, co-founder of Essential AI; Llion Jones, co-founder and CTO of Sakana AI; Lukasz Kaiser, member of technical staff at OpenAI; and other authors of the paper ‘Attention Is All You Need’.
A must-attend session, indeed!
Another session on ‘Beyond RAG Basics’ by developer advocate engineers of NVIDIA, will discuss the various architectural techniques that can be used to improve the quality of responses by a RAG system. If you wish to know about how agents, copilots and assistants are built, then this cannot be missed at any cost.
The year 2024 is poised to be the one for robotics and NVIDIA’s varied sessions on the subject are sure to pique the interest of many. A session on ‘Using Omniverse to generate first-person experiential data for humanoid robots’ by Geordie Rose, co-founder and CEO of Sanctuary AI, will discuss how NVIDIA Omniverse can be used to create synthetic first-person experience for robots, and even talk about AGI.
There’s also something for people looking to learn about tools in the media and entertainment industry. ‘Lessons on Video Generation Models from Research to Production’, by Anastasis Germanidis, the CTO and co-founder of Runway, will talk about their Gen-1 and Gen-2 video generation models from research to production.
While this is just the tip of the iceberg, an elaborate schedule of all the NVIDIA GTC sessions can be found here. If attending GTC in person is the concern, fret not because all the GTC sessions are virtually available. Make sure to plan well ahead of time.
Wait, there is more…
At last year’s GPU Technology Conference (GTC), NVIDIA unveiled a series of new products, including their new DGX Cloud, inference platforms, systems for the Omniverse platform, AI foundations for building LLMs and more. With the staggering upward trajectory of NVIDIA ever since, it is only obvious that the company’s focus on AI will continue.
Here are some of the forecast launches for GTC 2024.
Next-gen GPUs: NVIDIA’s next-generation GPU, codenamed ‘Blackwell’, is one of the most highly anticipated launches for GTC 2024. B100 and GB200 Blackwell graphics processors for enterprise computing are expected to be released. The B100 GPU is said to almost double the performance of the Hopper H200.
NVIDIA RTX 5000 series, which is expected to be based on the new architecture, Blackwell, is a high-performance graphics card that is said to leverage the latest GDDR7 (Graphics Double Data Rate 7) memory.
Rumours suggest that it will mostly be ready before CES 2025, and a confirmation on this may come during GTC 2024.
GPUs for Mining: The cryptomarket has been heating up in anticipation of NVIDIA’s GTC 2024. Jules Urbach, co-founder and CEO of OTOY, a leading global cloud rendering company, will give his first live talk since pre-COVID at the upcoming event.
In a 2013 keynote speech with Huang, Urbach unveiled the first cloud GPU rendering pipeline. It is possible that dedicated GPUs for mining, similar to NVIDIA Cmp Hx, can be unveiled at GTC 2024, considering how OTOY has been closely associated with the crypto market.
Patryk Pusch, CEO and founder of Gamer Hash, a decentralised computing network, tweeted that a major partnership announcement will happen.
An Unconventional Collab: Samsung Electronics is expected to unveil its 12-layer High Bandwidth Memory 3E (HBM3E) at GTC 2024. HBM3E stacks are set to enhance NVIDIA’s H200 AI GPUs. It integrates 12 DRAM (dynamic random accessory memory) layers, with a density of 288 Gbit or 36 GB per stack.
Soon, everyone will be a gamer: NVIDIA is rumoured to be working on a PC gaming handheld device. With its rival AMD’s dominance in handheld gaming PCs, NVIDIA’s re-entry into this space will differ from previous attempts (such as the NVIDIA Shield Portable), as the new device will be powered by NVIDIA’s GPU. While there is no confirmed release date at this time, it would be delightful if it were mentioned at GTC 2024.
Talking about how everyone will be able to code in the future, Huang also believes that AI and NVIDIA will facilitate an ecosystem that will make everyone a gamer. “Someday, everybody’s going to be a gamer,” he said.
Focus on Sustainability: NVIDIA first announced its plans to build Earth-2 at the GTC 2022 conference. The goal of Earth-2 is to create a digital twin of Earth in Omniverse to predict and monitor climate change and develop strategies to mitigate and adapt to it. The platform has not been released yet, and improvements or modifications may be announced during the upcoming conference.
Focus on Science : NVIDIA has made significant progress on the life sciences domain with the NVIDIA BioNeMo framework. Furthermore, Huang had also remarked about the use of ChatGPT for using generative AI to solve ‘real-world problems’ such as dissolving plastics, reducing carbon emissions, and so much more. It is highly likely that new announcements in this domain will be made.
Robotics Thrives: Robotics is a key theme for the conference with a number of robotics innovators convening to discuss and showcase the use of AI for autonomous machines. Announcements around robotics for daily use will likely be made at the GTC.
Source: NVIDIA Blog
Quantum Madness: Foraying into quantum computing, NVIDIA released CUDA Quantum, a platform for integrating and programming quantum processing units (QPUs), GPUs and CPUs, last year. It is possible that this year’s GTC would see the release of more advanced versions of the quantum-enabling platform to take on the likes of IBM and Google that are making significant strides in the field.
Chipmaker King: NVIDIA had earlier announced its plans to build semiconductor fabrication plants to boost the AI ecosystem in Japan with the help of startups there. The company is also venturing into the custom AI chips market to take on its competitors. It wouldn’t be a surprise if any significant announcement on personalised chips were made during the GTC 2024.
With a futuristic vision, this year’s GTC is sure to not only push AI advancements but also bring AGI into the scene. Huang shared his views on AGI, predicting its achievement within five years under specific conditions (i.e. acing human-level competitive exams). It’s going to be quite exciting!
