Nvidia Announces AI Hardware and Software at CES 2024

Seizing on the AI moment, Nvidia announced a sweeping set of generative AI solutions that span hardware and software and multiple markets.

“Generative AI is the single most significant platform transition in computing history and will transform every industry, including gaming,” Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang said. “With over 100 million RTX AI PCs and workstations, NVIDIA is a massive installed base for developers and gamers to enjoy the magic of generative AI.”

On the hardware front, Nvidia announced new versions of its GeForce RTX Super GPUs (graphics processing unit) for desktop PCs. There are three new cards, the RTX 4080 Super (at $999), the RTX 4070 Ti Super ($799), and the RTX 4070 Super ($599), and each is aimed at both high-end gaming and generative AI workstation workloads. Each also launches later in January, and with those aggressive price points, I think it’s fair to say they’ll sell well right away.

Nvidia also noted that Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo, MSI, Razer, and Samsung are all announcing new AI laptops based on its RTX AI chipset, which brings generative AI capabilities to the mainstream starting this month. Nvidia claims these GPUs will outperform NPUs by a factor of 20 to 60 times, which sounds like a stretch.

Interestingly, most of Nvidia’s announcements today—which are timed to this week’s CES 2024 in Las Vegas—concern software, not hardware. Key among these software announcements are:

• Nvidia RTX Remix – Shipping in beta this month, RTX Remix lets developers remaster classic games in 4K resolution and using physically-based rendering materials. And heads-up, the demo is of a remixed version of Half-Life 2 that looks stunning.
• NVIDIA TensorRT improvements – Nvidia’s TensorRT helps optimize AI workloads for Nvidia’s GPUs, and it is being updated to support Microsoft Phi-2, with 5x performance improvements, and Stable Diffusion XL, with 60 percent improvements in text-to-image performance.
• AI Workbench – This unified, easy-to-use toolkit for AI developers will be available in beta later this month, Nvidia says, with easy access to popular repositories like Hugging Face and GitHub.
• Chat with RTX – This tech demo will ship later this month and let AI enthusiasts interact with their notes, documents, and other content locally on their PCs using local LLMs.

Exciting stuff.