While today’s biggest stories may belong to Taiwanese company, ASUS, and their new smartphone releases, it would be a shame to snub announcements from other companies. NVIDIA’s CEO, Jen-Hsun Huang, took centerstage for their keynote at CES to let people know what the world’s leading GPU manufacturer is up to. Here are our main take aways from their keynote as CES 2017.
The New NVIDIA Shield
One of the major announcements from NVIDIA was the release of their new Shield TV, which will just be known as Shield from now on. While it was already capable of streaming 4K games and other content, it’s second iteration is said to perform 3x better than any other streamer in the market, will have 4K HDR support and get a helping hand from Google Assistant as well. They were playing a little coy with what exactly the new Shield has under the hood, so we’re going to have to wait for more details on this one.
You can pair the Shield with their NVIDIA Spot microphones that you can put around your house to access Google Assistant via the Shield.
NVIDIA Gets Into the Autonomous Car Game
We’ve heard rumblings that NVIDIA has been working on a self-driving car themselves, but now we know more details on this particular project. Powered by Xavier — their AI Car Supercomputer that runs the whole shebang — NVIDIA was able to show off their self-driving car, which they’ve codenamed BB8, via the video above. Xavier has an auto-grade, 512 Volta GPU and AI platform that is capable of learning through observation and data via the cloud. If you’d rather take the wheel yourself, there’s also an AI co-pilot feature that’s able to warn and possibly even stop you from getting into an accident.
Play Triple A Titles from your Mac or Budget Rig with GeForce Now
Gaming on a Mac can be a bit of a let down but thanks to this recent announcement by NVIDIA, you may be able to take on the latest games with a few caveats. NVIDIA announced that it will opening its GeForce Now services to PC and Mac user alike. If you’re unfamiliar with concept of GeForce Now, it allows users to access games in their Steam or Origin. Instead of using your laptop or Mac’s hardware though, you’ll be using NVIDIA’s GRID servers to play your games via GeForce now for an hourly fee; one of the caveats we were talking about. The fee to use GeForce Now is $25 (Php 1238) for 20 hours of play, which means you’re better off building your own rig as it will probably cost you less in the long run; not to mention, you’re going to need a pretty solid internet connection as well.
Source: NVIDIA
