Nvidia’s Graphics Technology Conference keynote just wrapped, and the two-hour-plus talk covered a lot of really interesting topics — if you’re a graphical engineer, data scientist, or autonomous vehicle enthusiast. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang didn’t even allude to the upcoming 11-series graphics cards, or the long-rumored Turing-series cryptocurrency mining GPUs. There were a few tidbits of interest for the rest of us, like the introduction of the world’s largest GPU and a brand-new Nvidia Quadro GPU, but other than that it was mostly a technical talk aimed at enterprise customers. Let’s get into it.
The first actual product shown off at Nvidia’s GTC keynote was the Quadro GV100, a new high-end professional-grade GPU. This thing is lightning-fast but unfortunately, it’s not for gaming so don’t get your hopes up. The GV100 is designed to power professional workstations and pump out CGI using cutting-edge real-time RTX raytracing which Nvidia first showed off at GDC. It features Nvidia’s next-gen Volta architecture and 32GB of memory, and if its predecessor, the GP100 is any indication, this card will cost more than an arm and a leg. The GP100 started at $7,000, so we can probably expect the GV100 to come in around that price.
Also unveiled at the GTC keynote was one of Nvidia’s most powerful — and most expensive — pieces of hardware: The Nvidia DGX-2, a GPU supercomputer that weighs in at around 350 pounds. The “mini” supercomputer features 16 individual Tesla V100 GPUs, each with 32GB of system memory. These cards all work together through Nvidia’s NVSwitch technology, meaning this massive machine is capable of crunching some serious numbers. Designed for deep-learning applications which require massive amounts of processing power, the DGX-2 is impressive, but again not for the average user. Unless you have a spare $400,000 laying around.
In what could be the most important announcement to come out of the GTC keynote, Nvidia briefly demoed a cloud supercomputing technology called Clara. The system could enable doctors and medical professionals working with old or outdated equipment to provide better care to patients without having to invest in multi-million-dollar imaging technology. The system, as demoed, can take the standard data output from a 15-year-old ultrasound machine, run it through its artificial intelligence models and actually infer more information than the ultrasound originally contained. During the demo, we saw Clara take a simple two-dimensional image of a heart beating and turn it into a fully three-dimensional image, complete with blood pressure estimates and other health diagnostics.
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.