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/.

Over 500 RTX games and applications have revolutionized how people game and create with ray tracing, NVIDIA DLSS and AI-powered technologies. Today, we're unveiling even more RTX games that will deliver the definitive PC experience for GeForce RTX gamers. At GDC 2024, we're announcing several new exciting integrations of cutting-edge RTX tech! In Black Myth: Wukong and NARAKA: BLADEPOINT, we're working with our partners to incorporate Full Ray Tracing and NVIDIA DLSS 3.5.

In Portal with RTX, our free, fully ray-traced reimaging of Valve's classic game, DLSS 3.5 with Ray Reconstruction and RTX IO are now available, further upgrading its technology, graphics and image quality. Diablo IV's ray tracing update arrives March 26th. Star Wars Outlaws will launch with DLSS 3 and ray-traced effects. The First Berserker: Khazan will launch with DLSS 3. And Sengoku Destiny introduced support for DLSS 3 earlier this week.

SK Hynix believes that it leads the industry with the development and production of High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) solutions, but rival memory manufacturers are working hard on equivalent fifth generation packages. NVIDIA was expected to select SK Hynix as the main supplier of HBM3E parts for utilization on H200 "Hopper" AI GPUs, but a surprise announcement was issued by Micron's press team last month. The American firm revealed that HBM3E volume production had commenced: ""(our) 24 GB 8H HBM3E will be part of NVIDIA H200 Tensor Core GPUs, which will begin shipping in the second calendar quarter of 2024. This milestone positions Micron at the forefront of the industry, empowering artificial intelligence (AI) solutions with HBM3E's industry-leading performance and energy efficiency."

According to a Korea JoongAng Daily report, this boast has reportedly "shocked" the likes of SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics. They believe that Micron's: "announcement was a revolt from an underdog, as the US company barely held 10 percent of the global market last year." The article also points out some behind-the-scenes legal wrangling: "the cutthroat competition became more evident when the Seoul court sided with SK Hynix on Thursday (March 7) by granting a non-compete injunction to prevent its former researcher, who specialized in HBM, from working at Micron. He would be fined 10 million won for each day in violation." SK Hynix is likely pinning its next-gen AI GPU hopes on a 12-layer DRAM stacked HBM3E product—industry insiders posit that evaluation samples were submitted to NVIDIA last month. The outlook for these units is said to be very positive—mass production could start as early as this month.

The stars align this GFN Thursday as more top titles from Ubisoft and Square Enix join the cloud. Star Wars Outlaws will be coming to the GeForce NOW library at launch later this year, while STAR OCEAN THE SECOND STORY R and PARANORMASIGHT: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo are part of eight new titles joining this week. Additionally, four other games are getting NVIDIA RTX enhancements, all arriving at next week's Game Developers Conference.

NARAKA: BLADEPOINT and Portal with RTX are adding full ray tracing and NVIDIA DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction capabilities. This month's Diablo IV update will add ray tracing. And Sengoku Dynasty—available to stream today—was recently updated with DLSS 3 Frame Generation.

TrendForce highlights the current landscape of the HBM market, which as of early 2024, is primarily focused on HBM3. NVIDIA's upcoming B100 or H200 models will incorporate advanced HBM3e, signaling the next step in memory technology. The challenge, however, is the supply bottleneck caused by both CoWoS packaging constraints and the inherently long production cycle of HBM—extending the timeline from wafer initiation to the final product beyond two quarters.

The current HBM3 supply for NVIDIA's H100 solution is primarily met by SK hynix, leading to a supply shortfall in meeting burgeoning AI market demands. Samsung's entry into NVIDIA's supply chain with its 1Znm HBM3 products in late 2023, though initially minor, signifies its breakthrough in this segment.

Two months ago, NVIDIA introduced its GeForce RTX 40 SUPER series to the market, bringing a trio of models: RTX 4070 SUPER, RTX 4070 Ti SUPER, and RTX 4080 SUPER. Today, according to the report from ComputerBase, NVIDIA's latest trio has recorded a drop in pricing recently, and it now retails under MSRP in German stores. The RTX 4070 SUPER started with an MSRP of 659 Euros ($599 in the US) and is now available from 589 Euros. Its older brother, the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER, started with an MSRP listing of 889 Euros ($799 in the US) and is now retailing from 840 Euros. Lastly, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER has been listed at 1,109 Euros ($999 in the US) and is now retailing with a small discount at 1,092 Euros.

Once NVIDIA launched a new GPU generation, it became a custom for these cards to be retailed over their MSRP long before prices were adjusted and settled. However, with the latest SUPER refresh, this seems to be one of the fastest price adjustments. This could be caused by either an improvement in the supply chain or leveled supply and demand, making it so that these cards are finally trading below their launch-level MSRPs.

Speculative NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50-series "GB20X" GPU memory interface details appeared online late last week—as disclosed by the kopite7kimi social media account. The inside information aficionado—at the time—posited that the "memory interface configuration of GB20x (Blackwell) is not much different from that of AD10x (Ada Lovelace)." It was inferred that Team Green's next flagship gaming GPU (GB202) could debut with a 384-bit memory bus—kopite7kimi had "fantasized" about a potentially monstrous 512-bit spec for the "GeForce RTX 5090." A new batch of follow-up tweets—from earlier today—rips apart last week's insights. The alleged Blackwell GPU gaming lineup includes the following SKUs: GB202, GB203, GB205, GB206, GB207.

Kopite7kimi's revised thoughts point to Team Green's flagship model possessing 192 streaming multiprocessors and a 512-bit memory bus. VideoCardz decided to interact with the reliable tipster—their queries were answered promptly: "According to kopite7kimi, there's a possibility that the second-in-line GPU, named GB203, could sport half of that core count. Now the new information is that GB203 might stick to 256-bit memory bus, which would make it half of GB202 in its entirety. What this also means is that there would be no GB20x GPU with 384-bit bus." Additional speculation has NVIDIA selecting a 192-bit bus for the GB205 SKU (AKA GeForce RTX 5070). The GeForce RTX 50-series is expected to arrive later this year—industry experts are already whispering about HPC-oriented Blackwell GPUs being unveiled at next week's GTC 2024 event. A formal gaming family announcement could arrive many months later.

Stability AI, the developers behind the popular Stable Diffusion generative AI model, have run some first-party performance benchmarks for Stable Diffusion 3 using popular data-center AI GPUs, including the NVIDIA H100 "Hopper" 80 GB, A100 "Ampere" 80 GB, and Intel's Gaudi2 96 GB accelerator. Unlike the H100, which is a super-scalar CUDA+Tensor core GPU; the Gaudi2 is purpose-built to accelerate generative AI and LLMs. Stability AI published its performance findings in a blog post, which reveals that the Intel Gaudi2 96 GB is posting a roughly 56% higher performance than the H100 80 GB.

With 2 nodes, 16 accelerators, and a constant batch size of 16 per accelerator (256 in all), the Intel Gaudi2 array is able to generate 927 images per second, compared to 595 images for the H100 array, and 381 images per second for the A100 array, keeping accelerator and node counts constant. Scaling things up a notch to 32 nodes, and 256 accelerators or a batch size of 16 per accelerator (total batch size of 4,096), the Gaudi2 array is posting 12,654 images per second; or 49.4 images per-second per-device; compared to 3,992 images per second or 15.6 images per-second per-device for the older-gen A100 "Ampere" array.

Microsoft's DirectX department is scheduled to show off several innovations at this month's Game Developers Conference (GDC), although a late February preview has already spilled their DirectSR Super Resolution API's beans. Today, retail support for Shader Model 6.8 and Work Graphs has been introduced with an updated version of the company's Agility Software Development Kit. Program manager, Joshua Tucker, stated that these technologies will be showcased on-stage at GDC 2024—Shader Model 6.8 arrives with a "host of new features for shader developers, including Start Vertex/Instance Location, Wave Size Range, and Expanded Comparison Sampling." A linked supplementary article—D3D12 Work Graphs—provides an in-depth look into the cutting-edge API's underpinnings, best consumed if you have an hour or two to spare.

Tucker summarized the Work Graphs API: "(it) utilizes the full potential of your GPU. It's not just an upgrade to the existing models, but a whole new paradigm that enables more efficient, flexible, and creative game development. With Work Graphs, you can generate and schedule GPU work on the fly, without relying on the host. This means you can achieve higher performance, lower latency, and greater scalability for your games with tasks such as culling, binning, chaining of compute work, and much more." AMD and NVIDIA are offering driver support on day one. Team Red has discussed the launch of "Microsoft DirectX 12 Work Graphs 1.0 API" in a GPUOpen blog—they confirm that "a deep dive" into the API will happen during their Advanced Graphics Summit presentation. NVIDIA's Wessam Bahnassi has also discussed the significance of Work Graphs—check out his "Advancing GPU-driven rendering" article. Graham Wihlidal—of Epic Games—is excited about the latest development: "we have been advocating for something like this for a number of years, and it is very exciting to finally see the release of Work Graphs."

The first round of NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50-series "Blackwell" graphics cards that implement GDDR7 memory are rumored to come with a memory speed of 28 Gbps, according to kopite7kimi, a reliable source with NVIDIA leaks. This is despite the fact that the first GDDR7 memory chips will be capable of 32 Gbps speeds. NVIDIA will also stick with 16 Gbit densities for the GDDR7 memory chips, which means memory sizes could remain largely unchanged for the next generation; with the 28 Gbps GDDR7 memory chips providing 55% higher bandwidth over 18 Gbps GDDR6 and 33% higher bandwidth than 21 Gbps GDDR6X. It remains to be seen what memory bus widths NVIDIA chooses for its individual SKUs.

NVIDIA's decision to use 28 Gbps as its memory speeds has some precedent in recent history. The company's first GPUs to implement GDDR6, the RTX 20-series "Turing," opted for 14 Gbps speeds despite 16 Gbps GDDR6 chips being available. 28 Gbps is exactly double that speed. Future generations of GeForce RTX GPUs, or even refreshes within the RTX 50-series could see NVIDIA opt for higher memory speeds such as 32 Gbps. When the standard debuts, companies like Samsung even plan to put up fast 36 Gbps chips. Besides a generational doubling in speeds, GDDR7 is more energy-efficient as it operates at lower voltages than GDDR6. It also uses a more advanced PAM3 physical layer signaling compared to NRZ for JEDEC-standard GDDR6.

During the 2024 SIEPR Economic Summit, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang acknowledged that the company's next-generation DGX systems, designed for AI and high-performance computing workloads, will require liquid cooling due to their immense power consumption. Huang also hinted that these new systems are set to be released in the near future. The revelation comes as no surprise, given the increasing power of GPUs needed to satisfy AI and machine learning applications. As computational requirements continue to grow, so does the need for more powerful hardware. However, with great power comes great heat generation, necessitating advanced cooling solutions to maintain optimal performance and system stability. Liquid cooling has long been a staple in high-end computing systems, offering superior thermal management compared to traditional air cooling methods.

By implementing liquid cooling in the upcoming DGX systems, NVIDIA aims to push the boundaries of performance while ensuring the hardware remains reliable and efficient. Although Huang did not provide a specific release date for the new DGX systems, his statement suggests that they are on the horizon. Whether the next generation of DGX systems uses the current NVIDIA H200 or the upcoming Blackwell B100 GPU as their primary accelerator, the performance will undoubtedly be delivered. As the AI and high-performance computing landscape continues to evolve, NVIDIA's position continues to strengthen, and liquid-cooled systems will certainly play a crucial role in shaping the future of these industries.

February saw community mods bring resizable BAR support to several older platforms; and now we come across a mod that brings it to some older GPUs. The NVStrapsReBAR mod by terminatorul, which is forked out of the ReBarUEFI mod by xCurio, brings resizable BAR support to NVIDIA GeForce RTX 20-series and GTX 16-series GPUs based on the "Turing" graphics architecture. This mod is intended for power users, and can potentially brick your motherboard. NVIDIA officially implemented resizable BAR support since its RTX 30-series "Ampere" GPUs in response to AMD's Radeon RX 6000 RDNA 2 GPUs implementing the tech under the marketing name Smart Access Memory. While AMD would go on to retroactively enable the tech for even the older RX 5000 series RDNA GPUs, NVIDIA didn't do so for "Turing."

NVStrapsReBAR is a motherboard UEFI firmware mod. It modifies the way your system firmware negotiates BAR size with the GPU on boot. There are only two ways to go about modding a platform to enable resizable BAR on an unsupported platform—by modding the motherboard firmware, or the video BIOS. Signature checks by security processors in NVIDIA GPUs make the video BIOS modding route impossible for most users; thankfully motherboard firmware modding isn't as difficult. There is an extensive documentation by the author to go about using this mod. The author has tested the mod to work with "Turing" GPUs, however, it doesn't work with older NVIDIA GPUs, including "Pascal." Resizable BAR enables the CPU (software) to see video memory as a single contiguously addressable block, rather than through 256 MB apertures.

Nations have long invested in domestic infrastructure to advance their economies, control their own data and take advantage of technology opportunities in areas such as transportation, communications, commerce, entertainment and healthcare. AI, the most important technology of our time, is turbocharging innovation across every facet of society. It's expected to generate trillions of dollars in economic dividends and productivity gains. Countries are investing in sovereign AI to develop and harness such benefits on their own. Sovereign AI refers to a nation's capabilities to produce artificial intelligence using its own infrastructure, data, workforce and business networks.

Why Sovereign AI Is Important
The global imperative for nations to invest in sovereign AI capabilities has grown since the rise of generative AI, which is reshaping markets, challenging governance models, inspiring new industries and transforming others—from gaming to biopharma. It's also rewriting the nature of work, as people in many fields start using AI-powered "copilots." Sovereign AI encompasses both physical and data infrastructures. The latter includes sovereign foundation models, such as large language models, developed by local teams and trained on local datasets to promote inclusiveness with specific dialects, cultures and practices. For example, speech AI models can help preserve, promote and revitalize indigenous languages. And LLMs aren't just for teaching AIs human languages, but for writing software code, protecting consumers from financial fraud, teaching robots physical skills and much more.

NVIDIA is offering a new professional certification in generative AI to enable developers to establish technical credibility in this important domain. Generative AI is revolutionizing industries worldwide, yet there's a critical skills gap and need to uplevel employees to more fully harness the technology. Available for the first time from NVIDIA, this new professional certification enables developers, career professionals, and others to validate and showcase their generative AI skills and expertise. Our new professional certification program introduces two associate-level generative AI certifications, focusing on proficiency in large language models and multimodal workflow skills.

"Generative AI has moved to center stage as governments, industries and organizations everywhere look to harness its transformative capabilities," NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang recently said. The certification will become available starting at GTC, where in-person attendees can also access recommended training to prepare for a certification exam. "Organizations in every industry need to increase their expertise in this transformative technology," said Greg Estes, VP of developer programs at NVIDIA. "Our goals are to assist in upskilling workforces, sharpen the skills of qualified professionals, and enable individuals to demonstrate their proficiency in order to gain a competitive advantage in the job market."

Omdia, an independent analyst and consultancy firm, has bestowed the title of "Kingmaker" on NVIDIA—thanks to impressive 2023 results in the data server market. The research firm predicts very buoyant numbers for the financial year of 2024—their February Cloud and Datacenter Market snapshot/report guesstimates that Team Green's data center GPU business group has the potential to rake in $87 billion of revenue. Omdia's forecast is based on last year's numbers—Jensen & Co. managed to pull in $34 billion, courtesy of an unmatched/dominant position in the AI GPU industry sector. Analysts have estimated a 150% rise in revenues for in 2024—the majority of popular server manufacturers are reliant on NVIDIA's supply of chips. Super Micro Computer Inc. CEO—Charles Liang—disclosed that his business is experiencing strong demand for cutting-edge server equipment, but complications have slowed down production: "once we have more supply from the chip companies, from NVIDIA, we can ship more to customers."

Demand for AI inference in 2023 accounted for 40% of NVIDIA data center GPU revenue—according Omdia's expert analysis—they predict further growth this year. Team Green's comfortable AI-centric business model could expand to a greater extent—2023 market trends indicated that enterprise customers had spent less on acquiring/upgrading traditional server equipment. Instead, they prioritized the channeling of significant funds into "AI heavyweight hardware." Omdia's report discussed these shifted priorities: "This reaffirms our thesis that end users are prioritizing investment in highly configured server clusters for AI to the detriment of other projects, including delaying the refresh of older server fleets." Late February reports suggest that NVIDIA H100 GPU supply issues are largely resolved—with much improved production timeframes. Insiders at unnamed AI-oriented organizations have admitted that leadership has resorted to selling-off of excess stock. The Omdia forecast proposes—somewhat surprisingly—that H100 GPUs will continue to be "supply-constrained" throughout 2024.

HP Inc. today announced the industry's largest portfolio of AI PCs leveraging the power of AI to enhance productivity, creativity, and user experiences in hybrid work settings.

In an ever-changing hybrid work landscape, workers are still struggling with disconnection and digital fatigue. HP's 2023 Work Relationship Index reveals that only 27% of knowledge workers have a healthy relationship with work, and 83% believe it's time to redefine our relationships with work. Most employees believe AI will open new opportunities to enjoy work and make their jobs easier, but they need the right AI tools and technology to succeed.

NVIDIA and HP Inc. today announced that NVIDIA CUDA-X data processing libraries will be integrated with HP AI workstation solutions to turbocharge the data preparation and processing work that forms the foundation of generative AI development.

Built on the NVIDIA CUDA compute platform, CUDA-X libraries speed data processing for a broad range of data types, including tables, text, images and video. They include the NVIDIA RAPIDS cuDF library, which accelerates the work of the nearly 10 million data scientists using pandas software by up to 110x using an NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada Generation GPU instead of a CPU-only system, without requiring any code changes.

South Korean tech insiders believe that SK Hynix has sent "12-layer DRAM stacked HBM3E (5th generation HBM)" prototype samples to NVIDIA—according a ZDNET.co.kr article, initial examples were shipped out last month. Reports from mid-2023 suggested that Team Green had sampled 8-layer HBM3E (4th gen) units around summer time—with SK Hynix receiving approval notices soon after. Another South Korean media outlet, DealSite, reckons that NVIDIA's memory qualification process has exposed HBM yield problems across a number of manufacturers. SK Hynix, Samsung and Micron are competing fiercely on the HBM3E front—with hopes of getting their respective products attached to NVIDIA's H200 AI GPU. DigiTimes Asia proposed that SK Hynix is ready to "commence mass production of fifth-generation HBM3E" at some point this month.

SK Hynix is believed to be leading the pack—insiders believe that yield rates are good enough to pass early NVIDIA certification, and advanced 12-layer samples are expected to be approved in the near future. ZDNET reckons that SK Hynix's forward momentum has placed it an advantageous position: "(They) supplied 8-layer HBM3E samples in the second half of last year and passed recent testing. Although the official schedule has not been revealed, mass production is expected to begin as early as this month. Furthermore, SK Hynix supplied 12-layer HBM3E samples to NVIDIA last month. This sample is an extremely early version and is mainly used to establish standards and characteristics of new products. SK Hynix calls it UTV (Universal Test Vehicle)... Since Hynix has already completed the performance verification of the 8-layer HBM3E, it is expected that the 12-layer HBM3E test will not take much time." SK Hynix's Vice President recently revealed that his company's 2024 HBM production volumes for were already sold out, and leadership is already preparing innovations for 2025 and beyond.

Some of the first gaming GPUs that implement the next-generation GDDR7 memory standard, will stick to 16 Gbit memory chip densities (2 GB), according to kopite7kimi, a reliable source with NVIDIA GeForce leaks. 16 Gbit is what is standard for the current RTX 40-series graphics cards, which ensures that a GPU with 256-bit memory bus gets 16 GB of video memory; the ones with 192-bit get 12 GB; and the ones with 128-bit get 8 GB. The flagship RTX 4090 uses twelve of these chips over its 384-bit memory bus for 24 GB.

Kopite7kimi's leak could have a different connotation, that much like the RTX 30-series "Ampere" and RTX 40-series "Ada," NVIDIA might not use JEDEC-standard GDDR7 on all product segments, and might co-engineer an exclusive standard with a DRAM company with memory bus signaling and power management technologies most optimal to its graphics architecture. It co-developed the GDDR6X with Micron Technology to do exactly this. GDDR7 comes with data-rates as high as 32 Gbps, which will be the top speed for the first round of GDDR7 chips that come out toward the end of 2024, heading into 2025. The second round of GDDR7 chips slated for late-2025 going into 2026, could go as fast as 36 Gbps. This is similar to how the first GDDR6 chips were 14-16 Gbps, and the next round did 18-20 Gbps.

Gamers can now seize the day with Day Passes, available to purchase for 24-hour continuous access to powerful cloud gaming with all the benefits of a GeForce NOW Ultimate or Priority membership - no commitment required. Publisher Cygames brings its next triple-A title to the cloud. Granblue Fantasy: Relink leads eight new games joining the GeForce NOW library this week. Plus, an update for GeForce NOW Windows and macOS adds support for G-SYNC in the cloud. By pairing it with new NVIDIA Reflex support for 60 and 120 frames per second streaming options, Ultimate members can experience ultra-low-latency streaming that's nearly indistinguishable from using a local PC.

Seize the Day
Day Passes offer access to 24 hours of GeForce RTX-powered cloud gaming. Users can get all the benefits of Ultimate and Priority memberships for a day without committing to longer-term monthly memberships, and choose how and when they access the cloud. Ultimate Day Pass users can stream at either 4K 120 FPS, up to 240 FPS, or with ultrawide resolutions. Plus, they can get all the same benefits as gamers using NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 Series GPUs, with access to NVIDIA DLSS 3 and NVIDIA Reflex technologies for the smoothest gameplay and lowest latency, even on underpowered devices. Both Ultimate and Priority Day Pass users can turn RTX ON in supported games for immersive, cinematic gameplay.

The global edge artificial intelligence (AI) market is booming, which has accelerated the urgent demand for reliable, high-performance, and highly flexible edge AI inference devices. Aetina, a leading global edge AI solution provider, announces the release of its cutting-edge fanless versatile expansion edge AI systems - the AIE-PN33/43 series and AIE-PO23/33 series. These innovative systems are powered by NVIDIA Jetson Orin NX and Orin Nano modules, offering outstanding AI computing performance of up to 100 TOPS and 40 TOPS respectively, along with flexible I/O interface options. Designed to seamlessly handle the connectivity and real-time data processing needs of various sensors and devices at the edge, these solutions help empower industries worldwide to efficiently deploy an extensive range of AI applications.

According to Statista's 'Number of IoT connected devices worldwide 2019-2030' report, the number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices worldwide is forecasted to exceed 29 billion by 2030. In response to the growing number of IoT devices and the diverse I/O and storage needs of different AI applications, Aetina has unveiled a range of fanless edge AI systems. This lineup includes the AIE-PN33/43-2PSE and AIE-PN33/43-4PSE, boasting 2 or 4 sets of PSE ports respectively; the AIE-PN33/43-6USB and AIE-PO23/33-6USB, each integrating 6 sets of USB ports; and the AIE-PN33/43-3M and AIE-PO23/33-3M, equipped with 3 sets of M.2 M-Key slots. Users can choose the most suitable product model based on their specific AI application requirements, whether it involves addressing wiring challenges in wide-ranging environments like ports or traffic roadside monitoring, fulfilling multi-sensor connectivity needs for smart factory defect detection or automated production lines, or expanding storage capacity for real-time image recognition tasks. These solutions are poised to accelerate the deployment of advanced AI intelligence applications across diverse industries.

Palit, and its sister brand Gainward, announced the GeForce RTX 4060 Infinity 2, and GeForce RTX 4060 Python 2 custom design graphics cards, respectively. Both cards feature an identical board design, differing only with their badging and outer boxes. Palit and Gainward seem to sell in the same markets, so you could pick either between the two. The card features identical dimensions to the Palit RTX 4060 DUAL V1 and the Gainward RTX 4060 Ghost V1 (which at least differ with their cooler shroud design).

Both cards get the same pair of 92 mm fans with idle fan-off. So why did Palit/Gainward come up with these? Apparently, cooler shroud of the Infinity 2 and Python 2 lack an RGB LED lighting element that you find on the Palit DUAL V1 and Gainward Ghost V1. The heatsink designs are changed, too. While the Palit DUAL V2 and Gainward Ghost V2 use an aluminium fin-stack heatsink, the newer cards come with an extruded aluminium monoblock heatsink that uses a copper heatpipe to spread heat. The shroud features an S-shaped design element going around the fan intakes, Palit sees the infinity symbol, while Gainward sees a python. Both cards stick to NVIDIA-reference clock speeds for the RTX 4060, of 2460 MHz boost, and 17 Gbps (GDDR6-effective) memory. Palit and Gainward may price the Infinity 2 and Phython at at the ever-shifting baseline price for the RTX 4060, which is now nearing $250 in some places.

NVIDIA's Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) has long been the de facto standard programming interface for developing GPU-accelerated software. Over the years, NVIDIA has built an entire ecosystem around CUDA, cementing its position as the leading GPU computing and AI manufacturer. However, rivals AMD and Intel have been trying to make inroads with their own open API offerings—ROCm from AMD and oneAPI from Intel. The idea was that developers could more easily run existing CUDA code on non-NVIDIA GPUs by providing open access through translation layers. Developers had created projects like ZLUDA to translate CUDA to ROCm, and Intel's CUDA to SYCL aimed to do the same for oneAPI. However, with the release of CUDA 11.5, NVIDIA appears to have cracked down on these translation efforts by modifying its terms of use, according to developer Longhorn on X.

"You may not reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble any portion of the output generated using Software elements for the purpose of translating such output artifacts to target a non-NVIDIA platform," says the CUDA 11.5 terms of service document. The changes don't seem to be technical in nature but rather licensing restrictions. The impact remains to be seen, depending on how much code still requires translation versus running natively on each vendor's API. While CUDA gave NVIDIA a unique selling point, its supremacy has diminished as more libraries work across hardware. Still, the move could slow the adoption of AMD and Intel offerings by making it harder for developers to port existing CUDA applications. As GPU-accelerated computing grows in fields like AI, the battle for developer mindshare between NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel is heating up.

Over 500 games and applications feature RTX technologies, and barely a week goes by without new blockbuster games and incredible indie releases integrating NVIDIA DLSS, NVIDIA Reflex, and advanced ray-traced effects to deliver the definitive PC experience for GeForce RTX gamers. Following last week's launch of Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons Remake and Myth of Empires, this week we're highlighting the launch of REVEIL, Hellbreach: Vegas, and Sons Of The Forest, 3 new DLSS games. Additionally, we're showcasing the work of several screenshot pros, who've snapped jaw-dropping pics from DLSS and RTX games.

Sons Of The Forest Available Now With DLSS 2
Endnight Games' The Forest was an incredibly popular open-world survival and crafting game. Their critically acclaimed follow-up, Sons Of The Forest, recently exited Early Access with a massive content update. In Sons Of The Forest, you're sent to locate a missing billionaire on a remote island, but instead find yourself in a cannibal-infested hellscape. Craft, build, and struggle to survive, alone or with friends, in this terrifying new open-world survival horror simulator.

Simply NUC, Inc, a leading custom computing company, proudly announced the expansion of the Onyx product line with Onyx Pro, a revolutionary Mini Workstation designed to cater to diverse computing needs. Powered by the Intel Core i9 vPro "Raptor Lake" 13900H CPU, Intel IRIS Xe integrated graphics, and featuring optional graphics cards such as NVIDIA T1000, Radeon Pro WX 3200, and Intel Arc A40, the Onyx Pro redefines computing in a compact form factor.

"Introducing the Onyx Pro marks a pivotal moment for Simply NUC." said Jonny Smith, CEO of Simply NUC "Powered by Intel Core i9 vPro "Raptor Lake", it's our first product with 10G fiber (x2) and standard quad network ports. With unmatched performance, AI-readiness, and advanced networking, Onyx Pro sets a new standard for compact workstations."