Anticipation for next year's Consumer Electronics Show is building up, and companies are starting to tease their events. Today, NVIDIA has decided to surprise us and give us a "heads up" about its upcoming event. Called "GeForce RTX: Game On", the company is going to host it as a virtual event (due to the pandemic concerns) and present new technologies. As the goal of the show, NVIDIA states that it will "unveil the latest innovations in gaming and graphics". That means only one thing - new graphics cards are incoming. With the current industry rumors pointing towards a high-end GeForce RTX 3080 Ti GPU, we can only speculate that it will be presented at the show. This launch date would contradict previous reports that this specific GPU is landing in February due to the supposed postponing. We have to wait and see what the event is about, so stay tuned on January 12th at 09:00 am PST for our coverage of the event.

Intel's chief architect and senior vice president of discrete graphics division, Mr. Raja Koduri, is said to be scheduled to present at Samsung Electronics Event day. With a presentation titled "1000X More Compute for AI by 2025", the event is called Samsung Foundry SAFE Forum. It is a global virtual conference designed to be available to everyone. So you might be wondering what is Mr. Koduri doing there. Unless you have been living under a rock, you know about Intel's struggles with node manufacturing. Specifically, the 10 nm node delays that show the company's efforts to deliver a node on time. The same is happening with the 7 nm node that also experienced significant delays.

Intel has a contract to develop an exascale supercomputer at Argonne National Laboratory, called Aurora. That supercomputer is using Intel's CPUs and the company's upcoming Xe GPUs. Since the company has problems with manufacturing and has to deliver the products (it is bound by several contracts) to its contractors and customers, it decided to look at external manufacturers for its products, specifically Xe graphics. Being that Mr. Koduri tweeted an image of him visiting Samsung Giheung Fab in Korea, and now presenting at the Samsung Foundry event, it is possible that Intel will tap Samsung's semiconductor manufacturing process for its Xe GPU efforts and that Samsung will be the contractor in charge.

After Sony has showcased Unreal Engine 5 capabilities on the new PlayStation 5 console, there was a counterpart event missing from Microsoft. However, Microsoft has announced today that the company will host a live stream event on July 23rd. That is the date when Microsoft will host the event on YouTube and Twitch. Starting at 9 am PT time, the company will showcase the capabilities of the new Xbox Series X console. Possibly, Microsoft will show ray tracing and all the latest technology advancements with AMD's RDNA2 graphics card found inside the new console. What we can expect in terms of games is Halo Infinite and maybe new Forza and Gears of War games. Either way, we have to wait and find out on July 23rd.

Every year, Oculus Connect brings together developers, content creators, marketers, and more to celebrate the VR industry's momentum and growth. In light of the evolving public health risks related to COVID-19, we've decided to shift Oculus Connect 7 to a digital format later this year.

This was a tough decision to make, but we need to prioritize the health and safety of our developer partners, employees, and everyone involved in OC7. Oculus Connect gives us an unprecedented opportunity to connect with our global developer community. OC7 will be no exception, and we look forward to sharing more details about the digital event in the coming months.

NVIDIA today announced that their yearly GPU Technology Conference (GTC) will be held online, instead of locally at the San Jose Convention Center as previously planned. The company cites Covid-19 (colloquially called Coronavirus) concerns as the root cause - the health of both its professionals and attendees is paramount for the company, and as such, an online event seems more inline with the state of the world.

In the press note, NVIDIA also said that NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang will still deliver a keynote address, which will be available exclusively by livestream. All those who registered for a GTC pass will receive a full refund. This is yet another event that has been impacted by the recent virus outbreak that has the world's economies teetering, but for the more cynical among us, it could be the beginning of a new way of doing this sorts of events: online, rather than locally, thus reducing the required investment and logistics usually associated with such.

Intel today announced to press that they've scheduled an event for December 11th. The scheduled event should take the form of a small gathering of both Intel and press professionals, where Intel will be giving insights into its thought process and technologies with some in-depth presentations for technicians and engineers from the blue giant. Intel has become more and more secluded when it comes to the workings and architecture details of its technology advances, with the company even going so far as to cancel the (previously annual) Intel Developer Forums.

The event is apparently focusing on "architecture" considerations for future Intel products, so information shared could be strung with NDAs, and could fall under any product family Intel is working on (CPU, GPU, FPGA, AI...). We'll see what Intel has to share, and what kind of details (or watercolor ideas) can be painted on any future Intel products.