Computex 2023: Top Announcements at the Computer Expo
Computex 2023 marks the return of NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang as the keynote speaker after five years.
- Computex 2023 is underway in Taipei, Taiwan, which started on May 30 with a keynote by NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang on May 29 and will run through June 2.
- NVIDIA made an impression at the first in-person Computex in four years by announcing several product offerings and an important partnership. Other companies, including Arm and Asus, made multiple important product announcements.
If you’re a gadget nerd, companies have announced some of the most exciting new devices at Computex 2023. Year in and year out, original equipment manufacturers throng Taipei to introduce and showcase their respective wares. This year is no different.
What is different is that Computex 2023 is a rather exciting proposition for tech watchers, considering it is the first in-person edition of the event since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, those interested can tune in from afar as the event is live-streamed over the web.
Computex 2023 is an ongoing event that started on May 30 with a keynote by NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang on May 29 and will run through June 2. So far, industry stalwarts like NVIDIA, Arm, Asus, and others have descended to Halls 1 & 2 of the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center in Taipei, Taiwan, to publicize their latest developments.
Computex 2023 also marks the return of Huang as the keynote speaker after five years (he last spoke at Computex 2019). And while an NVIDIA executive highlighting Computex 2023 signifies the presence of new artificial intelligence hardware at the event, it doesn’t mean its competitors are sitting by idly.
Let us look at the big announcements made in the first two days of Computex 2023.
Top Announcements From Computex 2023 (So Far)
1. NVIDIA Avatar Cloud Engine (ACE) for Games
“This is the future of video games,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang proclaimed during the keynote address. “Not only will AI contribute to the rendering and the synthesis of the environment, but AI will also animate the characters.”
NVIDIA is pegging ACE as a custom AI model foundry service, or in other words, an AI-rendering engine designed to bring life to non-playable characters (NPCs). “Player interactions with NPCs still tend to be transactional, scripted, and short-lived, as dialogue options exhaust quickly, serving only to push the story forward,” NVIDIA noted in a post.
“Now, generative AI can make NPCs more intelligent by improving their conversational skills, creating persistent personalities that evolve over time, and enabling dynamic responses that are unique to the player.”
The American company developed ACE in collaboration with the Australia-based Convai.
See More: Nvidia and Intel to Leverage AI in Latest Offerings
2. WPP-NVIDIA partnership
WPP, the largest advertising company globally by revenue and fourth largest by market capitalization, has partnered with NVIDIA to generate AI-driven content for brand marketing and advertising.
NVIDIA Omniverse Cloud platform’s world simulation and 3D design collaboration capabilities are at the partnership’s core, which will be used to create a content engine for WPP clients.
This is the second partnership based on the Omniverse Cloud platform. Although different in essence, at NVIDIA GTC 2023, the company also announced a partnership with Microsoft which will serve as the cloud service provider through Azure for Omniverse Cloud.
3. Arm Cortex-X4, DSU-120, Total Compute Solutions 2023 (TSC23)
Arm, primarily an intellectual property (IP) supplier whose designs make their way into nearly all present-day smartphones and the bulk of computers, introduced new CPU and GPU designs at Computex 2023.
Arm Cortex-X4 is the fourth-generation CPU from its Cortex-X core line of CPUs and is based on the new Armv9.2 architecture. The company promises a 15% performance improvement over the Cortex-X3 (used in Qualcomm’s flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 2) and a 40% improvement in power efficiency. Arm said it is expanding its partnership with TSMC to tape out the Cortex-X4 on the TSMC N3E process.
While the Cortex-X4 is the high-powered chip from Arm, topping at 3.4GHz, the company also introduced one medium and small chip in Cortex A720 (20% more efficient than the previous one) and Cortex A520 (22% more efficient), respectively.
Based on the Cortexd-X4, Arm shared details for the new DynamIQ Shared Unit, the DSU-120, under the new Total Compute Solutions 2023 (TCS23). DSU-120 succeeds the DSU-110 CPU cluster and features up to a whopping 14 cores and larger L3 cache configuration options with 24MB and 32MB.
The 14-core CPU cluster (10 Cortex-X4 + 4 Cortex-720) is designed for high-performance laptops, while for high-end flagship smartphones, Arm has the nine-core CPU cluster (one Cortex-X4, four Cortex-A720s and four Cortex-A520) under DSU-120.
“Alongside these CPU clusters, partners have the complete freedom to innovate their own for the next generation of consumer devices. These can be developed and utilized based on various use cases and their own computing requirements,” Arm said.
Additionally, the newly announced Arm Total Compute Solutions 2023 (TSC23) is the company’s foray into provisioning the latest IP designed for high-end mobile computing solutions. An important IP under TCS23 is the Arm Immortalis-G720, its latest GPU based on the company’s fifth-generation GPU architecture, which Arm dubs “the most efficient GPU architecture that Arm has ever created.”
The Arm Immortalis-G720 offers a 15% performance improvement and 40% power efficiency. The GPU was introduced alongside Mali-G720 and Mali-G620 in TSC23.
See More: Break Down Silos To Build New Hardtech Innovations
4. Other hardware
We will skip several companies’ refresh to laptop and computing lineup and head straight to two products that caught our eye. These include Asus’ ultra-wide display and an MSI laptop powered by Intel’s new Meteor Lake processor.
Asus announced the ROG Swift OLED PG49WCD curved gaming monitor. It features a 49″ ultrawide display with a resolution of 5120 x 1440 (5K), 144 Hz refresh rate for smooth motion, 1800R curvature, 1000 nits, and capable of producing 99% of the DCI-P3 color gamut. It has a built-in graphene film, a heatsink for cooling, and a KVM switch for seamless switching between other monitors.
ASRock also introduced PG558KF, a 55” monitor with an 8K ultra HD resolution and IPS display. However, it falls short of Asus PG49WCD in brightness (750 nits) and refresh rate (60 Hz).
Additionally, MSI announced the Prestige 16 Studio/Evo, which supposedly features the latest Intel Core i7 processor. MSI didn’t spell out the processor’s name, but the underlying processor was a 16-core and 22-threaded one (as opposed to Adler Lake and Raptor Lake ones which max out at 20 threads).
What are you excited about from Computex 2023? Share your thoughts with us on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook. We’d love to hear from you!
Image source: Computex
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