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Here we are at the NVIDIA GPU Technology Conference—or GTC—at the San Jose Convention Center. We’re registered and badged, the necessary booth folks are there, and everything works so it’s been a good day so far. We’re off to an NVIDIA networking event in an hour so that our new GPU product manager (and likely blogger later in the week) Stuart Heptonstall can meet with some key NVIDIA folks for the first time.
Abaco has been working with NVIDIA for over seven years now and we consider them a key partner in our drive to deliver state of the art equipment for rugged applications such as military and aerospace. NVIDIA’s state of the art graphics performance, their commitment to DSP through CUDA, and their exciting new work in Deep Learning and Artificial Intelligence make them of great interest to a number of our customers.
GTC is the world's largest and most important conference for GPU developers and this is my second time at the show. It’s very different from a typical mil/aero show. For example, I’ve never heard a DJ at AUSA—but I’ve been serenaded by chilled out EDM (US) all day during set-up.
I’m interested to hear what NVIDIA are announcing tomorrow at the keynote. I’m thinking additional pushes into Deep Learning and AI, Autonomous Cars, and Virtual Reality but your guess is as good as mine. The folks who know are keeping very quiet. As a big fan of last year’s movie about AI, Ex Machina, I’m intrigued and excited.
So how was set-up? Probably best described as “mostly harmless”—except for the seismic event alarm in the elevators which stopped them working for around a half hour and created some nervous glances later in the day. Somehow, a contingency plan for getting the booth gear from my seventh floor room without an elevator got missed from the planning meetings—but I’ll sort something out for next time. Stuart’s ironing skills came in handy later and I also remember giving him an earnest lecture about the importance of only putting individually wrapped candy in the candy bowl. As always, there was duct tape.
Best of all, the demo kit worked first time. As anyone who deals with demo kit a lot knows, this never happens, and I’m now even more paranoid for tomorrow. In the meantime, here’s a picture of our GigE camera mount being cute.
It was great to see Stuart and my other booth buddy Michael running off to other booths to start discussions with potential partners while I finished polishing the booth this afternoon. That’s an important reason why we’re here; we see ourselves as the leader in rugged GPU but partnership with other companies allows us to create even more value and innovation.
For another view of what we’ll be presenting at the show, please take a look at this official press release.
Everything has come together really well for the show and I’d like to thank Angie, Barry, Chris, Dan, Ian, Megan, Michael, Richard, Ross, Rubin, Stuart and Sue for their efforts. Despite being spread over around at least seven sites around the globe and having to put up with my wittering for the last 12 weeks, they’ve got us here, we’re ready and it’s show-time. More tomorrow!
