Leaving on a Jet Plane

8 April 2016
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It’s the last day for us at the NVIDIA GPU Technology Conference (GTC) at the San Jose Convention Center. The trade show is over, the booth is in bits, and there are far too many boxes keeping me company in my hotel room. I’m off to UPS and FedEx in a few minutes and then there’s a seven hour drive back to San Diego with the demo equipment and monitors. Actually, knowing LA traffic on a Friday, that’s more likely to be a 12-hour drive, but we’ll see. Even so, I’ll still get home before Stuart who is flying back to Towcester in the UK.

Speaking of Stuart: one of the highlights of the week for me has been getting to know Stuart Heptonstall face to face. He’s our new graphics and GPGPU product manager and has been with us for around three months. Previously, we’d only interacted on conference calls. As someone who works remotely, trade shows are a great opportunity for me to develop a shorthand with someone that comes in really handy when the show is over.

Stuart’s been in the embedded computer business for a long time, but also has an interesting background that includes electronics for super computers, super yachts and super cars. He brings an interesting (i.e. super) new perspective to the company and I think you’ll see some exciting (and probably super) developments in our product strategy over the next few months as he works closely with NVIDIA to bring our customers what they need. 
If you have an opinion about what Abaco should be designing to meet your particular GPU needs, please feel free to reach out to either Stuart or myself.

In summary, it’s been a great show that’s gone by in a bit of blur. It’s been interesting to show off our kit to such a diverse crowd of engineers and computer scientists. Only a few of the attendees had seen rugged boxes like ours before and it was fun to explain to folks some of the intricacies of the mil/aero business. On top of that, those folks here that did work in the mil/aero market came by for multiple chats; we had several repeat visitors to the booth. Add in the great meetings with NVIDIA and our partners and it’s clear that GTC works for us. Rugged GPGPU is a big part of what Abaco is, but there’s still a lot to do.

With that in mind, I need to clear out these boxes, and then think about getting home. I hope you’ve enjoyed this blog. Thanks for listening.

Leaving on a Jet Plane

Nick Porter

Nick has been selling embedded computing solutions to military/aerospace customers for over 20 years. Initially working as a government research scientist and gaining a PhD in radar signal processing, Nick's move to the dark side was prompted by the promise of a company car. He soon discovered how fun it was to solve customers’ problems and to progress a scribbled whiteboard design into a real fielded program. He also likes cats.