Nvidia Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) came out guns ablaze at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2024, presenting a suite of advancements across its hardware, artificial intelligence, and omniverse services lines.
Here are a few highlights from the microchip giant’s high-tech showcase.
Electric vehicle automation
Li Auto, a leader in extended-range electric vehicles (EVs), has chosen Nvidia's DRIVE Thor centralised car computer for its upcoming fleets.
Nvidia also announced partnerships with GWM (Great Wall Motor), ZEEKR, and Xiaomi, all of which have adopted the Nvidia DRIVE Orin platform for their AI-powered vehicle designs
Nvidia’s DRIVE Thor technology is focused on delivering autonomous driving and parking capabilities, as well as enhanced driver and passenger monitoring.
GWM, a key player in China's new energy vehicle market, plans to base its high-end intelligent driving system, Coffee Pilot, on the DRIVE Orin platform.
ZEEKR luxury sedan, powered by Nvidia – Credit: Nvidia
Similarly, ZEEKR and Xiaomi are leveraging Nvidia's technology to enhance their EV offerings. ZEEKR's Luxury Sedan, powered by two DRIVE Orin systems, will feature an in-house-developed ADAS system, offering an unmatched driving experience.
Nvidia introduced a new line of graphics processors and software designed to run generative artificial intelligence applications on personal computers, including three models of its GeForce RTX (NYSE:RTX) 40 Super Series desktop graphics processing units.
The top-of-the-line GeForce RTX (NYSE:RTX) 4080 Super is capable of generating AI images 1.7 times faster and video 1.5 times faster than the equivalent model from the previous generation of Nvidia technology.
The RTX 4080 Graphics card – Credit: Nvidia
The new chips are also optimised for a superior gaming experience, with the ability to power games with ray tracing at 4K resolution.
Getty Images has also teamed up with Nvidia for a new generative AI offering via Getty’s iStock stock images platform.
Announced at CES on Monday, ‘Generative AI by iStock’ is billed as “an affordable and commercially safe image generation service trained on the company’s creative library of licensed, proprietary data”.
Getty used Nvidia Picasso, the tech firm’s foundry for custom AI models, to build a vast creative library comprising photos, illustrations and videos, to provide users with a commercially safe way to generate visuals.
Omniverse steps up
Brickland, WPP, ZeroLight were named as creative partners and developers for Nvidia’s Omniverse digital-twin platform.
The 3D modelling technology stack is also being used by major automobile companies including Lotus to create exact digital replicas of their manufacturing warehouses.
AI-powered NPCs
Returning to its roots as a gaming company, Nvidia unveiled the NVIDIA Avatar Cloud Engine (ACE), which for all intents and purposes, sounds like a gaming geek’s wet dream.
The new ACE microservices let developers build interactive avatars using AI models such as NVIDIA Audio2Face (A2F), which creates expressive facial animations
from audio sources, and NVIDIA Riva Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR), for building customisable multilingual speech and translation applications using
generative AI.
Essentially, ACE will allow video game developers to create non-playable characters (NPCs) that react dynamically to the player’s actions.
“Nvidia ACE opens up new possibilities for game developers by populating their worlds with lifelike digital characters while removing the need for pre-scripted dialogue, delivering greater in-game immersion,” explained Keita Iida, vice president of developer relations.
Developers embracing ACE include Charisma.AI, Convai, Inworld, miHoYo, NetEase Games, Ourpalm, Tencent, Ubisoft and UneeQ.
Share price reactions
Despite being among the best-performing megacap stocks of 2023, Nvidia’s CES appearance proved that there is still some upside left in the tank.
Shares spiked 5.5% by the end of Monday’s trading session, marking yet another all-time high.