gaming
Power

Nvidia ignores the console wars and doubles down on GPUs

PC gaming is still a huge market, and Nvidia isn't afraid to commit to it.

Nvidia ignores the console wars and doubles down on GPUs

The company's new cards will be released later this month.

Photo: Nvidia

What next-generation gaming consoles? The real action in the $160 billion video game business is on PCs.

That was Nvidia's dismissive subtext on Tuesday as the company unveiled its first major new line of consumer graphics hardware in two years. While Sony and Microsoft are yet to reveal pricing and timing details for their new game machines expected this fall, Nvidia is getting on the all-important holiday wish lists early, with specific product announcements that will make many gamers' eyes water.

In addition to announcing a new line of powerful PC graphics cards for the fall — ranging from $500 to $1,500 — Nvidia also flaunted its tight relationships with many of the largest and most popular game developers. Nvidia and Epic Games — which is locked in a high-stakes antitrust lawsuit with Apple — announced that Fortnite, Epic's flagship franchise, would soon add support for Nvidia's ray-tracing technology, which generates more realistic and immersive lighting effects. Nvidia also revealed footage of two other highly anticipated games — Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War (from Activision Blizzard) and Cyberpunk 2077 (from CD Projekt) — that will use the same technology.

PCs are the world's most popular gaming platform with about 1.5 billion players — roughly half of the 3 billion gamers worldwide. By contrast, only about 8% of gamers globally appear to be dedicated console players. That's one reason why Nvidia, the leader in PC graphics, does not appear especially chagrined that both Microsoft and Sony opted for graphics systems from AMD for their new consoles. Dedicated PC gamers will pay more for a single graphics card than console gamers pay for their entire systems.

Wearing his trademark leather jacket and standing in his home's kitchen, Jensen Huang, Nvidia's chief executive, announced that the company's new 3070 card would be released next month starting at $499, the 3080 card would be released Sept. 17 starting at $699 and the 3090 (continuing a new trend of revealing hardware from his oven, saying "Come here, papa") would arrive Sept. 24 starting at $1,499. The company said that the 3080 — which Huang called the company's new "flagship," presumably because of what it sees as a sweet-spot positioning of price and performance — delivers up to twice the horsepower of current 2080 cards, which can cost up to $1,200.

In addition to the new cards, Nvidia also revealed new software to improve the performance of older cards; enable advanced machinima storytelling; and improve video and audio streaming quality.

 Seth Schiesel

Seth Schiesel ( @SethSchiesel) is a former contributing editor for Protocol focused on the business of video games and adjacent industries. He is a former editorial writer for The Boston Globe, entrepreneur and business reporter, technology writer and video game critic for The New York Times.

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Fintech

Judge Zia Faruqui is trying to teach you crypto, one ‘SNL’ reference at a time

His decisions on major cryptocurrency cases have quoted "The Big Lebowski," "SNL," and "Dr. Strangelove." That’s because he wants you — yes, you — to read them.

The ways Zia Faruqui (right) has weighed on cases that have come before him can give lawyers clues as to what legal frameworks will pass muster.

Photo: Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via Getty Images

“Cryptocurrency and related software analytics tools are ‘The wave of the future, Dude. One hundred percent electronic.’”

That’s not a quote from "The Big Lebowski" — at least, not directly. It’s a quote from a Washington, D.C., district court memorandum opinion on the role cryptocurrency analytics tools can play in government investigations. The author is Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui.

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Veronica Irwin

Veronica Irwin (@vronirwin) is a San Francisco-based reporter at Protocol covering fintech. Previously she was at the San Francisco Examiner, covering tech from a hyper-local angle. Before that, her byline was featured in SF Weekly, The Nation, Techworker, Ms. Magazine and The Frisc.

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Enterprise

AWS CEO: The cloud isn’t just about technology

As AWS preps for its annual re:Invent conference, Adam Selipsky talks product strategy, support for hybrid environments, and the value of the cloud in uncertain economic times.

Photo: Noah Berger/Getty Images for Amazon Web Services

AWS is gearing up for re:Invent, its annual cloud computing conference where announcements this year are expected to focus on its end-to-end data strategy and delivering new industry-specific services.

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Donna Goodison

Donna Goodison (@dgoodison) is Protocol's senior reporter focusing on enterprise infrastructure technology, from the 'Big 3' cloud computing providers to data centers. She previously covered the public cloud at CRN after 15 years as a business reporter for the Boston Herald. Based in Massachusetts, she also has worked as a Boston Globe freelancer, business reporter at the Boston Business Journal and real estate reporter at Banker & Tradesman after toiling at weekly newspapers.

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Farewell from Protocol

Image: Protocol

We launched Protocol in February 2020 to cover the evolving power center of tech. It is with deep sadness that just under three years later, we are winding down the publication.

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Bennett Richardson

Bennett Richardson ( @bennettrich) is the president of Protocol. Prior to joining Protocol in 2019, Bennett was executive director of global strategic partnerships at POLITICO, where he led strategic growth efforts including POLITICO's European expansion in Brussels and POLITICO's creative agency POLITICO Focus during his six years with the company. Prior to POLITICO, Bennett was co-founder and CMO of Hinge, the mobile dating company recently acquired by Match Group. Bennett began his career in digital and social brand marketing working with major brands across tech, energy, and health care at leading marketing and communications agencies including Edelman and GMMB. Bennett is originally from Portland, Maine, and received his bachelor's degree from Colgate University.

machine learning
Enterprise

Why large enterprises struggle to find suitable platforms for MLops

As companies expand their use of AI beyond running just a few machine learning models, and as larger enterprises go from deploying hundreds of models to thousands and even millions of models, ML practitioners say that they have yet to find what they need from prepackaged MLops systems.

As companies expand their use of AI beyond running just a few machine learning models, ML practitioners say that they have yet to find what they need from prepackaged MLops systems.

Photo: artpartner-images via Getty Images

On any given day, Lily AI runs hundreds of machine learning models using computer vision and natural language processing that are customized for its retail and ecommerce clients to make website product recommendations, forecast demand, and plan merchandising. But this spring when the company was in the market for a machine learning operations platform to manage its expanding model roster, it wasn’t easy to find a suitable off-the-shelf system that could handle such a large number of models in deployment while also meeting other criteria.

Some MLops platforms are not well-suited for maintaining even more than 10 machine learning models when it comes to keeping track of data, navigating their user interfaces, or reporting capabilities, Matthew Nokleby, machine learning manager for Lily AI’s product intelligence team, told Protocol earlier this year. “The duct tape starts to show,” he said.

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Kate Kaye

Kate Kaye is an award-winning multimedia reporter digging deep and telling print, digital and audio stories. She covers AI and data for Protocol. Her reporting on AI and tech ethics issues has been published in OneZero, Fast Company, MIT Technology Review, CityLab, Ad Age and Digiday and heard on NPR. Kate is the creator of RedTailMedia.org and is the author of "Campaign '08: A Turning Point for Digital Media," a book about how the 2008 presidential campaigns used digital media and data.

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