NVIDIA Pushes 3D, Tablets & DirectX 11 at Computex

During NVIDIA’s pre-Computex press conference, the company reiterated both its success with recent technologies, and also stressed the importance of 3D now and in the future. To kick the conference off, the ever charismatic Jen-Hsun Huang touted the company’s recent successes, such as ION and of course Optimus, before heading into a look at the future.

The two major topics during the press conference were tablets and 3D. The former is of little surprise, as with the recent success of the iPad, tablets seem to be headed as becoming a huge part of our future. NVIDIA is hugely confident that tablets will become a huge part of our lives.

NVIDIA doesn’t believe that tablets would ever replace our regular PC’s, but it does believe that we could become increasingly reliant on them for things like media, website viewing and other things… enough to be considered “Your Most Personal Computer”. The reason for the confidence is with the fact that the entertainment industry is huge, and tablets are a perfect fit for things like magazines, books, newspapers, games, music and of course movies.

I do think that a time when tablets become an integral part of our lives is a ways off, but it could happen. Tablets are convenient, and as we’ve seen, that’s a major selling point with mobile devices.

On the 3D side of things, NVIDIA has undoubtedly shifted its train to the point where it feels 3D is essential, and if you don’t invest in the technologies now, you’re going to be missing out. At this point in time, I have a tough time believing that 3D is going to be the be all end all, based on opinions I’ve heard, but it’s hard to ignore that it has had an impact so far, and that some companies are taking it very seriously.

I can’t recall the company, but Jen-Hsun mentioned that one movie studio has even decided to produce 100% of its movies going forward in 3D. That’s what I call a vote of confidence. Also, ASUS also announced a notebook that supports 3D Vision, without the use of a corded emitter, an EeeTop PC that also supports 3D, and a gaming PC that includes three 3D-capable displays.

In addition to 3D, NVIDIA also touched on its recent Fermi (GF100) launch, specifically on the benefits of its architecture where DirectX 11 is concerned, particularly tessellation. Overall, no new products at this press conference was announced, but 3D was pushed hard, and tablets look to be the future… as far as NVIDIA is concerned, at least.