Reporter | Lu Keyan
On January 5, 2022, CES, the world's largest consumer electronics show, opened in Las Vegas. Although the world is still shrouded in the shadow of the epidemic, and many companies have also announced the cancellation of exhibition plans due to the epidemic, as a weather vane of the electronics industry, this year's CES still has a lot to watch, and meta-universes, automatic driving, etc. are becoming new hot spots chased by many manufacturers.
CPU/GPU: The three giants are just frontal
On the eve of this CES, image processing (GPU) giant NVIDIA released two GPU products, the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti and 3050. Among them, the RTX 3090 Ti has 40 Shader TFLOPS, 78 RT TFLOPS, 320 Tensor TFLOPS performance, equipped with 24GB, 21Gbps bandwidth GDDR6X memory, known as the "new generation of card king"; RTX 3050 is an entry-level game graphics card, in addition to performance improvements, it also continues to decentralize ray tracing and DLSS and other technologies.
Image source: Nvidia
Nvidia said that in the future, there will be 160 new laptops from mainstream manufacturers such as Asus, HP, and Dell with RTX GPUs. Based on the latest generation of CPUs, these laptops come in a variety of form factors such as dual-screen, frame-mounted, convertible, and 14-inch screens, many with G-SYNC and 1440P displays.
On high-end gaming laptops, NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti and RTX 3070 Ti will also be supported by major notebook manufacturers, but the price will be more expensive. Nvidia said the RTX 3080 Ti laptop starts at $2499 and the RTX 3070 Ti laptop starts at $1499, and laptops with the two new GPUs will go on sale on Feb. 1.
Established chip company Intel also talked about graphics at this year's CES. Intel announced that its GPU product "Arc" has begun shipping, and it is expected that a number of products with Arc discrete graphics will be available.
In terms of CPU, Intel also once again faced AMD and Qualcomm, releasing the 12th generation Core Alder Lake platform, including the 45W high-performance H series, the 28W mainstream performance P series, and the U series for thin and light notebook products, with power consumption between 15W and 9W, a total of 28 products in the three series, providing up to 14 core configurations.
AMD launched a new Ryzen 6000 series mobile processor, in addition to the 6nm process, Zen 3+ architecture, there is also an RDNA 2 architecture integrated GPU, twice as fast as the previous generation, and can play most of the 3A masterpieces at 1080P resolution, with ray tracing features, more suitable for light gamers.
The heat of autonomous driving is still the same, and Sony also wants to build cars
Autonomous driving is entering the second half of mass production and commercialization. At this year's CES, companies upstream and downstream of the automotive industry chain have exhibited their newly developed autonomous driving technology.
Nvidia recently announced that it has reached cooperation with several Chinese electric vehicle manufacturers, which will use Nvidia's self-driving technology to compete with Tesla.
Intel's self-driving subsidiary Mobileye also came up with its flagship self-driving chip, EyeQ Ultra. Mobileye said that the EyeQ Ultra's computing performance of 176 trillion times per second will compete with Tesla, NVIDIA and Qualcomm in the field of high-end computing car chips.
Intel also announced that it will jointly develop a Level 4-enabled pure electric vehicle (EV) with Geely and will be available in China by 2024.
During CES, Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida announced that he would establish Sony Mobile, whose main task was to commercialize its electric vehicle business. This means that Sony will also join the army of technology companies to build cars.
At the scene, Sony presented a prototype of its Vision S concept electric vehicle, in addition to bringing a new model Sony Vision-SUV prototype. Kenichiro Yoshida said that the first priority of this SUV is safety, and a total of 40 detection sensors are installed inside and outside the vehicle to ensure the safety of drivers and passengers.
Accelerate towards the metaverse
AR/VR is a buzzword at this year's CES. Sony, Qualcomm, Panasonic and other manufacturers have made new progress in the AR/VR field.
Qualcomm announced that it is working with Microsoft to develop custom chips for AR glasses, and will also integrate AR chips with software such as Microsoft Mesh and Snapdragon SPaces XR development platforms. Panasonic said it will release three products as soon as spring, including vr-enabled headsets and microphones.
Sony here unexpectedly announced the second generation of PS VR, including 4 cameras and a controller for eye tracking infrared camera, support 4KHDR, 110 degree field of view and fixation rendering, using OLED screen, resolution of 2000 * 4000, 90 / 120 frame rate. In addition, Sony's original game Horizon: Call of the Mountains, created specifically for its PS VR2, is also coming soon.
Nvidia also announced that its metaversic creation tool Omniverse will be officially open to creators. According to reports, Omniverse will be provided free of charge to individual creators, and enterprise users will need to pay an annual fee. At the same time, Nvidia also announced a partnership with multiple technology platforms to support users to sell their own virtual content.
Laptop melee
The new laptop scuffle is a fixed drama that CES plays out every year. This year, Dell, Asus, HP, Acer, Lenovo and other major manufacturers have new products.
Dell's Alien ALIENWARE launched the brand's thinnest game book, ALIENWARE X14, which is also the first 14-inch laptop to support NVIDIA's G-Sync and Optimus technology, while the ALIENWARE m17 R5 and ALIENWARE m15 R7 are better in performance.
Alienware X14
ASUS launched the "Fearless" 2-in-1 OLED touchscreen notebook with a keyboard, body separation design, equipped with an Intel Pentium Silver N6000 processor, equipped with 4GB/8GB LPDDR4x memory, 256GB PCIe 3.0 SSD. The first launch starts at $4199.
It is worth mentioning that the notebook industry has also joined a new player - TCL. During CES, TCL released its first laptop, the TCL BOOK 14 Go, with a 14.4-inch IPS screen and an ARM-built Qualcomm Snapdragon 7C processor, priced at $349.
It is reported that LG will also release a new game OLED display at this CES, as well as a 17-inch foldable OLED display for laptops.
TV: Sony added a camera, Samsung played NFT
Following the market trend, Sony also announced that it has entered the era of quantum dot QD-OLED panel technology, its latest flagship A95K TV will provide wider viewing angles and rich color gamut, and the two Mini-LED panel TVs have added better backlight control performance.
For the first time, Sony has also added an external camera to its TV products, which can be purchased as an accessory. Although this is a technology that many Chinese manufacturers have installed on TVs, Sony said that in addition to supporting video calls, its cameras also have functions such as gesture operation and light analysis.
Samsung has released a new series of Neo QLED 4K and 8K models, supporting a smooth display of 144Hz, and another high-end TV series MicroLED model has also been updated, and will be replaced with a "bezel-less" design in 2022, which looks more like a painting hanging on the wall.
In addition, Samsung has also added NFTs to TVs, and users can use the "NFT Aggregation Platform" in Samsung MicroLED, Neo QLED and The Frame TVs to place orders for NFT works.