NVIDIA's keynote today kicked off with Linkin Park's appropriately-loud "A Light That Never Comes." We’ve been at nVidia’s GTC since yesterday, but today is the official kick-off of the GPU Technology Conference with nVidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang; Huang hosted today’s GTC Keynote – part of nVidia’s annual hype parade – to discuss advancements in GPU technology, SDKs for gaming applications, machine learning, PCIe bandwidth, and the new architecture after Maxwell (Pascal). We’ll primarily focus on the GPU technology and Pascal here – I have a full-feature article pending publication that covers all of the SDK information.

The big news is the announcement of nVidia's Pascal architecture, the architecture that will follow-up on Maxwell, Titan Z specifications, and NVLink.

Last week we visited San Francisco for GDC, the Game Developers Conference, where we interviewed AMD (content forthcoming), Intel about Devil’s Canyon, the EverQuest Next team, Clockwork Empires devs, Dreamfall Chapters devs, and more. Content is still pending publication for many of these interviews (thanks given to our hotel internet bottlenecking video uploads), but it’s time to start switching gears for GTC – the GPU Technology Conference, as hosted by nVidia.

The name is still unknown, but what will eventually become DirectX 12 should be shown off at GDC shortly; we'll be in attendance to report on the new announcements and will also be attending the GPU Technology Conference the following week, so check back for deeper analysis as we are exposed to information. In the meantime, Microsoft's new iteration of DirectX has some between-the-lines reading for AMD's Mantle.

Hey everyone - this is just a quick blog-style post for our regulars and fans. I wanted to notify you all that we will be adding to our convention coverage extensively this year, including on-site content produced from the floors of GDC (Game Developer's Conference) in San Francisco and GTC (GPU Technology Conference) in San Jose. The events will be hosted back-to-back (March 17-21 & March 24-27, respectively) and will be promptly followed-up by PAX East coverage (April 11-13).

I'll personally be at all of these events. I will be joined at GTC by our resident expert on all things programming (CUDA expert, GPU/CPU architecture expert), Jim Vincent - who often handles behind-the-scenes research and photography; Games Editor Nick Pinkerton will likely be joining me for GDC (at least in part) and will again be present at PAX East; Staff Writer Paige Spears will be joining me and Nick for PAX East, where she will get her first experience with major convention coverage.