Nvidia's CEO Jen-Hsun Huang recently told the BBC News that the PC has lost its magic... or, at least, the PC as we've come to know it today. While he's not condemning the platform in any way, he does offer a valid point: hardware has reached a mature level, making it one of the reasons why PCs no longer amaze us as they once did. But what's the next level? Where does technology go from here?
The Nvidia CEO foresees a future where gesture recognition and computer "vision" come into play, when a PC knows that its owner is sitting in front of the screen simply by observing the user's face, the way he moves and speaks. While that may sound a bit far-fetched and ripped straight out of a science fiction movie, Huang believes it to be a possibility in the next generation.
"These kinds of capabilities are certainly within the next generation, because we have created a processor for the GPU that makes it possible to do parallel processing so much faster on a PC," he told the BBC. "We think this GPU technology is going to transform computing in a way that will bring back the magic to consumers."
Huang's lengthy interview with the BBC spans the history of Nvidia, going back seventeen years when the market was saturated with over 70 companies churning out GPUs, to the recent CES 2010 trade show where Nvidia was boasting about its latest GPU-powered movie, Avatar. But during the interview, Huang made one thing perfectly clear: even though the company is expanding into new areas, PC gaming will still be its primary focus.
