By Laura Kobylecky

At this 2021 online edition of CES, AMD won an Award and the CEO gave a keynote speech. It’s a big year for the company.

AMD’s “Ryzen 5000 Series desktop processors” won one of this year’s CES “Best of Innovation” Awards. The Innovation Awards are part of an annual competition “honoring outstanding design and engineering in consumer technology products.” The processor is “built on cutting edge ‘Zen 3’ technology, providing unmatched compute power and exceptional performance-per-watt thanks to its ground-breaking 7nm architecture,” according to their CES Innovation Award Profile.

2020 was perhaps one of the most productive years for AMD
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Dr. Lisa Su, President and Chief Executive Officer of AMD (Advanced Micro Devices), showed up to give the keynote speech. She spoke about how technology has been changed by the pandemic, as well as AMD’s newest projects and some of their collaborations with other companies.

Dr. Lisa Su’s presentation started with the standard “Dramatic Tech Video” of a diverse group of people using AMD technology for work and play.

Zoom users are approaching three and a half trillion minutes of meetings per year
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Her intro touches base with the current state of the world. She says that “2020 was perhaps one of our most productive years.” The increased dependence on technology in a socially-distant world accelerated “the pace of our digital transformation.” We have “transitioned to the new normal.”

One example she presents is the rise in video collaboration. She explains that “Zoom users are approaching three and a half trillion minutes of meetings per year. Cisco Webex meeting participants recently hit 600 million per month and Microsoft Teams is now supporting 115 million daily users.” This is only one example of many, but it showcases how “the pandemic has elevated technology to become an essential part of how we live, work, play and communicate.”

Naturally, this transformation has placed “significantly higher demands on our digital infrastructure.” She explains that “at the center of all this technology is high-performance computing”

Microsoft and Gaming

She brings up a live video of Panos Panay, chief product officer of Microsoft. She mentions that they have been collaborating over Microsoft Teams and so he seems very familiar to her, despite having not met in “real life” during this time. Panay talks about how he has been “learning to work differently” in a world where a meeting might include the sound of his dogs “barking in the background.”

He believes that “PC is becoming more essential.” It has expanded beyond “a productivity tool” into something that is used “to connect with other humans and people in general.” He aspires to “help tech disappear into the background,” as they move forward and “continue to push the boundaries.”

Cisco Webex meeting participants recently hit 600 million per month and Microsoft Teams is now supporting 115 million daily users
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The increased dependence on technology in a socially-distant world accelerated the pace of digital transformation as we have transitioned to the new normal
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They also discuss Microsoft’s gaming partnership with AMD. Panay states that “AMD’s momentum right now is incredible” and he describes their partnership as “two teams coming together.” AMD has created “high-performace CPUS and GPUs for the x box series x and series S.”

Another AMD innovation that will be helpful to gaming is the “AMD ryzen 5000 series mobile processors powered by our new zen 3 core.” AMD Zen 3 Ryzen 5000 “increases our lead in overall performance and energy efficiency and also delivers the best single threaded performance,” according to Su. This should lead to more powerful laptop gaming or any other creative uses.

AMD expects “more than 150 ultrathin gaming and professional notebooks powered by Ryzen 5000 series to launch this year.” The first are anticipated to go on sale in February. As a result, AMD will have “ultrathin notebooks all the way up to super computers” with extremely high levels of performance.

Lucasfilm and AMD

The next guest to appear on a video screen is Francois Chardavoine, VP of Technology at Lucasfilm. Su explains that that Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), Lucasfilm and AMD have worked together “for more than a decade” and that they were “an early adopter of AMD EPYC ThreadRipper.”

Chardavoine says that, recently, demand has been on the rise for video entertainment so “content creation is through the roof.” They have “built an entirely new studio from scratch in Sydney, Australia.” One very important part of the facility is “the render farm.” The render farm is where they have the computing “firepower that creates all of the images that you see on screen.”

The pandemic has elevated technology to become an essential part of how we live, work, play and communicate
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Software is being designed to take full advantage of processing “firepower in a way that software never has before
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The Sydney, facility will be exclusively AMD. Chardavoine explains that they chose AMD because “we just need as much firepower as possible” and “the amount of threads and cores that you have available is unprecedented and this really helps us deliver the content that we have.” He explains that current software is being designed to take full advantage of that “firepower” “in a way that software never has before.” The artists can make changes and see immediate results leading to a more “intuitive sense of what they are working on.

Overall, there’s a lot happening for this company. People are increasingly dependent on their home computer setup and that benefits companies like this. Their Innovation Award and partnerships may be good signs for their immediate future. It seems like they have an interesting year coming up and it should be exciting to see how that works out for them and what they bring to the table next year.

Tech Trends’ Digital Consultancy services offer support for companies looking to enhance brand strategy with immersive technologies such as Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Reality

Laura Kobylecky is a contributing writer to Tech Trends. She is particularly interested in new and emerging technology and culture. Connect with her on LinkedIn 

The post AMD Keynote at #CES2021 appeared first on Tech Trends.

By Laura Kobylecky

Normally, a convention like CES has a big expo hall with a variety of companies and promotional marketing techniques. This year, at online CES 2021, that has been replaced with a virtual exhibit hall. It is a section of the CES website where the exhibitors are listed alphabetically.

You can also narrow the exhibitors by category. Click on their name and you will go to a page with some basic info and whatever facts, media, and contact information they choose to provide. There is also a chat function available. Some of them have a “microsite,” a custom website they have created solely for their CES presence.

P&G LifeLab

Proctor and Gamble have taken it a step further. They created a virtual world, accessible as a microsite. It is called LifeLab. In some ways, it is the recreation of a basic experiential marketing event at a convention. There is an event “footprint,” a small area transformed into a branded space where they have demos. There are brand representatives roaming about and waiting to help or explain.

#CES2021 features a virtual exhibit hall
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When you first click on the microsite, you are offered the chance to modify your avatar. The standard is a genderless blue form in tan slacks and a black long-sleeve shirt. You enter an elevator and appear to be traveling through the void of space, except the stars are replaced by various P&G products.

You leave the elevator to enter a large white room. There you can go to other areas, like the strangely dark “Oral B” world. You walk up to videos and they show animated screens with bacteria and speak ominously about tooth decay. The audio is dimensional. As you turn to leave, the sound retreats quietly and in a spatially-correct direction.

Overall P&G's LifeLab it is an interestingly ambitious experiment in virtual experiential marketing
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On the main floor, you can speak with the representatives. If you stand still, they are likely to approach. They speak to you with real human voices and human names and you realize that these are probably actual humans. They offer to explain things to you and you can press space to speak. Or you can back away without speaking. Oddly enough, the experience seems slightly more awkward than avoiding a conversation in real life, perhaps because the room is so empty.

If you walk by other people, you can hear their conversations too. This experience is also rendered with appropriately dimensional sound. There are “private” sitting areas you can go to if you would like to speak without all ears on your conversation. There is also a chat function for those who choose not to speak.

Proctor and Gamble have created a virtual world, accessible as a micrositem called LifeLab
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If you walk to the edge of the room you see a beautiful coastal view through a giant glass wall, but you can walk no farther. It might be a lake or an ocean. How this striking coastline relates to the LifeLab remains a mystery, but it makes the strange, white, room you roam in seem more bare and stark by contrast.

Occasionally, a small group of birds flies by randomly. You hear their calls at random points throughout the hall. Their sound, like the rest, is spatially placed, to a haunting effect as their voices echo in the room. They seem as hopeless as a sparrow in a grocery store. Who are these birds and how did they become trapped in the LifeLab? The answer is a mystery, known only to the makers of this mysterious lab.

Overall, it is an interestingly ambitious experiment in virtual experiential marketing. The graphics ran smoothly and the overall layout seemed well designed. I can imagine companies seeing this as a cost-effective substitute for the live events they would normally do.

Oddly enough, the experience seems slightly more awkward than avoiding a conversation in real life, perhaps because the room is so empty
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Does it meaningfully recreate the level of engagement normally available at a convention? Probably not. However, the P&G LifeLab is an admirable attempt at engaging marketing in a socially-distant world.

Tech Trends’ Digital Consultancy services offer support for companies looking to enhance brand strategy with immersive technologies such as Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Reality

Laura Kobylecky is a contributing writer to Tech Trends. She is particularly interested in new and emerging technology and culture. Connect with her on LinkedIn 

The post Virtual Marketing at #CES2021 appeared first on Tech Trends.