With files from Pragya Sehgal
With the onset of the new decade, new year’s biggest trade show for new products and technologies, CES 2020, is fast approaching, and while the event has mass appeal for general consumers, the B2B market has its eyes peeled open for the latest in enterprise solutions, IoT infrastructure, and much more.
“Companies across every major industry are using technology to transform their businesses, and CES 2020 will be the global stage for the latest innovation across all sectors,” said Karen Chupka, executive vice president of CES, in a press release. “The show will represent all facets of global business where attendees can expect the unexpected.”
Hardware, lots of hardware
While we can’t put a digit on exactly what will be released, AMD has a few things that consumers are anticipating. AMD’s third-gen Ryzen CPUs are setting excellent benchmark numbers, but it still needs to address the mainstream motherboard market with a mainstream motherboard chipset. If we follow its traditional naming convention, this chipset will likely be named the AMD B550. Currently, only the enthusiast X570 motherboards are available, which makes entering into the Ryzen 3000 platform a little pricier than the competition. With that said, system builders can opt for a previous generation X470 or B450 motherboard, but since the new platforms are here anyway, it would better to purchase everything for current-gen.
The elusive 64-core Threadripper CPU may also make a debut. We’re heavily emphasizing “may” here, as AMD has yet to announce exactly when this part will drop. Its current multi-thread champion, the Threadripper 3970X, sports 32 cores / 64 threads and a whopping 128MB of L3 cache to ensure that all cores can perform at full capacity without being constrained by cache volume. Like the Ryzen 3000 processors, the third generation Threadripper CPUs are built using the TSMC’s 7nm FinFETs and its Zen 2 architecture with vastly improved infinity fabric latency.
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CES is traditionally a consumer-oriented event, but in the past few years, we’ve seen the show floor populated with enterprise solutions as well. For example, at CES 2019, AMD debuted a new Epyc data centre processor. It’s unclear if it plans on releasing any new Epyc chips this year, but do keep your eyes peeled.
AMD’s other business is in graphics. Thus far, it’s only released the Radeon RX 5700XT as its flagship card based on its shiny new Navi graphics architecture. Its performance is relatively on par with the Nvidia RTX 2070 at a lower price point. Without a product to compete against Nvidia’s top-end graphics cards, there’s a clear hole in AMD’s enthusiast segment. Knowing that AMD is still in the performance market, the tech scene has been speculating that AMD is saving its fastest graphics Navi graphics cards for 2020, and we may see a glimpse of it at CES.
Intel will also be making an appearance at CES by hosting a number of conferences and events. What it will be announcing, though, is pure speculation at this point. It may plan on revealing more details its discrete GPU slated for release in 2020, or delve more into its processor roadmap. On the mobile front, it may decide to talk more about the progress and adoption of the Project Athena notebook certification program.
Then there’s the slew of new laptop refreshes. Dell has already announced its new XPS 13 ultrabook today with even thinner bezels and up to a quad-core Intel Ice Lake processors with Iris graphics. Expect other manufacturers, HP, Lenovo, and others to follow suit.
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Dell unveils Latitude 7400 and XPS 13 – All Hands on Tech at CES 2019
While laptop PCs are likely to maintain their clamshell design, the arrival of dual and foldable displays seem imminent. Microsoft has even announced the Windows 10 X, an operating system specifically tailored to dual-displays, at its October Surface launch event to support this next evolution. Will this actually increase productivity or is it just a fad? Expect other manufacturers to tap into this well at CES as well.
CES marketplaces
In addition, the event will exhibit dedicated CES marketplaces that will shed light on the impact that technology has on specific sectors, such as the new travel and tourism space. Expanded exhibits focused on smart cities’ resilience, sports technology and digital health will also be a part of the event.
More than 300 sessions will be hosted by the CES Conference Program, which will feature top executives from United Healthcare, Lenovo Research, AARP, Samsung, Discovery, Samsung, SoftBank Robotics among others.
For a full recap of last year’s CES coverage, click here