Nvidia is set to open its annual developer conference, GTC 2026 (GPU Technology Conference), on the 16th local time and is expected to lay out a concrete production timeline for its "Vera Rubin" artificial intelligence (AI) chip launching this year. Details of the next-generation AI chip "Feynman" are also expected to be introduced at the event, which runs through the 19th.
"Vera Rubin" combines 36 "Vera" central processing units (CPUs) and 72 "Rubin" graphics processing units (GPUs) into a single system. Compared with the existing Blackwell product, it delivers five times the inference performance while reducing the expense per token to one-tenth. As the AI market's center of gravity shifts from "training" to "inference," the plan is to offer tailored performance.
Nvidia is said to have adopted a "dual bin" strategy that separates the supply chain by performance tiers to ensure stable supply of the "Vera Rubin" platform. The industry is also closely watching whether Nvidia will mention specific plans on this.
Performance details for the next-generation AI chip that follows Vera Rubin also appear set to be unveiled. Nvidia Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang previously called "Feynman," slated for release in 2028, "a chip the world has never seen." Nvidia is reportedly planning to equip Feynman with 8th-generation high bandwidth memory (HBM5) and apply Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC)'s 1.6-nanometer (nm; one-billionth of a meter) process to boost performance.
With Nvidia, the leader in the AI infrastructure market, set to disclose its technology development roadmap, "tech big shots" will attend in force. This year's GTC participating corporations include Adobe, Dassault Group, Dassault Systèmes, General Motors, Google DeepMind, Hugging Face, IBM Research, L'Oréal, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Siemens, Snap, Tesla and Uber.
From Korea, SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won is expected to attend GTC. Hyundai Motor, LG Display, Naver and Krafton will also give presentations. Next-generation technologies from Samsung Electronics and SK hynix, which supply HBM to Nvidia, will be introduced.
On the first day of the event, CEO Huang plans to introduce Nvidia's latest AI technologies under development in a keynote. Huang said, "All corporations will use AI, and all countries will build AI," adding, "Every element that makes up AI—energy, chips, infrastructure, models and applications—is advancing simultaneously, and at GTC you will be able to witness these changes firsthand." Nvidia said more than 30,000 people from 190 countries are attending GTC 2026.