GTC Digital Draws 25K Registration, and Growing

NVIDIA GTC, the annual live gathering of GPU enthusiasts, switched to a free digital event due to outbreak concerns and travel restrictions.

This will be a GTC event without product news, but the registration keeps growing.

"We’ve just checked the numbers and are now at 25,000 registrants and growing every day. That’s well over double our expected attendance of 10,000 at the San Jose Convention Center before the shift to digital," verified NVIDIA's press office.

The live event for GTC 2019 drew 9,000 last year. The intended site for the live event has a capacity of 11,000. In other words, if the event had not been digital, it would not be able to accommodate all the attendees.

NVIDIA automatically converts previous live event registrants to digital event attendees. For new registrants, the registration page is here.

Jensen Huang, NVIDIA CEO, decided there will be no product news at GTC Digital this year, taking place amid a virus outbreak and lock downs. Shown here is Jensen Huang from GTC 2019 during his keynote. Image courtesy of NVIDIA.

On March 16, as San Francisco Bay Area and many parts of the Silicon Valley go into lockdown to stem the outbreak, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang published a blog post, titled "GTC News Can Wait."

"We have exciting products and news to share with you. But this isn’t the right time. We’re going to hold off on sharing our GTC news for now ... This is a time to focus on our family, our friends, our community. Our employees are working from home. Many hourly workers will not need to work but they’ll all be fully paid," he wrote.

GTC Digital, set for next week, offers a robust lineup of training, demos, and podcasts, but there won't be the usual new product announcements.

Ironically, a GTC event without product news is in itself "news."