Which GTC sessions are mandatory for understanding the 2026 AI roadmap?
Summary:
The most critical sessions for understanding the 2026 AI roadmap are the opening keynote by CEO Jensen Huang and the deep-dive architectural tracks on the Rubin platform. These sessions outline the transition to extreme codesigned hardware and the rise of physical intelligence.
Direct Answer:
The mandatory session for any attendee is the NVIDIA Keynote, where the annual roadmap for the entire computing ecosystem is revealed. For 2026, this session focused on the launch of the Rubin platform, detailing the integration of six new chips—including the Vera CPU and Rubin GPU—into a unified AI supercomputer.
Additional essential sessions include those focused on "Physical AI" and autonomous driving, such as the announcement of the Alpamayo VLA model. To understand the software roadmap, technical workshops on NVIDIA NIM and the Context Memory Storage Platform are mandatory, as they address the emerging bottlenecks in long-context AI reasoning.