We're certain to get some updates on the performance of Nvidia chips during today's keynote, but could we also get new ones? The Verge and The Wall Street Journal have reported that Nvidia is building two new chips, called N1 and N1X, specifically for Windows computers. These chips would fuel Nvidia's return to the consumer market, potentially in Dell and Lenovo computers. 

Nvidia's partnership with MediaTek would likely play a big role in the development of these chips. CNET's computing expert Matthew Elliott explains that these new silicon chips would be "a system-on-chip," meaning they would integrate central, graphics and neural processing units. It will be based on Arm architecture, like Apple and Qualcomm incorporate -- not the x86 architecture used by competitors AMD and Intel, which are in many Windows computers.

"Unlike high-end gaming and creator laptops with dedicated Nvidia GeForce RTX GPUs, laptops with this new Nvidia-designed, MediaTek-manufactured SoC are expected to be thin and light and long running," Elliott said.

Whether you run your AI on-device or in the cloud probably isn't something you think about often. But it should be. There are a lot of benefits to running AI models locally, and Nvidia hardware is helping make that easier for you.

CNET Managing Editor Jon Reed got a close-up look at Nvidia's Project G Assist at CES in January. It's a chatbot-like interface that runs on your device and lets you easily adjust your computer's settings by talking out loud. It's also the tech behind AI chatbot assistants Nvidia is developing for gamers.

"Complex strategy games like Total War: Pharaoh can be particularly challenging for new players to grasp, given that they often come with extensive documentation and intricate mechanics that warrant their own encyclopedias," Reed wrote. "This AI adviser, which runs on-device rather than in the cloud, can answer the player's questions about actual in-game events using the context of all that information."

On-device AI isn't perfect -- it takes up a signification portion of your device's memory, for example. But it's part of a growing movement to give developers and AI users a more secure, inexpensive and quick way to access AI tools without having to rely on AI companies and their data centers. Nvidia's chips in hardware like laptops are one way to make locally running AI easier, along with its more powerful desktop supercomputers, like the DGX Spark, that can be used by individual users and small- to medium-sized companies for more compute-intensive tasks.

If there's one thing that's absolutely taken over the AI world this year, it's OpenClaw. This viral, open-source AI agent wowed fans with its agentic AI abilities, able to complete tasks independently and run your entire digital life, if you want that. OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger appeared in a video interview with Huang, airing on the screen inside the theater at the GTC preshow. His lobster headband is a reference to OpenClaw's lobster mascot/logo.

OpenAI acquired OpenClaw quickly after it went viral, with Meta picking up its agentic AI social media spin-off, Moltbook.

CNET Social Media Manager Faith Chihil and Jacqueline Goldblatt from our sibling site PCMag are inside the SAP Center waiting for the keynote to begin at 11 a.m. PT.

CEO Jensen Huang will be speaking today about the "latest breakthroughs in AI and accelerated computing." Nvidia GTC's keynote is scheduled to begin at 11 a.m. PT (2 p.m. ET, 6 p.m. UK) on Monday, March 16. You can stream the event on YouTube.