This is actually a good idea.

Latent encoding/decoding is basically extreme, "good enough" image compression. It's a pretty old ML technique, and the models to do it can be small (eg fast-ish). A cross-platform implementation is doable.

If I were a game dev, I wouldn't overuse it, but it seems like a great way to store huge, somewhat less frequently-used textures in VRAM.

...But one thing I'm wondering is what they decode to? If its a huge bitmap (instead of a compressed texture format), that seems suboptimal. And I don't think it's decoded per pixel like BCx compression, unless I'm misremembering how it works. That granular access is kind of the point of texture compression.

What's the catch? Will CPU/GPU processing (I/O) skyrocket?

Seems pretty perf intensive for present hardware. Wonder how it will influence later designs, presume more area would go towards accelerating this.

Great, more vendor-locked solutions to problems created by them.

It really is impressive how Nvidia manages to push everyone into buying from them, by enshittifying the whole market.

That's a big reduction in VRAM usage, but how much processing power does it take to decompress the textures? It's worthless if it tanks the frame rate. The lower end GPUs that would benefit the most from this aren't going to have a lot of processing power to spare.

I really hope the competition steps up their game soon… this monopoly is cancer and nvidia gets better at tech and shittier as a company by the second. At this point only DLSS 5 seems to scratch on their invincibility cloak. Jensen needs to be brought down to earth.

Novidia will do anything but bump the vram on consumer models. CG artists be dammed.

So, nvidia, a gpu maker, invents a technology that reduces memory needs in exchange for more gpu needs. Bonus points for AI.

So finally my 4GB VRAM gpu is not gonna be useless?

Finally! An excuse for AAA studios to 10-fold game size!

Yet another AI enshittification on top of visual artists hard work.

“NTC drastically reduces VRAM usage by emulating textures, allowing for either much lower VRAM consumption or significantly enhanced material appearance, depending on the game developer's goals.”

We are just emulating textures, trust me bro.

Ah great, just what we need </s>, "AI" slop on the textures too.

-- Frost