NVIDIA Corp (NVDA.O) revealed new chips and technologies on Tuesday, claiming that they will speed up the processing of increasingly complex artificial intelligence algorithms, ratcheting up fight against other chipmakers vying for lucrative data centre contracts. The H100 chip and a new processor chip named the Grace CPU Superchip, both based on British chip firm Arm Ltd’s technology, were released by the company as specifics of new graphic chips (GPU) that will be at the basis of AI infrastructure.
It’s NVIDIA’s first Arm-based processor since the company’s deal to buy Arm fell through last month. When it goes live later this year, NVIDIA’s new supercomputer “Eos” will be the world’s fastest AI system. Data centres are becoming AI factories, processing and refining mountains of data to produce intelligence,” said NVIDIA Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang, referring to the H100 processor as the “engine” of AI infrastructure during NVIDIA’s AI developer conference online. According to NVIDIA, the new technologies will assist reduce compute times for some tasks involving AI model training from weeks to days. AI and machine learning have been used by businesses for a variety of purposes, ranging from giving recommendations for the next movie to watch on TVs and phones to discovering new drugs. “It’s evident from the recent announcements that NVIDIA is becoming a more substantial threat to Intel and AMD in the data centre and cloud computing businesses,” said TECHnalysis Research’s Bob O’Donnell, chief analyst. Intel Corp.
(INTC.O) has long been the leading manufacturer of central processors for data centres, but the lucrative and rapidly expanding market has seen more competition. However, Vlad Galabov, the head of Omdia’s cloud and data centre research practise, expressed concern about the H100 chip’s power consumption, claiming that it could limit the chip’s market attractiveness. NVIDIA’s Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress stated that the company’s market opportunity was roughly a trillion dollars, ranging from gaming to chips and systems to corporate industries, with the new processors driving AI computing forward.
NVIDIA said it plans to monetize its software business even more in the future, citing open-source software as a significant motivator for enterprises to adopt its chips. “We have already been selling software to our enterprises, and this is a couple hundred million dollars today, and we believe this is a growth opportunity for us,” Kress said, adding that the software business will help NVIDIA’s gross margins improve in the future, despite chip component shortages and supply constraints. According to Huang, software for the automobile business will be a crucial driver in the future. “Auto will be our next multibillion-dollar company,” he said.NVIDIA’s autonomous vehicle computer “Drive Orin” began shipping this month, and Chinese electric vehicle producer BYD Co Ltd (002594.SZ) and luxury electric vehicle maker Lucid Motors (LCID.O) will use it in their next-generation fleets, he added. NVIDIA’s vice president of automotive, Danny Shapiro, claimed the company has $11 billion in automotive business in the “pipeline” for the next six years, up from $8 billion last year. According to Shapiro, the expected revenue increases would come from hardware as well as increasing, recurring revenue from NVIDIA software. On the Nasdaq, NVIDIA shares fell 0.8 percent to $265.24.
