Nvidia unveiled the B200 flagship AI chip, new AI software tools at the annual conference.

Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang kicked off his company’s annual developer conference on Monday with a series of announcements to put the chipmaker in a dominant position in the artificial intelligence industry.

On stage at a hockey arena in the heart of Silicon Valley, Huang introduced Nvidia’s latest chip, which is 30 times faster than its predecessor in some tasks.

He also detailed a new set of software tools to help developers sell. A.I More easily model companies using technology from Nvidia, whose customers include some of the world’s largest technology firms.

Nvidia’s chip and software announcements at GTC 2024 will help determine whether the company can maintain its 80 percent market share for AI chips.

“I hope you realize this is not a concert,” Huang said, wearing his signature leather jacket and joking that the day’s keynote would be full of math and science.

It was a nod to how Nvidia, once known mostly among computer gaming enthusiasts, has gained recognition on a par with tech giants like Microsoft and has become a Wall Street standout, with its sales It has more than doubled to over $60 billion in the most recent fiscal year. (Rs. 4,97,665 crore approximately).

Nvidia’s new flagship chip, called the B200, takes two square pieces of silicon the same size as the company’s previous offering and combines them into a single component.

Although the B200 “Blackwell” chip is 30 times faster at tasks such as rendering responses to chatbots, Huang did not provide specific details about how well it performs when crunching through huge amounts of data to train these chatbots. Performance — that’s the kind of work that powers much of Nvidia’s growing sales. He also did not give any details about the price.

Altogether, Huang’s announcements failed to add new fuel to a rally that has seen Nvidia shares rise 240 percent over the past 12 months, making it the third most valuable company on the U.S. stock market, only After Microsoft and Apple. Nvidia stock fell 1.4 percent in extended trading, while Super Microcomputer, which makes AI-optimized servers with Nvidia’s chips, fell 4 percent. Advanced Micro Devices stock fell about 3 percent during the keynote.

Tom Plumb, CEO and portfolio manager of Plumb Funds, whose largest holdings include Nvidia, said the Blackwell chip was not a surprise.

“But it reinforces that this company is still cutting-edge and the leader in all graphics processing. That doesn’t mean the market won’t be big enough for AMD and others to come in. But it shows That they have an edge. Very insurmountable,” Plumb said.

Nvidia said major customers including Amazon.com, Alphabet’s Google, Microsoft, OpenAI and Oracle are expected to use the new chip in the cloud computing services they sell, and in their own AI offerings. Even for

Nvidia is also moving from selling single chips to selling total systems. Its latest iteration has 72 AI chips and 36 main processors. It has a total of 600,000 parts and weighs 3,000 pounds (1,361 kg).

Many analysts expect Nvidia’s market share to decline by several percentage points in 2024 as new products from competitors enter the market and Nvidia’s biggest customers make their own chips.

“Competitors like AMD, Intel, startups, and even Big Tech’s own chip ambitions threaten to erode Nvidia’s market share, especially among cost-conscious enterprise customers,” said Insider Intelligence analyst Jason Bourne. between,” said internal intelligence analyst Jason Bourne.

While Nvidia is widely known for its hardware offerings, the company has also created a significant battery of software products.

New software tools, called microservices, improve system performance across a variety of uses, making it easier for businesses to incorporate AI models into their operations, just like a good computer operating system. Can help system apps work well.

In addition to AI software, Nvidia dived deeper into software for simulating the physical world with 3-D models. Huang also announced partnerships with design software companies Ansys, Cadence and Synopsys for work on designing cars, jets and products. Shares in all three companies rose about 3 percent in extended trading after Huang’s comments.

Huang also said Nvidia’s software will be able to stream 3-D worlds to Apple’s new Vision Pro headset.

Nvidia also introduced a new line of chips designed for cars with new capabilities to run in-vehicle chatbots. Electric vehicle makers BYD and Xpeng will both use its new chips, the company said, deepening its already extensive ties with Chinese automakers.

At the end of his keynote, Huang also outlined a new series of chips for building human-like robots, inviting several robots built using the chips to join him on stage.

© Thomson Reuters 2024

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