Nvidia (NVDA) took the wraps off a slew of new AI-centric products on Monday, as the chipmaker continues to ride the generative-AI wave.
The lineup includes a high-powered supercomputer called the Nvidia DGX GH200 and a platform called Nvidia ACE that will put generative AI to work in video game development. Nvidia also said that advertising giant WPP will use its platforms and generative AI to build a content engine for producing ads.
The announcements come after shares of the graphics chip giant skyrocketed last week on news that the company anticipated second-quarter revenue well above Wall Street’s expectations, based on the strength of its data center business.
Nvidia stock was up more than 165% year-to-date as of Friday afternoon, with the S&P 500 (^GSPC) just 9.5% higher in the same time frame. Rival chipmaker AMD (AMD) has seen a similar boost in stock price, rising 93%. But Intel (INTC) is lagging behind, with shares up just 8%.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said on a recent earnings call that he believes data center operators are looking to inject AI computing prowess into their gear. That in turn is powering a shift to graphics chips like those his company makes, and away from the central processing units that underpinned Intel's previous dominance in data centers.
According to Nvidia, its new DGX GH200 supercomputers combine 256 GH200 superchips that can act as a single graphics processing unit (GPU). The result is a system that has nearly 500 times the memory of a single one of Nvidia’s DGX A100 systems.
“Generative AI, large language models and recommender systems are the digital engines of the modern economy,” Huang said in a statement.
“DGX GH200 AI supercomputers integrate NVIDIA’s most advanced accelerated computing and networking technologies to expand the frontier of AI.”
The GH200 superchips that power the new supercomputer work by combining Nvidia’s Arm-based Grace GPU and an Nvidia H100 Tensor Core GPU in a single package.
So far Google (GOOG, GOOGL) Cloud, Facebook parent Meta (META), and Microsoft (MSFT) are among the first companies that will get access to the supercomputers, Nvidia said. The chipmaker also said it's building its own supercomputer running four DGX 200 systems at the same time to power its own research.
Nvidia is adding products against the backdrop of a massive increase in interest in generative AI that OpenAI kickstarted with the release of its ChatGPT bot last year. Since then, a wave of tech companies have released or said they're working on a generative-AI platform of their own.
Microsoft and Google are leading the pack, thanks to Microsoft’s tie up with OpenAI, and Google’s years of AI research. Meanwhile, Facebook owner Meta is building out generative AI teams, and Apple (AAPL) is staffing up for its own efforts.
Nvidia Omniverse and AI
Alongside the hardware announcement Monday, Nvidia said it has partnered with advertising giant WPP to create a content engine that uses its Omniverse technology and generative AI capabilities to help build out ad content.
The idea is to cut down on the time and price costs of producing ads by enabling WPP’s clients to lean on Nvidia’s technology.
Speaking of the Omniverse, Nvidia said electronics manufacturers such as Foxconn, Pegatron, and Wistron are using Omniverse technology to create digital twins of their factory floors, so they can get a sense of how best to lay them out before making any physical changes.
Nvidia also unveiled its ACE generative AI model for video games. The service will let game companies use generative AI for large games with multiple nonplayer characters, giving them unique lines of dialogue and ways to interact with players that would normally need to be programmed by developers individually.
As interest in generative AI has climbed, so has Nvidia’s stock price. According to analysts, Nvidia is well ahead of its chip rivals in the AI processing space. But how long that remains the case is anyone’s guess.
Daniel Howley is the tech editor at Yahoo Finance. He's been covering the tech industry since 2011. You can follow him on Twitter @DanielHowley.
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