Finance Associated Press, February 9 (edited by Zhao Hao).According to a whopping nine sources, Nvidia is building a new business unit focused on designing custom chips for companies such as cloud computing, as well as advanced artificial intelligence (AI) processors.
In recent years, OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Meta and other companies have rushed to buy Nvidia's graphics processing units (GPUs) in order to compete in the AI field, bringing its market value to 17 trillion US dollars, among the "Big Seven" of US stocks.
Since Nvidia's H100 and A100 are general-purpose AI accelerators, some tech companies have started developing their own in-house chips for specific needs to reduce energy consumption and reduce costs. Nvidia sees an opportunity in this regard and is planning to play a role in helping these companies develop customized AI chips, the sources said.
Although Nvidia has not revealed**, the H100 is bound to be expensive. Greg Reichow, a partner at venture capital firm Eclipse Ventures, said that if companies want to optimize in terms of power or cost, then they shouldn't buy the generic H100 or A100 "because you just need to use their computing power." ”
According to two sources,Nvidia executives have met with representatives of Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Google and OpenAI to discuss making custom chips for them. In addition to data center chips, Nvidia is also looking for customers from the telecommunications, automotive, and gaming industries.
Alan Weckel of research firm 650 Group estimates that the market for custom chips for data centers will grow to $10 billion this year and double by 2025. Currently, the field of custom chips designed for data centers is dominated by Broadcom and Marvell.
Sources also revealed that Nvidia is in talks with telecommunications infrastructure provider Ericsson. According to Needham analyst Charles Shi, the broader custom chip market will be worth about $30 billion in 2023, accounting for about 5% of global chip annual sales.
Nvidia's foray into this space could eat into Broadcom and Marvell's share of sales. In terms of gaming, there is news that Nintendo's Switch game handheld, which is scheduled to be launched this year, may feature a custom design from Nvidia. Currently, Nintendo's Switch is powered by NVIDIA's Tegra X1 processor.
Finance Associated Press Zhao Hao).