Nvidia Accelerates AI Chip Production to Yearly Releases

Nvidia’s CEO, Jensen Huang, revealed that Nvidia will now release new AI chips every year instead of the previous two-year cycle. This decision comes after Nvidia announced higher-than-expected revenue during its quarterly earnings call.

The company’s accelerated production rhythm is set to leverage the boost they’ve received from the artificial intelligence sector. Nvidia posted a profit worth $14 billion in its first quarter, with shares trading at above $1,000. The company had released the Ampere chip in 2020, followed by a new architecture, Hopper, in 2022, and then Blackwell earlier this year.

A report published earlier this month by analyst Ming-Chi Kuo had stated that the new chip, called Rubin, should be released in 2025. The chip is expected to power R100 GPUs. Until now, tech firms training AI models were clamouring for the industry-favourite, the H100 GPU.

Huang added that the company plans to accelerate production of other chips as well. He explained that it will be easy for companies to transition seamlessly from say the Hopper to Blackwell given that the new AI chips were electrically and mechanically backward compatible and run on the same software.

However, the cost of compute and demand has forced tech companies to make their own AI chips, presenting a challenge to Nvidia’s dominance. Huang’s decision to move fast signals a need to maintain the lead in AI computing.

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