Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang unveils flagship AI chip, the B200, aiming to extend dominance

19.03.2024 - 07:49 / tech.hindustantimes.com / Jensen Huang

Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang on Monday kicked off his company's annual developer conference with a slew of announcements designed to keep the chip maker in a dominant position in the artificial-intelligence industry.

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

He also detailed a new set of software tools to help developers sell AI models more easily to companies that use technology from Nvidia, whose customers include most of the world's biggest technology firms.

Nvidia's chip and software announcements at GTC 2024 will help determine whether the company can maintain its 80% share of the market 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 dense math and science.

It was a nod to how Nvidia, once mostly known among computer gaming enthusiasts, has earned recognition on par with tech giants like Microsoft and has become a Wall Street standout, with sales that more than doubled in its most recent fiscal year to surpass $60 billion.

Nvidia's new flagship chip, called the B200, takes two squares of silicon the size of the company's previous offering and binds them together into a single component.

While the B200 "Blackwell" chip is 30 times speedier at tasks like serving up answers from chatbots, Huang did not give specific details about how well it performs when chewing through huge amounts data to train those chatbots - which is the kind of work that has powered most of Nvidia's soaring sales. He also gave no price details.

All together, Huang's announcements failed to provide new fuel for a rally in which Nvidia's shares have surged 240% over the past 12 months, making it the U.S. stock market's third-most valuable company, behind only Microsoft and Apple. Nvidia stock dipped 1.4% in extended trade, while Super Micro Computer, which makes AI-optimized servers with Nvidia's chips, fell 4%. Advanced Micro Devices stock dipped nearly 3% during the keynote.

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

"But it reinforces that this company is still at the cutting edge and the leader in all graphics processing. That doesn't mean the market is not going to be big enough for AMD and others to come in. But it shows that their lead is pretty insurmountable," said Plumb.

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

Nvidia also is shifting from