Nvidia chief says tech at ‘tipping point’

Huang unveils new platform to help tech groups build generative AI models

TAIPEI (AFP) — Nvidia chief Jensen Huang said the world was at “the tipping point of a new computer era” as he unveiled a raft of AI-related products Monday in his first public speech in four years at a Taiwan tech trade show.

The U.S. firm, which specializes in chips coveted in the artificial intelligence boom, saw its value surge to nearly $1 trillion last week, after the company’s quarterly earnings report blew past expectations.

Nvidia is known for creating graphics chips long coveted by gamers but which have become engines for the kind of complex processes involved in artificial intelligence, known as accelerated computing.

Its chips are a central ingredient to the generative AI revolution, capable of delivering the computing heft needed to churn out complex content in just seconds from data centers around the world.

In Taipei on Monday, the Taiwanese-American CEO expressed excitement to be back at the Computex forum, one of the largest trade shows for the sector.

“Our first live event in almost four years! I haven’t given a public speech in four years — wish me luck!” he said.

Huang’s two-hour presentation introduced a dizzying host of new products — including an AI supercomputer platform called DGX GH200, which he said is now “in full production.”

“We’re so excited that Google Cloud, Meta and Microsoft will be the first companies in the world to have access,” he added.

“They will be doing be doing exploratory research on the pioneering front, the boundaries of artificial intelligence, with us.”

The new supercomputer will — in theory — help the tech industry as it seeks to create more AI-related products, which require more complex computing tasks.

“This is really one of the first major times in history a new computing model has been developed and created,” he said, referring to accelerated computing.

“We have now reached the tipping point of a new computing era.”

Founded 30 years ago by Huang, Nvidia was initially a star in the video game world. The Silicon Valley-based company has since built its reputation on making graphics processing units (GPUs), which ramp up image quality and vanquish response lag time for gamers.

Its shares soared more than 25 percent Wednesday after an earnings report showed the AI trend is fueling demand for its sophisticated chips.

Nvidia to build Israeli

supercomputer

JERUSALEM (Reuters) — Nvidia said on Monday it was building Israel’s most powerful artificial intelligence (AI) supercomputer to meet soaring customer demand for AI applications.

Nvidia, the world’s most valuable listed chip company, said the cloudbased system would cost hundreds of millions of dollars and be partly operational by the end of 2023.

Gilad Shainer, a senior vice president at Nvidia, said Nvidia worked with 800 startups in Israel and tens of thousands of software engineers.

The system, called Israel-1, is expected to deliver performance of up to eight exaflops of AI computing to make it one of the world’s fastest AI supercomputers. One exaflop has the ability to perform 1 quintillion — or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 — calculations per second.

Shainer said AI was the “most important technology in our lifetime” and that to develop AI and generative AI applications large graphics processing units (GPUs) were needed.

“Generative AI is going everywhere nowadays. You need to be able to run training on large datasets,” he told Reuters, noting companies in Israel will have access to a supercomputer they don’t have today.

“This system is a large scale system that actually will enable them to do training much quicker, to build frameworks and build solutions that can tackle more complex problems.”

OpenAI’s ChatGPT, for example, was created with thousands of Nvidia GPUs.