Nvidia is one of the world’s biggest computer chip companies, best known for its line of graphics processing units or GPUs. Although the firm had its start in the world of consumer gaming, in recent years it’s grown into a true tech titan with diverse investments in self-driving cars, cloud computing, supercomputing, and artificial intelligence. The parallel processing power of Nvidia’s GPUs has proven to be particularly good at machine learning tasks, and its chips are in high demand not only from AI researchers but any business with an interest in artificial intelligence. From 2015 onwards, Nvidia’s share price grew sharply, allowing the company to make some key acquisitions, including UK chip designer ARM, which it announced it would purchase in September 2020 for $40 billion. Nvidia was founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang, who is currently the firm’s CEO. Known for his leather jackets and upbeat corporate presentations, Huang is a familiar figure to anyone interested in tech.
There was a big shock earlier this year about Huawei’s development, but Nvidia’s CEO doesn’t see it as a huge deal.
“These are just numbers. Is it really 7? Did they shrink it down to something sufficiently good that you can make a phone from? There’s no magic in these numbers. It’s just 7.”
says Nvidia’s CEO at the DealBook 2023 event. “We should try it, we should endeavor it ... but total independence of supply chain is not a real thing for a decade or two,” Jensen Huang says.
Jensen Huang is on stage at DealBook, talking about how soon we might see artificial general intelligence, or AGI. But without a clear definition, it’s a hard question to answer.
One definition is AI software being able to complete basic intelligence tests with results competitive to a “normal human.” Under that definition, Huang says AGI could come within the next five years.
The company’s Q3 2024 earnings reveal $18.12 billion in revenue for the quarter, with $14.51 billion from its data center business as the world’s AI companies jockey for Nvidia’s chips. That overall revenue number is a 206 percent jump from last year and marks a continuing growth trend for the company.
It also noted China and other areas make up 20 – 25 percent of its chip sales, which new US export restrictions will cut into soon; however, the decline should be “more than offset” by growing sales to other regions.
Bethesda has released the 1.8.86 update for Starfield, and for PC gamers with recent Nvidia graphics cards, it should be an important one since it adds support for their cards’ AI-powered upscaling.
It also has a ton of other fixes and tweaks (now you can easily eat all the food you find), but the folks at Digital Foundry tried the beta version of the patch and have more information on exactly the kind of performance bump players can expect.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has just taken the stage at Microsoft’s Ignite event to talk about how the company is partnering with Microsoft on a variety of AI projects. “Generative AI is the single most significant platform transition in computing history,” says Huang. “In the last 40 years, nothing has been this big. It’s bigger than PC, it’s bigger than mobile, and it’s gonna be bigger than the internet, by far.” Nvidia made $6 billion in pure profit earlier this year thanks to the AI boom.
If you updated to the latest Nvidia driver for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III earlier this week, you might have noticed transparency issues in Windows 10. Nvidia has now issued a hotfix driver to fix the problems and address stability issues in Alan Wake 2 and even a Blue Screen of Death crash. You can grab the new 546.08 driver over at Nvidia’s hotfix site, or simply wait on the next Game Ready driver release that will include these fixes.
The H100 GPUs have become a hot commodity with the AI boom, so I’m guessing this AWS new service will be pretty popular.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III campaign early access starts on November 2nd, and Nvidia is ready with its latest driver update. There’s DLSS 3, DLAA, and Reflex support included for MW3, alongside Nvidia Omniverse getting DLSS 3.5 support with Ray Reconstruction. You can download the latest Nvidia GPU driver right here.
1/3
Previously exclusive to Nvidia’s RTX 30 and RTX 40 series cards, the company’s RTX Video Super Resolution technique for Chrome, Edge and VLC is now adding RTX 20 cards, too.
Nvidia says version 1.5 also “improves the quality even further to avoid over smoothing and increase the level of detail and can now enhance video when played back at native resolution.” Here’s the company’s FAQ:
[nvidia.custhelp.com]
The DLSS 3.0 technique arrives today to dramatically increase perceived framerate by imagining lots of new frames, and the the speedy Naraka’s a good candidate — particularly since it already has Nvidia Reflex to soften the blow to latency. It’s part of a new GeForce driver today. AMD’s got similar tech, but also some catching up to do.
[www.nvidia.com]
AMD CEO Lisa Su on the AI revolution and competing with Nvidia
At this year’s Code Conference, the CEO of one of the world’s largest computer chip companies discusses competing with Nvidia’s leading GPU, AI regulation, and the global supply chain.
First shown at Computex in May, the ROG Matrix Platinum comes with the “industry’s first” liquid metal thermal material on the GPU’s die, which should allow for cooler temperatures and better performance when compared to using thermal paste.
It also comes with a pretty sleek design that creates a sort of lighted frame around the card. As you might’ve imagined, this GPU doesn’t come cheap — it costs $3,199.99.
GFN.ru, auto-translated:
In the current circumstances, we cannot provide the quality of service that we have established for ourselves and that our users expect and deserve.
Cloud gaming service ends October 1st. They’re promising refunds. Nvidia ceased all activities in Russia last October; both actions are presumably related to the Ukraine war. (Via Tom’s Hardware)
[gfn.ru]
Starting today, you can access several PC Game Pass titles from Nvidia’s cloud gaming service GeForce Now, including Deathloop, No Man’s Sky, Grounded, and more. You can view the whole roster of available games from Nvidia’s website.
Nvidia’s AI lead pushed it to become a $1 trillion company, while its H100 chips are so in demand they can be used as collateral even as the next-gen Nvidia GH200 sits on the horizon.
Now the New York Times describes how it’s established a monstrous lead over other chipmakers, extending a victory tour of editorial recounting Nvidia “hand-delivering processors to Elon Musk and Sam Altman,” how it started in a Denny’s, and CEO Jensen Huang’s SIGGRAPH keynote outlining its decision to focus on AI.