Nvidia announced on Monday, that it plans to produce a cloud processor chip based on technologies from the United Kingdom’s Arm Ltd, placing it in direct competition with Intel Corp for the first time, and complicating the antitrust investigation into Nvidia’s $40 billion (roughly Rs. 300,520 crores) acquisition of Arm.
Intel remains the world’s largest manufacturer of central processors for data centre servers, but Arm-based chips are gaining ground. Nvidia will be the largest chip company to threaten Intel in its core market, with its Grace cloud processor.
After the release, Nvidia shares gained 2.6 percent, while Intel shares fell 4 percent in midday trading. Intel’s stock has increased more than 30% this year, after current CEO Pat Gelsinger detailed the company’s vision for overcoming years of manufacturing problems.
Arm’s technology is used in most tablets, but it has also been finding its way into data centres in recent years, with firms including Amazon and Ampere Computing building server chips using it.
The arrival of Nvidia into the industry could hasten Arm’s entry into data centres. Nvidia’s chips have historically been used alongside existing central processors from Intel, Advanced Micro Devices, and others as “accelerators,” offloading some processing activity from them and speeding up the overall computing machine.
For the first time, Nvidia is actively competing with Intel and AMD, by developing its own core processor. Nvidia Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang named the new server chip the “last piece of the puzzle” that will unite Nvidia’s graphics and networking chips to form the “basic building block of the digital data centre” in a keynote speech unveiling the chip.
Nvidia was once known for its graphics chips that improved video game play, but in recent years, it has concentrated extensively on artificial intelligence computing, helping its market capitalisation surpass Intel, to become the largest US Semiconductor firm.
Nvidia has announced that the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre would construct a new supercomputer called “Alps” with Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s new “Grace” processors. The computing machine, which Huang claims would be ten times faster than the world’s best supercomputer, which would be used for tasks like weather forecasting and physics analysis.
Officials from Nvidia stated that the company’s accelerator chips will continue to support central processors from Intel and AMD, even as it enters the market. Huang stated that Nvidia would shift its emphasis, focusing on accelerator chips that work with Arm processors one year, and then chips that work with AMD and Intel processors the next year.
Nvidia did not specify which Arm technology would be used for the chips, but did state that they would use computing cores from Arm’s upcoming “Neoverse” family of server chip technology. Huang claimed that the technology was “off-the-shelf” from Arm.
Rivals are concerned that Nvidia will leverage its future ownership of Arm to gain early access to Arm’s technologies, as they become more widespread in the data centre industry.
Nvidia, according to Arm, had equal rights to the intellectual property as the majority of Arm’s client base, and did not get early access to the technologies.
