Nvidia Corp., the biggest maker of chips powering graphics cards, entered the supercomputer market with a new product that speeds up artificial intelligence (AI) software and applications.
The US$129,000 computer, called the DGX-1, was built using the company’s Tesla P100 processor and will be sold to operators of data centers and companies that want to increase their machine-learning capabilities, the company said.
“This is one beast of a machine,” Nvidia CEO Huang Jen-hsun (黃仁勳) said on Tuesday at a company event. “It’s like having a data center in a box.”
He said that the new products represent a commitment to go “all in” on machine learning, an increasingly popular area of AI in which computers, and the software that controls them, can learn and improve without help from human programmers.
Under Huang, Nvidia has escaped the worst of a four-year slump in the market for personal computers by persuading video-game players to upgrade to faster machines and finding new markets for its chips in data centers, research labs and cars.
Huang said that the new P100, a board containing various chips, is the result of as much as US$3 billion of research and design spending over about three years. The graphics processing unit at the center of it is the biggest processor ever designed or made, containing 15 billion transistors, Huang said.
The P100 is in volume production and will be integrated into data centers and used as the center of new computers made by customers, including IBM Corp, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Dell Inc, he said.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”