Nvidia Announces New Technology & An Updated GPU Roadmap

March 18th, 2015 by Trefis Team
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Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) kick-started its GPU Technology Conference by unveiling new devices, hardware and software that bring unprecedented speed, ease and power to deep learning research. Deep learning, a rapidly growing segment of artificial intelligence, is an engine of computing innovation for areas as diverse as advanced medical and pharmaceutical research to fully autonomous, self-driving cars. In sum, the company continues a brisk pace of technological advancement in new non-PC and PC markets.  Below are the key announcements made by Nvidia yesterday:

1. Titan X – Titan X is Nvidia’s new flagship GeForce gaming GPU, which is also suited for deep learning. Based on Nvidia’s Maxwell GPU architecture, Titan X delivers twice the performance and double the power efficiency of its predecessor, which was based on the Kepler architecture. [1] Titan X started selling yesterday for $999. According to AnandTech, the GPU competitive landscape right now will greatly favor Nvidia. With AMD’s high-end GPUs having last been refreshed in 2013 and with the GM204 GTX 980 already ahead of the Radeon 290X, GTX Titan X further builds on Nvidia’s lead in the GPU market. [2]

Maxwell is Nvidia’s 10th generation GPU architecture, offering twice the performance power of the Kepler architecture, which the company had touted as the most energy-efficient GPU ever built by it. Nvidia’s gaming platforms grew more than 30% year on year in Q4 2015, driven by strong uptake of the Maxwell processor and the vibrant gaming market. There are now more than 50 million PCs with GeForce Experience devices. PC gaming represents almost 40% of the worldwide gaming market, which is higher than consoles, phones, tablets or any other individual gaming segment. [3]

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2. Digits Deep Learning GPU Training System and Digits Dev Box– Digits Deep Learning GPU Training System is a software application that makes it far easier for data scientists and researchers to quickly create high-quality deep neural networks. It’s the first system of its kind to provide real-time monitoring and visualization. As a platform for this application, Digits Dev Box is a small $15,000 high-powered desk-side computing appliance with four Titan X GPUs, and is aimed at speeding up deep learning research.

3. Drive PX – Drive PX is a $1,000 self-driving car development platform which enables automakers to develop self-driving vehicles. The platform features two Tegra X1 processors said to be powerful enough to weave together data streaming in from 12 camera inputs and enable a wide range of advanced driver assistance features to run simultaneously.

Strategy Analytics expects the market for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems to be worth around $15 billion by 2016, with a CAGR of 23%. [4]  Nvidia  has been working on building its automotive computing platform for over a decade and is in a strong position to leverage this growth. The company’s automotive platforms remain on a sharp upward trajectory with over 7.5 million cars using Nvidia’s technology at present, up from 4.7 million a year ago.

The automotive segment is the fastest growing sub-segment of Nvidia’s Tegra business and offers higher gross margins (compared to devices). In Q4 2015, Nvidia’s automotive segment revenue almost doubled year on year. Automotive electronics is a large market and it is going through a transition  as cars have increased computing capability in both the drive train and the dashboard. Increasingly, dashboard functionality within cars (infotainment system, digital cluster and automatic driver assistance) are being computerized. At Nvidia’s GPU Technology Conference, Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk said that autonomous cars will become a reality in just a few years.

4. Pascal GPU Architecture – Nvidia also announced details of its next generation GPU architecture (Pascal), which will debut next year. Pascal promises to accelerate deep learning applications 10 times beyond the speed of the current-generation Maxwell processors. Nvidia provided details of its updated processor roadmap, and said that it will benefit from a billion dollars worth of refinement because of R&D done over the last three years. (Read Press Release)

Our price estimate of $23 for Nvidia is in line with the current market price.

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NVIDIA just announced that the 32GB LTE variant of the Shield is now available for pre-order. $399 buys the unlocked LTE tablet in its own right, but NVIDIA tells us that AT&T will be offering it for $299 on contract.
Notes:
  1. Nvidia Propels Deep Learning with Titan X, New DIGITS Training System and DevBox, Nvidia Blog, March 17, 2015 [↩]
  2. The Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan X Review, AnandTech, March 17, 2015 [↩]
  3. Nvidia’s CEO Discusses F3Q 2014 Results – Earnings Call Transcript, Seeking Alpha, November 7, 2013 [↩]
  4. Nvidia’s CEO Discusses F4 Q2014 Results – Earnings Call Transcript, Seeking Alpha, February 12, 2014 [↩]