AI chip leader Nvidia responds to rumors of delayed release of AI chips.
On August 4th, in response to the news of the delayed release of Nvidia AI chips, Nvidia responded to reporters by saying, "As we previously mentioned, the demand for Hopper is very strong, and sample trials of Blackwell have begun widely. Production is expected to increase in the second half of the year. Besides, we do not comment on rumors
Recently, foreign media reported that design flaws in Nvidia's AI chips could lead to a delay of three months or more in release, affecting major clients such as Meta, Google, and Microsoft, who have already ordered chips worth billions of dollars.
According to two insiders who helped produce Nvidia's new AI chip and server hardware, the release of Nvidia's new AI chip Blackwell will be delayed for three months or even longer due to design flaws.
Another source said that Nvidia issued a notice this week to Microsoft and another large cloud computing provider that its new Blackwell chip will be "delayed".
However, Morgan Stanley has expressed an optimistic view in its latest report, stating that production of Blackwell chips will only be suspended for about two weeks and can catch up with progress through TSMC's efforts in the fourth quarter of 2024.
Nvidia is currently upgrading its GPU architecture with an average update frequency of once every two years, significantly improving product performance. Nvidia released the H100 accelerator card based on the Hopper architecture in 2022. The "Blackwell" chip series was launched in March this year, with the first Blackwell chip named B200, which will be mass-produced later this year.
The new processor B200 combines two silicon chips, the same size as the company's previous products, and can handle certain AI related tasks (such as providing answers to chatbots) 30 times faster than its predecessor. It is reported that the price of each B200 chip ranges from 30000 to 40000 US dollars.
In addition to delayed product delivery, according to foreign media reports, the US Department of Justice may initiate an antitrust investigation into Nvidia, mainly involving a merger case and Nvidia's business practices. This investigation is mainly due to complaints from Nvidia's competitors that Nvidia may have abused its market dominance by "forcing" cloud computing suppliers to purchase multiple Nvidia products when selling AI chips.
The US Department of Justice is still investigating whether Nvidia will increase the price of network equipment for customers who want to purchase AI chips from its competitors such as AMD.
In addition, a merger by Nvidia has also attracted the attention of the Ministry of Justice. According to reports, lawyers from the US Department of Justice are investigating Nvidia's acquisition of Israeli AI startup Run: AI on antitrust grounds. The two companies announced the transaction at the end of April this year, but did not disclose the price. However, foreign media reported that the transaction amount was $700 million.
On August 2nd local time, Nvidia's stock price fell 1.78% to close at $107.27 per share, with a total market value of $2.64 trillion. According to Wind data, Nvidia's stock price has risen 116.64% since the beginning of this year.