Nvidia unveils gaming chips, desktop PC to protect AI lead

Before his main pitch about technology destined for data centers, Huang offered up some advances for his traditional audience: gamers. Nvidia is launching an update to its GeForce GPUs — short for graphics processing units — which were created with the same Blackwell design that the company uses in its AI accelerators, Huang said.

New GeForce 50 series cards will take advantage of Blackwell’s capabilities to create even more realistic experiences for computer gamers, the company said. While traditional graphics chips build an image by calculating the shade of each pixel in the picture, the new technology will lean more heavily on AI to anticipate what the next frame should look like.

“GeForce allowed AI to reach the masses, and now AI is coming home to GeForce,” Huang said during the presentation.

The flagship RTX 5090 model will be available later this month for $1,999, with less powerful cards following later. The RTX 5070, costing $549, will debut in February with better performance than the prior range’s top model, the RTX 4090, Nvidia said.

As recently as 2022, gaming was Nvidia’s biggest source of sales. Now the chipmaker’s data center operation is far larger. It’s on course to contribute more than $100 billion this year, as the company’s accelerator chips are prized by the world’s largest tech companies. The next step is rolling out hardware and software to a larger swath of business and government agencies, helping diversify Nvidia’s revenue.

Huang announced that Toyota, the world’s biggest vehicle maker, is now a customer for Nvidia’s autonomous driving AI products and will use its Drive chips and software. Toyota shares in Tokyo extended gains after the announcement.

Extending AI into more of the physical world will transform industries worth $50 trillion, Nvidia said. But the move will also bring challenges. Robots and cars will require software that can handle real-life complexities in a safe way. The company has created Nvidia Cosmos to help make robots smarter and produce fully autonomous vehicles, Huang said.

Cosmos technology is able to create video from inputs such as text. That video then becomes the basis of virtual training, helping reduce dependence on expensive and time-consuming real-world experimentation. The generated video can be searched and honed so that important but infrequent events — such as a car’s encounter with an emergency vehicle — can be tested repeatedly.

Nvidia also is working with Uber Technologies Inc. to develop self-driving technology. The millions of trips that Uber handles daily will provide a trove of data for training AI models.

Mass-market carmakers are going to shift toward using one computer and operating system for their entire model lineup, rather that segmenting systems by the class of vehicle, Nvidia said. That transition will set the table for a wider use of the chip designer’s comprehensive offerings, the company believes. To speed that up, Nvidia has had its products certified by government transportation safety organizations.

Nvidia is now also offering a desktop PC called Project Digits. The company is equipping the small $3,000 device with a single Grace Blackwell Superchip – a combination of central processor and graphics semiconductor – working with a large chunk of memory and fast connectivity. The idea is to provide developers with hardware capable of running very large AI models, ones that current laptops will struggle to handle.

The new machines, developed in partnership with Taiwan’s MediaTek, will run a version of the Linux operating system and aren’t designed for everyday use. Instead, they’re meant to help AI developers work locally when either connecting to the cloud or using conventional computers isn’t practical or possible.