Mellanox seem to provide network ethernet adapters, switches, networking. Things that allow data to move around data centers quickly. I don’t know anything about them.
It’s seems an… odd? acquisition for Nvidia, and really only fits (AFAIK) into their datacenter business. But it doesn’t really fit there either, unless they’re looking to provide their own datacenters.
Thats the only thing I can come up with. I’m out of Nvidia, and this news won’t make me go back to it.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-10/nvidia-is…
cheers
Greg
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Not odd at all, if you understand what Mellanox does. One of their claims to fame is the ability to (inter)connect two pieces of hardware via a VERY fast connection (InfiniBand is one of theirs) so that you can do things like:
- mirror a data write between multiple “nodes” without any perceived latency
- provide high-availability and failover between “nodes” of a system because that interconnect lets the nodes talk to each other (call it a “heartbeat” for simplicity’s sake) and know when something bad happens
- Run large scale databases across all that hardware (those multiple “nodes” with their own processors) with gobs of data flying around very quickly – at near-CPU speed in some instances
That’s not an all-inclusive list, just some real-world examples. Add in the AI/Machine Learning aspect (and others), and you start to see the future. NVIDIA’s DGX-1 AI/deep learning appliances already incorporate multiple (I think it’s 4x of) InfiniBand HCAs to allow for 400Gbit/second throughput between the DGX cluster.
Lots of storage companies (EMC, NetApp, Pure, Nutanix, etc.) use InfiniBand HCAs on their platforms for the same reason – high speed, low-latency between hardware boxes. Mellanox says “Latency as low as 0.6µs” which is pretty fast.
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Thanks for that hlygrail, appreciate the extra information.
I guess I find it odd in terms of what (I thought) Nvidia does in terms of datacenters, namely provide Tesla cards to cloud datacenters. Maybe my understanding of their current datacenter business is wrong?
This acquisition suggests that they will look to either a) create their own datacenters, b) create their own supercomputers (to be rented out?), and/or c) provide bigger building blocks to cloud-based datacenters (rackable units rather than GPU cards).
It seems a significant departure from their current lines of business.
cheers
Greg
1 Like
This acquisition suggests that they will look to either a) create their own datacenters, b) create their own supercomputers (to be rented out?), and/or c) provide bigger building blocks to cloud-based datacenters (rackable units rather than GPU cards).
It seems a significant departure from their current lines of business.
cheers
Greg
I wonder how this plays into the AIRI-type products, which I first saw get rolled out by PSTG, with a combination of ANET, NVDA, and PSTG hardware (with later versions using CSCO in place of ANET and maybe some use of NTAP in place of PSTG, but basically always with NVDA processors as the key component).
volfan84
long PSTG, ANET, & NVDA
From what little I know, I believe NVDA already provides high-tech graphical systems to various industries, such as oil drilling, aerial reconnaissance, photogrammetry, etc. Graphical systems are scaling wide, employing a lot of GPUs in parallel, necessitating high speed interconnections. With the amount of data these graphical systems produce it is not hard to see why they would need the cutting edge tech that Mellanox specializes in.
In addition, I read a while back that oil drilling, and GIS systems rely on super high resolution imagery like what NVDA can provide for exploration, mapping, vision guidance systems, etc. I don’t know for certain their specific goals for the mellanox acquisition, but I would not rule out ambitions to one day offer supercomputing cloud services to related industries. It would be a nice diversification opportunity and would open streams of recurring revenue.
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Well nice move in NVDA today, especially since they are the acquirer.
After a lot of thinking and reading on the boards and knowing that the chip sector is a notorious early stage economic mover, this bull market being long in the tooth and the overall negative earnings growth in the sector right now, I decided to bail on half my shares of NVDA.
Hopefully the stock price gets one more bump up and I’ll bail out completely.
Chip sector=wrong place, wrong time.
Chris
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Nvidia is currently selling DGX systems, complete servers with 16 fully interconnected GPUs, priced at $400,000. https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/data-center/dgx-systems/ Each of these servers comes with two Mellanox ports built in.
IMO, Nvidia just wants to control more of the hardware that they are already selling. Intel was bidding against Nvidia for Mellanox. I see this as a defensive acquisition.
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