Nvidia shares down on news of competing AI chip
Jul. 17, 2017 11:39 AM ET|By: Brandy Betz, SA News Editor
Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) trades down after Fujitsu releases details about its new AI processor.
Fujitsu’s deep learning unit or DLU coprocessor has 16 DEP with each containing 8 SIMD execution units tailored for AI-related workloads.
Fujitsu says its chips provide 10x better performance than “the competition.”
Fujitsu plans to release the deep learning chips in FY18, which will compete with similar products from Nvidia and Intel.
Nvidia shares are down 1.44%.
(Doesn’t seem a game-changer to me).
2 Likes
Does the Fujitsu chip run CUDA? That is what is running in data centers around the world. You are not going to win large amounts of business by being just a little bit better or a little bit cheaper. The same problem that AMD has had with Intel all these years, and still has with Intel, and has with NVDA now as well.
There may be a niche market for a faster chip or cheaper chip, or whatever attribute to the chip, but the mass market is based on CUDA, just as the CPU market is based on x86.
Msft and ARM and QCOM are working to move PCs and servers to ARM away from x86, but still a work in progress, even after all these years.
If that happens, it could be a decent size blow to Intel’s monopoly on x86, and a boon for Qualcomm.
So CUDA is not an impenetrable shield or anything, but all things being equal, who wants to use a non-standard product in their server farm?
Tinker
10 Likes
Does the Fujitsu chip run CUDA? That is what is running in data centers around the world.
Great point, Tinker.