First up from Barron's, August 3:
Nvidia’s New Blackwell GPU May Be Delayed. What That Means for the Chip Maker.
A report says volume shipments of the Blackwell B200 chip would be delayed some three months.
A report Saturday said one of Nvidia ’s next generation chips will be delayed by a just-discovered design flaw. If true, a few billion dollars in revenue for the chip maker may arrive in early 2025, instead of late 2024, according to calculations from Barron’s.
Tech news site The Information, citing a couple of industry sources, said volume shipments of the Blackwell B200 chip would be delayed some three months.
The Blackwell chips are the next-generation of the artificial-intelligence acceleration chips that have made Nvidia one of the most valuable companies on the planet. Demand for the company’s current generation Hopper chips still outstrips production.
Blackwell volumes were expected to begin in October 2024. Nvidia reports on a January fiscal year, so a delay would push revenue contributions from the B200 into the April 2025 quarter.
Nvidia told Barron’s that its story hasn’t changed.
“As we’ve stated before, Hopper demand is very strong,” said a spokesperson. “Broad Blackwell sampling has started, and production is on track to ramp in 2H. Beyond that, we don’t comment on rumors.”
Tech’s biggest companies are pouring tens of billions of dollars into building data centers to run the generative-AI models that make OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini so clever. Capital spending at Google-parent Alphabet , Amazon.com , Microsoft , and Facebook -parent Meta Platforms totaled nearly $60 billion in the second quarter ended in June, up two-thirds year over year. Much of that spending is going to Nvidia.
Here’s the math on the rumored B200 delay:
The Blackwell architecture was planned to start shipping in several varieties. There are the B100 and B200 chips, with the latter more powerful and in higher demand. Then there is the GB200, which is faster still because it packages two B200s with a third processor that all share data at high bandwidth....
....MUCH MORE
And Reuters, August 3:
Delay to Nvidia's new AI chip could affect Microsoft, Google, Meta, the Information says
Design flaws could cause a delay of three months or more in the launch of chip giant Nvidia's upcoming artificial-intelligence chips, tech-focused publication the Information said on Friday.The setback could affect customers such as Meta Platforms, Alphabet's Google and Microsoft which have collectively ordered tens of billions of dollars' worth of chips, it said, citing people who help produce chip and server hardware for Nvidia.
The AI chip company unveiled its Blackwell chip series in March, succeeding its earlier flagship AI chip, the Grace Hopper Superchip, that was designed to speed generative AI applications....
