First up, from Forbes, August 22:
HotChips Preview: Nvidia Scales AI Beyond The Data Center
The annual HotChips conference starts this Sunday, Aug. 24,
in San Francisco[sic]. Nvidia is scheduled to present six sessions covering topics of interest to AI data center users and operators and will make several key announcements I’ll cover in this article. (Like most AI semiconductor-related companies, Nvidia is a client of Cambrian-AI Research.)NVLink Fusion is perhaps the most fascinating topic, enabling the entire industry of CPUs and GPUs to create chips to access NVLink, the company’s secret sauce for interconnecting up to 72 accelerators and 36 CPUs in a rack. While I’m working on another article that specifically covers how Qualcomm is using NVLink Fusion to enter the data center with its super-fast Arm-based Oryon CPUs, I’ll focus here on how Nvidia is enabling AI to expand beyond a single data center, and a new 4-bit format that could significantly improve the efficiency of training AI models by as much as four-fold.
Connecting Multiple Data Data Centers for Massive AI
As older data centers struggle to grow AI due to power constraints, many are seeking a method to break through the walls and distances to connect their network of data centers, delivering on the promise of AI and growing their business. Nvidia has launched a new Ethernet card called Spectrum-XGS to enable these data centers to enter the world of giga-scale AI. This scale is needed for training large AI models but increasingly is also used for agentic AI and reasoning models. Nvidia claims this network can nearly double the performance of multi-site AI workloads....
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The big get-together is held at Stanford's Memorial Auditorium, PALO ALTO.
From the conference organizers:
Advance Program
And at Nvidia:
August 21 - Scaling AI Inference Performance and Flexibility with NVIDIA NVLink and NVLink Fusion
August 22 - Hot Topics at Hot Chips: Inference, Networking, AI Innovation at Every Scale — All Built on NVIDIA
NVLink, along with the various software offerings including CUDA are major components of Nvidia's moat (and potential targets for anti-trust investigators).
March 20, 2025 - NVIDIA GTC Financial Analyst Q&A March 19, 2024 Video and Transcript
March 25, 2024 - Reuters "Exclusive: Behind the plot to break Nvidia’s grip on AI by targeting software" (NVDA)
April 22, 2024 - Nvidia's Jensen Huang: “even when the competitors’ chips are free, it’s not cheap enough.” (NVDA)
That's quite a statement. It was made in reference to NVDA's chips and CUDA software combo pack....
September 11, 2024 - "How Nvidia Is Building A Competitive Moat To Fend Off AI Challengers" (NVDA)
One of our early Nvidia posts called out NVLink:
November 6, 2015 - "NVIDIA: “Expensive and Worth It,” Says MKM Partners" (NVDA)
We don't do much individual stock stuff on the blog but this one is special.
We use it as an example of what Silicon Valley used to be, when high tech meant high technology and not a new app for some (still) mundane task.
Simply put, NVIDIA makes some of the fastest computer chips in the world.
They are used in gaming systems that require graphics that don't make you (literally) puke. Right now automakers use their chips for graphic displays.
The future: Robocars? May 2015: "Nvidia Wants to Be the Brains Of Your Autonomous Car (NVID)":
Among the fastest processors in the business are the one's originally developed for video games and known as Graphics Processing Units or GPU's. Since Nvidia released their Tesla hardware in 2008 hobbyists (and others) have used GPU's to build personal supercomputers.
Here's Nvidias Build your Own page.
Or have your tech guy build one for you.
In addition Nvidia has very fast connectors they call NVLink.
Using a hybrid combination of IBM Central Processing Units (CPU's) and Nvidia's GPU's, all hooked together with NVIDIA's NVLink, Oak Ridge National Laboratory is building what will be the world's fastest supercomputer when it debuts in 2018.
As your kid plays Grand Theft Auto....
And more recently, May 19, 2025:
Nvidia Blog: Highlights Of Jensen Huang's Computex 2025 Keynote Address (NVDA)
And May 29, 2025:
"Energy Dept. Unveils Supercomputer That Merges With A.I." (DELL; NVDA)
I believe this is were we came in....
