Artificial-intelligence applications will soon receive a massive jolt of computing power. This past Monday, chip giant
Nvidia,
which has seen its shares nearly triple to over $400 on rising demand for AI, announced its new DGX GH200 AI supercomputer powered by its GH200 Grace Hopper superchips. That’s a lot of letters, numbers, and supers.
Let’s translate. In a videoconference with reporters, a Nvidia executive said the new supercomputer will enable the next generation of generative-AI applications with its bigger memory and larger-scale model capabilities. The supercomputer will have nearly 500 times the memory of Nvidia’s earlier, DGX A100 system—a massive 144 terabytes (one terabyte is a trillion bytes). This will allow developers to build better AI chatbot language models, complex recommendation algorithms, and more effective fraud detection and data analyses.
The GH200 uses two types of logic chips: central processing units, or CPUs, that act as the main computing brains for PCs and servers, and graphics processing units, or GPUs, long a Nvidia strength and essential for graphics, videogaming, and AI calculations. The DGX GH200 incorporates 256 GH200 Grace Hopper superchips, each of which has a GPU; the DGX A100 has only eight GPUs. The superchip integrates Nvidia’s “Grace” CPU and “Hopper” GPU into one package for speed and efficiency.
Nvidia said that
Alphabet,
Meta Platforms,
and
Microsoft
will be among the first companies to get access to the DGX GH200. The superchips are in production now and the supercomputer should be available by the end of the year. Nvidia didn’t say what it would cost.
Write to Tae Kim at tae.kim@barrons.com
Next Week
Monday 6/5
The Census Bureau reports factory orders, which include durable and nondurable goods, for April. Total orders are expected to increase 0.9% month over month after a 0.4% gain in March.
Gitlab
reports first-quarter fiscal-2024 earnings.
The Institute for Supply Management releases its Services Purchasing Managers’ Index for May. The consensus estimate is for a 52.1 reading, roughly even with the April data. Resilient consumers, aided by a healthy labor market, have helped the index post only one reading below the expansionary below of 50 since May of 2020.
Tuesday 6/6
Ciena,
Ferguson, and J.M. Smucker report quarterly results.
BorgWarner
hosts its 2023 investor day in New York.
The Reserve Bank of Australia announces its monetary-policy decision. Traders are pricing in a 33% chance that the central bank will raise its cash-rate target a quarter of a percentage point, to 4.1%. The RBA has raised its key interest rate 11 times since April of last year, bringing the cash-rate target from 0.1% to 3.85%.
Wednesday 6/7
Brown-Forman,
Campbell Soup,
GameStop,
and Trip.com announce earnings.
The Federal Reserve reports consumer credit data for April. In the first quarter, total consumer credit increased at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.4%, to a record $4.85 trillion. Nonrevolving credit, such as home mortgages and auto loans, rose 3.1%. Revolving credit—mostly credit-card debt—jumped 12.3%, as consumers’ excess savings from the pandemic continue to dwindle.
Thursday 6/8
DocuSign
and
Vail Resorts
hold conference calls to discuss quarterly results.
Cardinal Health
hosts an investor day in New York. The company will discuss its long-term financial outlook and growth strategies.
The Department of Labor reports initial jobless claims for the week ending on June 3. Claims averaged 229,500 in May and have normalized to historical averages after an 18-month period of being below trend. Despite this, job openings surprised Wall Street this past week by surging past the 10 million mark after two months below than that level.
The Federal Reserve releases the Financial Accounts of the United States for the first quarter. The report details the net worth of U.S. households. At the end of 2022, the net worth of households and nonprofits stood at $147.7 trillion, about $4 trillion less than the peak hit in the first quarter of 2022. With the S&P 500 up 7% in the first quarter a new high might be in sight.
Friday 6/9
NIO reports first-quarter fiscal-2023 earnings.
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