Tag: nvidia

Nvidia and AI changed landscape of the chip industry, as rivals play catch-up

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This year’s artificial-intelligence boom turned the landscape of the semiconductor industry on its head, elevating Nvidia Corp. as the new king of U.S. chip companies — and putting more pressure on the newly crowned company for the year ahead.

Intel Corp.
INTC,
+2.12%,
which had long been the No. 1 chip maker in the U.S., first lost its global crown as biggest chip manufacturer to TSMC
2330,

several years ago. Now, Wall Street analysts estimate that Nvidia’s
NVDA,
-0.94%
annual revenue for its current calendar year will outpace Intel’s for the first time, making it No. 1 in the U.S. Intel is projected to see 2023 revenue of $53.9 billion, while Nvidia’s projected revenue for calendar 2023 is $56.2 billion, according to FactSet.

Even more spectacular are the projections for Nvidia’s calendar 2024: Analysts forecast revenue of $89.2 billion, a surge of 59% from 2023, and about three times higher than 2022. In contrast, Intel’s 2024 revenue is forecast to grow 13.3% to $61.1 billion. (Nvidia’s fiscal year ends at the end of January. FactSet’s data includes pro-forma estimates for calendar years.)

“It has coalesced into primarily an Nvidia-controlled market,” said Karl Freund, principal analyst at Cambrian AI Research. “Because Nvidia is capturing market share that didn’t even exist two years ago, before ChatGPT and large language models….They doubled their share of the data-center market. In 40 years, I have never seen such a dynamic in the marketplace.”

Nvidia has become the king of a sector that is adjacent to the core-processor arena dominated by Intel. Nvidia’s graphics chips, used to accelerate AI applications, reignited the data-center market with a new dynamic for Wall Street to watch.

Intel has long dominated the overall server market with its Xeon central processor unit (CPU) family, which are the heart of computer servers, just as CPUs are also the brain chips of personal computers. Five years ago, Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
AMD,
+0.90%,
Intel’s rival in PC chips, re-entered the lucrative server market after a multi-year absence, and AMD has since carved out a 23% share of the server market, according to Mercury Research, though Intel still dominates with a 76.7% share.

Graphics chips in the data center

Nowadays, however, the data-center story is all about graphics processing units (GPUs), and Nvidia’s have become favored for AI applications. GPU sales are growing at a far faster pace than the core server CPU chips.

Also read: Nvidia’s stock dubbed top pick for 2024 after monster 2023, ‘no need to overthink this.’

Nvidia was basically the entire data-center market in the third quarter, selling about $11.1 billion in chips, accompanying cards and other related hardware, according to Mercury Research, which has tracked the GPU market since 2019. The company had a stunning 99.7% share of GPU systems in the data center, excluding any devices for networking, according to Dean McCarron, Mercury’s president. The remaining 0.3% was split between Intel and AMD.

Put another way: “It’s Nvidia and everyone else,” said Stacy Rasgon, a Bernstein Research analyst.

Intel is fighting back now, seeking to reinvigorate growth in data centers and PCs, which have both been in decline after a huge boom in spending on information technology and PCs during the pandemic. This month, Intel unveiled new families of chips for both servers and PCs, designed to accelerate AI locally on the devices themselves, which could also take some of the AI compute load out of the data center.

“We are driving it into every aspect of the applications, but also every device, in the data center, the cloud, the edge of the PC as well,” Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said at the company’s New York event earlier this month.

While AI and high-performance chips are coming together to create the next generation of computing, Gelsinger said it’s also important to consider the power consumption of these technologies. “When we think about this, we also have to do it in a sustainable way. Are we going to dedicate a third, a half of all the Earth’s energy to these computing technologies? No, they must be sustainable.”

Meanwhile, AMD is directly going after both the hot GPU market and the PC market. It, too, had a big product launch this month, unveiling a new family of GPUs that were well-received on Wall Street, along with new processors for the data center and PCs. It forecast it will sell at least $2 billion in AI GPUs in their first year on the market, in a big challenge to Nvidia.

Also see: AMD’s new products represent first real threat to Nvidia’s AI dominance.

That forecast “is fine for AMD,” according to Rasgon, but it would amount to “a rounding error for Nvidia.”

“If Nvidia does $50 billion, it will be disappointing,” he added.

But AMD CEO Lisa Su might have taken a conservative approach with her forecast for the new MI300X chip family, according to Daniel Newman, principal analyst and founding partner at Futurum Research.

“That is probably a fraction of what she has seen out there,” he said. “She is starting to see a robust market for GPUs that are not Nvidia…We need competition, we need supply.” He noted that it is early days and the window is still open for new developments in building AI ecosystems.

Cambrian’s Freund noted that it took AMD about four to five years to gain 20% of the data-center CPU market, making Nvidia’s stunning growth in GPUs for the data center even more remarkable.

“AI, and in particularly data-center GPU-based AI, has resulted in the largest and most rapid changes in the history of the GPU market,” said McCarron of Mercury, in an email. “[AI] is clearly impacting conventional server CPUs as well, though the long-term impacts on CPUs still remain to be seen, given how new the recent increase in AI activity is.”

The ARMs race

Another development that will further shape the computing hardware landscape is the rise of a competitive architecture to x86, known as reduced instruction set computing (RISC). In the past, RISC has mostly made inroads in the computing landscape in mobile phones, tablets and embedded systems dedicated to a single task, through the chip designs of ARM Holdings Plc
ARM,
+0.81%
and Qualcomm Inc.
QCOM,
+1.12%.

Nvidia tried to buy ARM for $40 billion last year, but the deal did not win regulatory approval. Instead, ARM went public earlier this year, and it has been promoting its architecture as a low-power-consuming option for AI applications. Nvidia has worked for years with ARM. Its ARM-based CPU called Grace, which is paired with its Hopper GPU in the “Grace-Hopper” AI accelerator, is used in high-performance servers and supercomputers. But these chips are still often paired with x86 CPUs from Intel or AMD in systems, noted Kevin Krewell, an analyst at Tirias Research.

“The ARM architecture has power-efficiency advantages over x86 due to a more modern instruction set, simpler CPU core designs and less legacy overhead,” Krewell said in an email. “The x86 processors can close the gap between ARM in power and core counts. That said, there’s no limit to running applications on the ARM architecture other than x86 legacy software.”

Until recently, ARM RISC-based systems have only had a fractional share of the server market. But now an open-source version of RISC, albeit about 10 years old, called RISC-V, is capturing the attention of both big internet and social-media companies, as well as startups. Power consumption has become a major issue in data centers, and AI accelerators use incredible amounts of energy, so companies are looking for alternatives to save on power usage.

Estimates for ARM’s share of the data center vary slightly, ranging from about 8%, according to Mercury Research, to about 10% according to IDC. ARM’s growing presence “is not necessarily trivial anymore,” Rasgon said.

“ARM CPUs are gaining share rapidly, but most of these are in-house CPUs (e.g. Amazon’s Graviton) rather than products sold on the open market,” McCarron said. Amazon’s
AMZN,
-0.18%
 Graviton processor family, first offered in 2018, is optimized to run cloud workloads at Amazon’s Web Services business. Alphabet Inc.
GOOG,
+0.66%

GOOGL,
+0.63%
also is developing its own custom ARM-based CPUs, codenamed Maple and Cypress, for use in its Google Cloud business according to a report earlier this year by the Information.

“Google has an ARM CPU, Microsoft has an ARM CPU, everyone has an ARM CPU,” said Freund. “In three years, I think everyone will also have a RISC-V CPU….It it is much more flexible than an ARM.”

In addition, some AI chip and system startups are designing around RISC-V, such as Tenstorrent Inc., a startup co-founded by well-regarded chip designer Jim Keller, who has also worked at AMD, Apple Inc.
AAPL,
+0.54%,
Tesla Inc.
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+2.04%
and Intel.

See: These chip startups hope to challenge Nvidia but it will take some time.

Opportunity for the AI PC

Like Intel, Qualcomm has also launched an entire product line around the personal computer, a brand-new endeavor for the company best known for its mobile processors. It cited the opportunity and need to bring AI processing to local devices, or the so-called edge.

In October, it said it is entering the PC business, dominated by Intel’s x86 architecture, with its own version of the ARM architecture called Snapdragon X Elite platform. It has designed its new processors specifically for the PC market, where it said its lower power consumption and far faster processing are going to be a huge hit with business users and consumers, especially those doing AI applications.

“We have had a legacy of coming in from a point where power is super important,” said Kedar Kondap, Qualcomm’s senior vice president and general manager of compute and gaming, in a recent interview. “We feel like we can leverage that legacy and bring it into PCs. PCs haven’t seen innovation for a while.”

Software could be an issue, but Qualcomm has also partnered with Microsoft for emulation software, and it trotted out many PC vendors, with plans for its PCs to be ready to tackle computing and AI challenges in the second half of 2024.

“When you run stuff on a device, it is secure, faster, cheaper, because every search today is faster. Where the future of AI is headed, it will be on the device,” Kondap said. Indeed, at its chip launch earlier in this month, Intel quoted Boston Consulting Group, which forecast that by 2028, AI-capable PCs will comprise 80% of the PC market..

All these different changes in products will bring new challenges to leaders like Nvidia and Intel in their respective arenas. Investors are also slightly nervous about Nvidia’s ability to keep up its current growth pace, but last quarter Nvidia talked about new and expanding markets, including countries and governments with complex regulatory requirements.

“It’s a fun market,” Freund said.

And investors should be prepared for more technology shifts in the year ahead, with more competition and new entrants poised to take some share — even if it starts out small — away from the leaders.

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This Nvidia Cofounder Could Have Been Worth $70 Billion. Instead He Lives Off The Grid

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If Curtis Priem, Nvidia’s first CTO, had held onto all his stock, he’d be the 16th richest person in America. Instead, he sold out years ago and gave most of his fortune to his alma mater Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

By Phoebe Liu, Forbes Staff

Curtis Priem wanders across a wooden stage before coming to a standstill a few feet right of center. It’s one of the “acoustic sweet spots” in the 1,165-seat Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute concert hall that the Nvidia cofounder donated $40 million to construct between 2003 and 2008. Bathed in warm stage lights, Priem, 64 and dressed in suit and red tie, gestures toward the thousands of uniquely curved wood panels lining the walls and tightly-woven fabric specifically tuned for air permeability and mass on the ceiling—all built for ideal acoustics. “This is the most technically advanced performance space in the world,” the electrical engineer beams, describing the Troy, NY, venue that is named after him: the Curtis Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center.

It’s part of a much bigger commitment to his alma mater that most recently includes helping it become the first university in the world to house an IBM Quantum System One computer. Expected to be operational by next spring, it will be the cornerstone of a new computational center that will hopefully help RPI and the surrounding area attract top talent.

Since 2001, Priem has given $275 million to RPI, accounting for 40% of RPI’s total gifts during that period, and he’s pledged approximately $80 million more. Only half that amount has ever been publicly acknowledged as gifts from Priem. An anonymous pledge of $360 million was announced by RPI in 2001 around the time Priem started giving, but neither he nor the school would comment on whether he is the donor.

What’s even less known is Priem’s own story. An inventor who has almost 200 patents, he helped design the first graphics processor ever for PCs in the early 1980s and later cofounded semiconductor firm Nvidia, where he spent a decade working as its first chief technology officer.

Following Nvidia’s 1999 IPO, he transferred most of his shares to a charitable foundation, after deciding it was an “excessive amount of money” to hold onto. A few years later he left the company, in part due to a highly litigious first marriage that ended in divorce and domestic violence allegations against his ex-wife. By 2006 he’d sold off his remaining shares. Had he held onto his entire stake, he’d be worth $70 billion. Instead, Forbes estimates that Priem has a fortune that’s closer to $30 million, just over one tenth of what he’s given to RPI.

That includes a $6 million home near Fremont, California where he lives off the grid with unreliable cell service and writes “manifestos” filled with equations about how to solve world problems like “repairing the earth.” (None have been published anywhere). He says he often communicates by giving out unique email addresses—sixteen-digit strings of numbers including one given to this Forbes reporter, as a way of avoiding spam (he says he hasn’t gotten any since 2000). He also owns a Gulfstream G450 private jet, named Snoopy, that he bought in 2021 and now uses to fly to RPI four times a year.

In an interview on RPI’s campus in the historically blue-collar town of Troy, NY, Priem opens up about his donations, why he left Nvidia and a few regrets. “I did a little crazy thing, and I wish I’d kept a little bit more [Nvidia shares],” admits Priem, who says he still thinks of Nvidia twice a day—when he puts on and takes off his Omega Speedmaster X-33 Mars watch, the same model worn by Thunderbirds and Space Shuttle astronauts; it was a gift from Nvidia on his fifth company anniversary. For him, RPI has become the place not only to put his money but also to find meaning and solace. “Hell was happening for me on the outside, and [RPI] was actually my retreat,” says Priem of his work with RPI, where he has served on the board of trustees since 2003. “It became my purpose and my sanity.”

Priem chose RPI over the better-known Massachusetts Institute of Technology thanks in part to it having a fancy IBM computer he wanted to use. It turned out to be an ideal place for Priem, who had always been interested in the intersection of technology and the arts. In high school, after moving “all over the east coast” as a child, his family settled outside Cleveland, where Priem took cello lessons with the Cleveland Orchestra’s Donald White, the first Black musician to play in a major orchestra, and spent two summers at an intensive camp for classical musicians in North Carolina. He also played the trombone. At RPI, he played cello in its orchestra all four years, and credits much of his creativity in the electronics industry and his work at RPI to his musician upbringing. “To perform, you have to practice, right? And you have to be creative,” Priem says. “So I started applying that to electronics and computer science.”

He graduated from RPI with a degree in electrical and computer engineering in 1982, and went to work as a staff engineer for PC company Vermont Microsystems, followed by a stint as a hardware engineer at electronic test equipment firm GenRad. He later moved to California to work at Sun Microsystems for seven years.

The idea for Nvidia was hatched in 1993 at a Denny’s in Silicon Valley. That’s where he, his Sun Microsystems colleague Chris Malachowsky and their friend Jensen Huang, an engineer who worked at LSI Logic, would meet up to brainstorm how to build a better chip. Priem describes his role early on as the architect creating the underlying blueprint that allowed engineers to design algorithms for Nvidia’s chips, working mostly behind the scenes. “There was a saying at Nvidia to never put Curtis in front of a camera, and never put Curtis in front of a customer,” Priem quips. (CEO Huang’s response: “Curtis was actually excellent with customers.”)

In 1999, Nvidia had two major breakthroughs: It went public with a $1.1 billion market capitalization and it invented its graphics processing unit, or GPU, which was initially used for video editing and gaming but eventually reshaped the computing industry. That July Priem also married his first wife, Veronica, and two months later, established the Priem Family Foundation in which he put more than three quarters of his 12.8% (at IPO) Nvidia stake–about 100 million shares (in today’s share count). Part of the reason for the big gift, he said, was that he didn’t want the government to get the money if he had sold a bunch of shares and owed taxes on them.

It was also around that time that Priem looked at his shareholding and thought he’d end up with around $50 million. “My saving grace was that I couldn’t predict the future,” he says somewhat wistfully about his decision to sell off shares in the now $1.2 trillion (market cap) company.

After initially donating to a handful of causes including The Nature Conservancy and the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Priem shifted away from his goal of alleviating human-induced suffering to preventing it, mostly through education-focused giving. “Adam and Eve had free will and chose a sinful path which originated suffering … our belief is that most suffering can be avoided since it is within our control to begin with,” stated his foundation’s early website, drawing on his family’s roots in the United Church of Christ (Priem doesn’t practice the religion, but his father, sister and grandparents were all ministers, he says).

In 2000, Priem went back to RPI to receive the university’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award for his work at Nvidia. “I walked onto campus, and it’s like, okay, this is sort of my calling,” Priem says. He says he donated $1 million to RPI in 2000 and again in 2001. Then in the fiscal year ending in June 2002, the Priem Family Foundation began disbursing at least $10 million a year to RPI—and has done so ever since.

More than 40% Of Gifts to RPI Since June 2001 Have Come From The Priem Foundation

Things at Nvidia, meanwhile, weren’t going as well. According to Priem, he was distracted by personal issues at home and not contributing at the level he wanted, so he left.

The next decade of Priem’s life was a mess, he says—a court found that Veronica had a “history of domestic violence” against him. He alleged in 2013 court filings that the violence had “generated 19 written police reports, five arrests, three criminal convictions, three criminal protective orders, one civil temporary restraining order, and three probationary periods.” According to the same document, Veronica claimed that Curtis “triggered her violent reactions by provoking her verbally” and mentioned a “lack of severity associated with her misconduct.” (Her lawyer did not respond to multiple requests for comment.) At one point, Curtis Priem says he met with California state senator Bob Wieckowski to advocate for an amendment that would make it harder for alleged perpetrators of domestic violence to receive spousal support. The amendment, SB 28, passed unanimously in a 2015 Senate vote. His ex-wife pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of domestic violence, and he never paid spousal support.

Throughout this time, Priem continued to help RPI, which he said had financially “floundered” for decades. He wanted to help “turn this super tanker around.” First, his donations went to the essentials—hiring more faculty, building renovations and acquiring lab equipment. Then came contributions to what’s now the Shirley Ann Jackson Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies and to the performing arts center, which opened in 2008.

The idea for his biggest contribution yet came just months ago at a board retreat in Carlsbad, California. That’s where Priem suggested to RPI’s new president Martin Schmidt that they try to bring a quantum computer to RPI, an interesting idea but one Schmidt thought would be too costly.

“We left Carlsbad with me agreeing that I would drive down to see Dario Gil, the head of IBM research … to see if we could convince him that IBM should put a quantum computer on the RPI campus,” Schmidt told Forbes. Just three months later, in June, RPI formally announced plans to bring an IBM Quantum System One computer to campus next year, which will make it the only university in the world to house one.

“Now, with quantum computers, RPI will be at the forefront of ushering in a completely new paradigm of computing that offers profound possibilities for the exploration of a range of previously intractable problems across areas such as material design, sustainability, pharmaceutical development, healthcare and much more,” Gil said at an October groundbreaking event for the quantum computer.

Priem’s latest $95 million pledge to bring the computer to campus and set up a new center for it is, in his words, setting his foundation on the “glide path to zero.”

“This weekend is actually the termination of our foundation,” Priem said at the groundbreaking event, where he explained to a packed crowd of students, faculty, alumni and other guests that his funding for the computer would be his foundation’s last major gift and use up most of its remaining funds. He made the announcement standing in front of a gleaming “quantum chandelier,” the heart of the forthcoming quantum computer because it contains the quantum chip and is surrounded by intricate gold wiring to keep the 2,000-pound computer cold enough to operate, at around -460 degrees Fahrenheit. The computer is expected to be operational sometime in spring 2024 and will sit under four stained-glass windows in a former chapel.

Priem’s family foundation currently has $160 million in assets and is on track to wind down by 2031, he says, but he isn’t sure the money will last that long, given all the new initiatives he keeps deciding to fund at RPI. “We can’t stop spending, so it’ll probably be a lot sooner than that,” says Priem, who adds that “when the money runs out, I get to retire.”

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How AI Is Changing Datacentres, Role of CPUs vs GPUs: Interview With Intel’s Sandra Rivera

Post By Science And Technology , , ,

Most people don’t really think about datacentres, but we all use Internet-connected apps, streaming services, and communication tools that rely on processing and storing massive amounts of information. As the world gets more connected and it becomes easier to create and distribute huge amounts of data, the systems and processes needed to handle all of it keep evolving. Sandra Rivera, Intel Executive Vice President and General Manager, Data Centre and AI Group, was recently in Bengaluru, and Gadgets 360 had the chance to hear about her take on current trends and her vision for the future. A lot has changed thanks to the pandemic, and of course AI is a huge part of the story going forward.

We first brought you Sandra Rivera’s comments about Intel’s ongoing work in India and everything that the company is doing here. Now, here are some more excerpts from that conversation, about innovation in hardware and software, the evolving nature of datacentres, and competing with Nvidia.

How datacentres are becoming even more important, and how things have changed in the recent past:

Sandra Rivera: All our innovations and products are clearly being driven by our customers. We are in a large and growing TAM [Total Addressable Market] and as we drive forward, nowhere is that more evident than in India, with digital transformation and the digitisation of every part of our lives. We need more compute; we’re creating more data. It needs to be compressed, secured, delivered over a network, and stored. It needs to be served up, and you also need to get valuable insights out of that, which of course is where AI comes in.

One of the interesting things that happened during COVID is that because of supply chain constraints that we all struggled through, we saw customers lean into more utilisation of the infrastructure that they had. AI, networking, and security are very hungry for the latest innovations and solutions, but a lot of the Web tier; office applications that run in cloud infrastructure; ERP systems; accounting systems; etc, are actually very focused on utilisation.

The biggest growth is happening at what we call the edge of the network, or on premises. The compute is coming to the point of data creation and data consumption. A lot of the challenge for us there is partnering with our OEMs to simplify deploying applications on-premise to process that data; to run machine learning, AI, data analytics, networking capabilities, security. That’s a lot of work both in hardware and of course in in software.

That’s true here in India as well. [Some of it] is driven by power constraints and so if they can have power dedicated to those leading-edge applications and infrastructure and then cap the power on more mainstream applications, then that’s a smart use of the power budget, which is a big deal.

India has been so important for us from an R&D perspective; I mean we’ve been here for decades. We also see with all of the investments that the government is making in digital transformation and infrastructure, that India is going to be a huge consumption market for us as well. The opportunity to build out more infrastructure here, more datacentres, more enterprise solutions, software ecosystem solutions, and services, is very exciting. We continue to invest not only in the workforce but also in the market opportunities here.

The continued importance of CPUs even as GPUs are in demand, and how that is disrupting datacentre design:

Sandra Rivera: There are high-growth workloads like AI and networking driven by the continued proliferation of 5G, as well as security and storage. One of the dynamics we’re seeing in the market is that in the near term, there’s a lot of interest for accelerated compute, meaning GPUs and AI accelerators.

Customers are looking to shift a bit of their capital expenditure towards GPUs. The CPU is part of the equation, but in the near term, more of that capex spend is going to go to GPUs. We don’t think that that’s a permanent market condition. The CPU is quite good from a cost-performance-programmability perspective for many AI workloads. In many cases, customers already have a Xeon CPU, and so the fact that they can do AI machine learning [with that] is a tailwind for our business.

Intel AI Continuum

[All that] everyone talks about right now is generative AI and large language models, but AI is much more than that, right? AI is all the data preparation that happens before you train the model; it’s the data management, filtering, and cleaning. So if you are trying to build an application to identify cats, [for example] you don’t want any dogs in those pictures. All of that is done upfront with the CPU and actually almost exclusively with the Xeon today. That’s part of the AI workflow. Then you get to the actual model training phase. The CPU is very well positioned to address small to medium-sized models – 10 billion parameters or lower – or mixed workloads where machine learning or data analytics is part of a broader application. The CPU is very flexible, highly programmable, and you probably have CPUs already.

When you talk about the largest models, with 100, 200, 300 billion parameters – there you need a more parallel architecture, which is what a GPU provides, and you also benefit from dedicated deep learning acceleration, like we have in Gaudi. After you train the model, you get to what we call the inference or deployment phase. Typically, you’re on-premises there. If you are in a retail organization or a fast food restaurant, you will typically be running that on either a CPU or some less power-hungry, less expensive accelerator. In the inference stage, we can compete very effectively with our CPUs and some of our smaller GPUs and accelerators.

Right now, there’s a lot of interest around those largest language models and generative AI. We see more customers saying they want to make sure that they have some GPU capabilities. We do see that dynamic, but long-term, the market is complex. It’s growing. We’re in the early days of AI. We think that we have a very good opportunity to play with the breadth of capabilities that we have across our portfolio. So it’s not that I think that generative AI is small; but it’s not addressable only with a large-scale GPU.

How Intel sees Nvidia, and how it plans to compete

Sandra Rivera: Everyone knows that Nvidia is doing a great job of delivering GPUs to the market. It’s a giant player. Let me put that in perspective. The Gaudi 2 has better performance than the Nvidia A100, which is the most pervasive GPU today. It doesn’t have more raw performance versus H100 right now, but from a price-performance perspective, it’s actually very well positioned. One of the data formats supported in the Gaudi 2 hardware is FP8, and the software to support that is going to be released next quarter. We expect to see very good performance, but you’ll have to wait and see what we publish in November. Next year, we’ll have Gaudi 3 in the market which will be competing very effectively with H100 and even the next generation on the Nvidia roadmap. Our projections look very good. We’re priced very aggressively. Customers want alternatives and we absolutely want to be an alternative to the biggest player in the market. It’s going to be what we do, not what we say.

Intel’s roadmap for building sustainable datacenters.

Sandra Rivera: We use over 90 percent and in some cases 100 percent renewable energy in all our manufacturing across the world. We are second to no one in renewable energy and total carbon footprint for the manufacturing of our products. The competition, like most of the world, is building their products in foundries either in Taiwan or in Korea. Of course Taiwan is the biggest, but the footprint that they have in renewable energy is actually quite small. It’s an island; everything gets shipped using diesel fuel. When we look at the datacentres that we’re building ourselves for our own fabs and our own IT infrastructure, again that’s 90 percent plus renewable energy. We also partner very closely with our OEMs as well as cloud service providers to help optimise around green and renewable energy.

With the 4th Gen Xeon we introduced a power-optimised mode where you can actually use 20 percent less energy by being smart about turning off cores during idle times and tuning the processor. We were able to do that with a very small performance impact, less than 5 percent, and customers like that because they don’t always need the processor to be running at full capability and they can save a lot of energy.

The current state and future potential of neuromorphic and quantum computing in datacentres

Sandra Rivera: Neuromorphic and quantum computing are leading-edge technologies. We’ve been an investor in quantum for at least a decade and a half. We’ve been investors in silicon photonics; optical networking and interconnects have become increasingly interesting, especially in these very high-end, large-scale computing platforms. We know that memory technologies are going to be critical for us going forward. We’ve been investors in memory technologies with partners and on our own. The commercial viability of those technologies are sometimes 10-20 years out, but innovation is the lifeblood of our business. We have extraordinary capabilities with Intel Labs. We have so many fellows, senior fellows and industry luminaries. The process technology is some of the most complex and exquisite engineering in the world.

We’ll continue to lead from an innovation perspective. Commercial viability all depends on how fast markets shift. We do think that AI is disruptive, and some of those technologies will probably be [developed] at an accelerated pace, particularly networking and memory. There are lots of innovations in power and thermals; these chips and systems are getting bigger and hotter. It’s not always easy to answer when the timing is [right]. Some of these technologies may not have commercial success, but you take parts of them and channel them into other areas. I think this is the business of innovation and we’re very proud of our history. Those [teams] get to do a lot of very fun things and they’re very energised.

Some responses have been condensed and slightly edited for clarity.

Disclosure: Intel sponsored the correspondent’s flights for the event in Bengaluru.

Affiliate links may be automatically generated – see our ethics statement for details.

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MSI Titan GT77 HX 13VI Review: The performance brute, reborn with more power and grunt- Technology News, Firstpost

Post By Science And Technology , , , , , ,

Mehul Reuben DasJun 05, 2023 09:57:43 IST

Pros:
– The sheer brute performance
– The CherryMX Mechanical keyboard
– Expandability and upgradability in terms of Storage and RAM
– PCIe Gen 5 M.2 Storage slot
– Excellent thermal management
– The subtle but aggressive aesthetics
– The 4K 144Hz MiniLED display
– Great selection of ports and I/O
– Choice of materials could have been better

Cons:
– The price
– Average webcam considering the other specifications and the price
– Too bulky, even for a gaming laptop

Price: Rs 6,71,990/-
Rating: 4.75/5

Last year, when we reviewed the MSI Titan GT77 UHS, we were very impressed by it. Powered by the Intel i9-12900HX & the NVIDIA RTX 3080Ti Laptop GPU, it was very easily, the most powerful computer that we had used last year. In fact, we had stated in our review that most people don’t have full-fledged desktops that could go toe to toe against the Titan GT77.

Image Credit: Tech2 | Mehul Reuben Das

Well, MSI is back with another iteration of the Titan GT77 and is more bonkers than ever before. At first glance, it seems that not a lot has changed – it still has that patently bonkers gamer aesthetics, and backbreaking heft and bulk from last year. Look closely though and you’ll see that the newest generation of the Titan GT77 is a beast that has reincarnated in a much more stronger avatar. MSI seems to have taken all the numbers from last year’s Titan GT77, and have turned it up to 11.

The newest MSI Titan GT77 is a true enigma in this regard. The Titan GT77 continues to be a legitimate desktop replacement, delivering desktop-level performance in a reasonably portable form factor. Yes, there are a few gaming laptops that have the same sort of specifications that the new MSI Titan GT77 comes with, but they have some omissions or others, that leaves a sour taste in your mouth, especially when you know that there exists a machine, that makes absolutely no compromises when it comes to sustained performance, not just in gaming but other intensive tasks as well.

As always with the Titan GT77, while you can use this machine for intense gaming and experience impressive results, its true purpose lies in tackling far more demanding tasks. Who exactly and what task? Well, that’s exactly the question we will tackle in this review of the MSI Titan GT77 and explore the intended audience for this desktop replacement laptop.

MSI Titan GT77 HX 13VI Review: Specs and features
The unit we tested was the MSI Titan GT77 HX 13VI, featuring an Intel Core i9-13950HX CPU. Our specific configuration included 64GB (2x32GB) of DDR5 RAM in a dual-channel setup, running at 4800MHz. However, it’s worth noting that the laptop supports up to 128GB RAM thanks to an additional two So-DIMM slots

Retail units of the MSI Titan GT77 HX 13VI will be equipped with an Intel Core i9-13980HX CPU, which has slightly more powerful cores, up by 100Mhz. This is supposed to aid in lighter, more office-oriented tasks.

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Image Credit: Tech2 | Mehul Reuben Das

As for the GPU, we had the laptop variant of the NVIDIA RTX 4090, offering 16GB of GDDR6 VRAM. The laptop-grade GPU has a total of 175W of power to play with, so you know that the GOu is well-fed. Additionally, the laptop includes Intel’s UHD Graphics for lighter tasks.

The display on our test unit was a 17.3-inch UHD 4K (3840X2160) MiniLED display, boasting an impressive refresh rate of 144Hz, and certification for HDR1000.

In terms of storage, our unit came equipped with 2 PCIe Gen 4 SSDs of 2TB for a total of 2TB. The MSI Titan GT77 features three M.2 slots, one of which supports PCIe Gen 5.

As for the ports, you get the following:

  • 1x Type-C (USB / DP / Thunderbolt™ 4) with PD charging
  • 1x Type-C (USB / DP / Thunderbolt™ 4)
  • 3x Type-A USB3.2 Gen2
  • 1x SD Express Card Reader
  • 1x HDMI™ 2.1 (8K @ 60Hz / 4K @ 120Hz)
  • 1x Mini-DisplayPort
  • 1x RJ45 that supports up to 2.5G

For wireless connectivity, you get a Killer AX1690i module that supports WiFi 6E as well as Bluetooth 5.3.

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Image Credit: Tech2 | Mehul Reuben Das

Powering the device is a non-removable 4-cell, 99.99Wh battery, accompanied by a 330W charging brick with a proprietary connector.

For security features, the Titan GT77 offers an IR camera and fingerprint-based biometrics, a webcam shutter for the integrated camera, and Firmware Trusted Platform Module(TPM) 2.0.

MSI Titan GT77 HX 13VI Review: Design and build quality
Like last year, The design of the latest generation of the MSI Titan GT77 is far from understated. MSI is actually continuing with the same design that we saw last year, which makes one thing very clear – the Titan GT77 has a legacy and a lineage that MSI feels should be recognisable at once.

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Image Credit: Tech2 | Mehul Reuben Das

The laptop sports an all-black colour scheme and has a very aggressive styling. The prominent vents on the sides and back clearly are the first identifiers of the performance beast that’s lurking under the chassis, even when you switch the RGB lighting off. The rear exhaust vents feature customizable RGB lighting, allowing users to assign different colours to each vent outlet using the SteelSeries GG app.

The MSI Titan GT77 is built like a tank – you can feel the heft just by looking at it. Weighing over 3.3 kilograms on its own it may seem heavy on its own. The power brick to keep this beast juiced up, weighs another 1.4 kilograms. However, considering its purpose as a true desktop replacement and the performance it delivers, the weight becomes more reasonable.

The laptop features a metallic top lid that houses the display. The lid is sturdy and shows minimal flex, and is slightly recessed from the edge of the clamshell, creating a noticeable protrusion at the rear.

Additionally, the lid showcases the illuminated MSI shield logo, enhancing its gamery vibes. It is attached to a robust yet solid hinge that can be easily opened with one hand, preventing unnecessary swaying of the panel As for the bezels, the left, top, and right edges boast thin bezels, while the bottom edge contains a thicker bezel with the MSI logo.

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Image Credit: Tech2 | Mehul Reuben Das

The interior of the laptop is primarily composed of plastic, but it doesn’t feel cheap. However, the choice of materials could have been better as the entire laptop is a fingerprint magnet. This clean and sharp aesthetics of the device are easily besmirched by the user’s fingerprints, and no matter how hard you try, you can’t clean up the laptop with a microfibre cloth every 5 minutes.

The keyboard shows virtually no flex, and on the left and right sides of the keyboard, there are 2W speakers. Towards the bottom-left corner of the keyboard, we see the Cherry MX branding, again, illuminated with RGB.

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The bottom of the laptop consists of two parts. The top half is made of metal, most likely aluminium, allowing for better heat dissipation due to the presence of well-positioned vents. The other half is constructed of plastic. Additionally, two 2W woofers can be seen on the bottom of the laptop.

MSI Titan GT77 HX 13VI Review: Keyboard and trackpad
The MSI Titan GT77 is equipped with a low-profile mechanical keyboard developed by SteelSeries, incorporating Cherry MX switches. From the feel and sound of it, it seems to be a Cherry MX Brown switches. This results in one of the finest laptop keyboards available, offering a delightful typing and gaming experience. Additionally, there is a dedicated numeric keypad on the right-hand side, albeit with slightly smaller keys, which enhances typing convenience. It’s important to note that the keys on the numpad, function row and arrow keys may not feel as tactile as the Cherry switches and have a more membrane-like sensation.

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Image Credit: Tech2 | Mehul Reuben Das

Similar to other keyboards featuring Cherry MX switches, the key switches on the Titan GT77 offer excellent actuation and a satisfying tactile feel. The keyboard is equipped with per-key RGB backlighting, allowing users to customize the lighting according to their preferences. The included SteelSeries GG software also allows users to easily create and manage custom profiles, making it one of the most user-friendly configurators.

The trackpad on the laptop is notably large and lacks physical buttons. It functions as a standard multi-gesture trackpad, providing responsive and precise control. The surface of the trackpad feels smooth and pleasant to touch, and it has very precise palm rejection, which is particularly beneficial considering its size. Furthermore, it is very accurate. MSI need not have gone for such a good trackpad for the Titan GT77, considering that a majority of the users will be using a mouse with it anyway. Having said that, we’re glad that MSI did go for it.

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MSI Titan GT77 HX 13VI Review: Webcam and speakers
The MSI Titan GT77 still uses a 720p camera which is housed in the thin top bezel of the display. the fact that some people may think of using the webcam to stream, it would have been preferable to see at least a 1080p sensor instead. Further still, considering what people will pay for the laptop and the fact that it is the best of the best when it comes to specifications, a 4K sensor would have been ideal.

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Image Credit: Tech2 | Mehul Reuben Das

Having said that, the image and video quality produced by the webcam is decent enough to serve general purposes, like attending a meeting or a video call. Like last year, the camera gets some IR capabilities, which makes it great for biometrics. One thing that has been added to this year’s GT77 is a physical web shutter for increased privacy.

The built-in microphone, unlike the webcam, performs well and is suitable even for streaming. During video calls, it effectively isolates the speaker’s voice from any surrounding background noise.

The audio output of the device consists of a pair of 2-watt speakers and a pair of 2-watt woofers, all facing the user. These speakers provide high-quality sound with a distinct mid-range, ample separation between high and low frequencies, and a satisfying bass presence. Throughout our testing, we encountered no instances of rattling, distortion, or any other undesirable problems when playing bass-heavy tracks. Although the maximum volume level is somewhat on the lower side, it can still reach sufficient loudness to fill a room, albeit it might leave some users slightly disappointed.

MSI Titan GT77 HX 13VI Review: Display
Last year, the unit we tested came with a 17.3-inch 1080P IPS display that had a refresh rate of 360Hz. The units available in India come with a 4K, 120Hz IPS display. This year, MSI has made some massive updates to the display. For the 2023 version, we get a 4K resolution, measuring 3840 x 2160 pixels, and a refresh rate of 144 Hz. Additionally, there is an alternative option of a QHD IPS screen with a refresh rate of 240 Hz.

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Image Credit: Tech2 | Mehul Reuben Das

Mini-LED screens ensure true black images without any backlight bleeding. MSI promotes over 1000 dimming zones, although some blooming may still be observed. When bright objects are displayed on dark backgrounds, the entire dimming zone illuminates, resulting in bright clouds. However, this effect is primarily noticeable when logos are displayed and not during gaming or regular usage. The average brightness is measured at 600 nits, and the low black value contributes to a remarkably high contrast ratio.

The panel supports HDR 1000, and our tests show that it has a maximum brightness of over 1000 nits. Users will need to manually activate HDR. Moreover, the different colour profiles that come with MSI’s True Color software cannot be used, and HDR cannot be utilized while on battery power. This is because Windows falls spectacularly short when it comes to implementing HDR.

Speaking of True Colour, the Titan GT77 comes equipped with the True Color software, which provides various preconfigured settings for colour spaces and situations such as gaming, office work, and movie viewing. Additionally, the software allows users to calibrate the screen according to their preferences.

MSI Titan GT77 HX 13VI Review: Performance in Productivity and Gaming
This is where the MSI Titan GT77 shines the brightest, and the main reason why the select few people who can actually afford this laptop, should go for it. Last year’s Titan GT77 was a beast when we were looking at its performance. The newer, 2023 version fo the GT77, is an even more powerful, and surprisingly, more efficient beast – but, a beast nonetheless.

The 2023 version of the Titan GT77 comes with an Intel Core i9-13950HX CPU which boosts up to 5.5 GHz, has 32 threads and 24 Cores, 8 of which are the top-tiered Performance Cores, and an additional 16 Efficiency Cores. The P-Cores boost all the way up to 5.5Ghz whereas the E-cores go all the way up to 4GHz.

MSI Titan GT77 HX 13VI Review (1) Benchmarks
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As far laptop grade CPUs are considered, this is bested only by the Intel Core i9-13950HX, which is what retail customers will be getting. Needless to say, it is the best of laptop CPU out there right now.

Even the Intel Core i9-13950HX CPU is a pretty powerful CPU. The only difference between the two CPUs is the 13980HX offers a 100 MHz higher maximum clock for the P-cores and lets go of the vPro support. vPro won’t help that much with gaming, but it does slightly help with work-related stuff. Nonetheless, the CPU again is a great example of just how raw power and efficiency can be packed into a single SoC. Intel does that using Intel’s hybrid architecture is.

As for the GPU, we get a laptop version of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090, again, the best that a laptop can be equipped with right now. The RTX 4090 in the MSI Titan GT77 boosts up to 2340Mhz and comes with 16GB of GDDR6 VRAM and a TDP of 175W. What this means is that the GPU has plenty of room to stretch its legs and perform as a 4090 should.

The net result is that the Titan GT77 truly is the king of performance among portable laptops. The Intel Core i9-13950HX crushes all benchmarks that you throw at it and is bested only by proper desktop-grade K-series CPUs from Intel. During our testing, it fared better than almost all other laptops that we tested this year, by quite a margin. And thanks to Intel’s hybrid architecture, it got some of the highest scores we have seen across benchmarks, both in single-threaded and multithreaded workloads.

The GPU too crushes every synthetic benchmark that is thrown at it. MSI has given the RTX 4090 a TDP of 175W. Both, the Intel Core i9-13950HX and the RTX 4090 are properly fed when it comes to power. Intel actually allows you to play with the clock speeds of the Core i9-13950HX using MSI Centre’s profiles. We did all of our testing of the laptop, benchmarking and gaming at its Extreme Performance to get the best out of the device.

Apart from keeping the giants properly fed, MSI has also ensured that the CPU and the GPU are adequately cooled. The Titan GT77 comes with a slightly updated version of MSI’s Cooler Boost Titan system that helps maximize the i9-13950HX’s and RTX 4090’s performance efficiency. This year, you get 4 fans and a heat sink with 8 pipes and 6 exhausts.

In benchmarks, the Titan GT77 tops nearly every benchmark that you run it through, as it should. In 3DMark Time Spy it scores 20140, in Cinebench R23 it scores, 2120 for the single core and 30065 for the multicore tests. In PCMark 10, it gets a very solid score of 8801, the highest we have seen in a laptop.

In Pugetbench, it has an overall score of 1213 for Photoshop, and 1530 in Lightroom. And, in Crossmark, it is 1864 for productivity, 2441 for creativity, 1623 for Responsiveness and an overall score of 2051.

We have only seen top-tier desktop CPUs and GPUs scores that are comparable to this. Having said that we have always maintained that benchmark numbers do not necessarily reflect how a device actually performs in real life. For that, you have to turn to gaming and other real-life applications.

We tested out games like Far Cry 5, Far Cry 6, Shadow of The Tomb Raider, Metro Exodus, and the recent Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2. We also played CS:GO, but did not include it in our test results, and the results were just ridiculous, but more on that later.

MSI Titan GT77 HX 13VI Review (1) Gaming
Image Credit: Tech2 | Mehul Reuben Das

As stated earlier, we did all of our testing, including the benchmarks using MSI’s Extreme Performance mode to extract the maximum possible juice from the processor and GPU package. As for in-game settings, we were at the highest possible presets, enabling DLSS where possible, and antialiasing. We tested the game at 1080P because that is what most gamers would go for given the size of the panel, and in 4K given that our unit had a 4K panel.

In 1080P Gaming, with the settings turned all the way up where we could have, and with DLSS on when possible, we had more than an awesome experience. In Far Cry 5, we were averaging 158 FPS, in Far Cry 6, we were getting a comfortable 142 FPS. In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, we were consistently getting an average of 212 FPS. Metro Exodus was giving us an ultra-smooth 131 FPS. And, in Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 (2022) we were averaging 174.

We get to see a similar story in 4K gaming as well. In Far Cry 5, we were getting 131 FPS, in Far Cry 6, we were getting a pretty smooth 87 FPS. In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, we were getting an impressive 101 FPS. In Metro Exodus, we were getting a very much playable 79 FPS. and, in Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 (2022) we were averaging a very healthy 83.

Coming to CS:GO, we were getting a ridiculous 600+ FPS at 2K with the details cranked up. We did not bother testing it on 4K, but rest assured, it should be somewhere between 300-400 FPS, at the minimum

MSI Titan GT77 HX 13VI Review: Battery
The Titan GT77 comes with one of the largest batteries to be ever fitted to a laptop. It has a 4-cell, 99.99W/hr battery, and a 330W charging brick. But because of the hardware that this laptop packs and the performance that it delivers, the Titan GT77 isn’t anything to write sonnets about. Still, it lasts a little longer than the last generation’s battery.

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Image Credit: Tech2 | Mehul Reuben Das

On an average day of work, which consisted of a ton of writing, some photo editing, and quite a bit of content consumption on YouTube and Netflix, we got about 6-7 hours of usage at about 40-50 per cent screen brightness. Do note, that this was in Silent mode, which is another and on the Intel GPU.

During our extended battery testing, where we play a 4K Video on YouTube on 75 per cent brightness and 50 per cent volume, with all RGB lights on, the MSI Titan GT77 lasted just under 5 hours. This, from a laptop that is as performance-packed as this, is actually very impressive.

While gaming without the charger, the laptop conked off after 1 hour or so of gaming with reduced screen brightness. The performance did take a minor hit without the charger.

MSI Titan GT77 HX 13VI Review: Verdict
The MSI Titan GT77 is not a machine for everyone, not even the most avid of gamers. Unless you’re planning to take up e-sports and gaming as a career option, or are planning to get into AI/ML development or to render a lot of CAD designs or videos, this is not the laptop for you, For most games and purposes, it is an overkill.

So, who is the Titan GT77 designed for? We believe it is tailored for high-performing content creators, gamers, machine learning engineers, data scientists, and game developers who are frequently on the move and require a true desktop replacement that can be easily transported.

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Image Credit: Tech2 | Mehul Reuben Das

As powerful as the Titan GT77 is it has a few drawbacks. We wish we had a higher-quality webcam, and that it wouldn’t have been priced this prohibitively. Nevertheless, once you experience the powerful synergy between the Core i9-13950HX processor and the RTX 4090 graphics card, these minor drawbacks fade into insignificance.

If you seek uncompromising and unrestrained performance, and if you have the financial means to invest in a laptop priced at around Rs 6.5 Lakhs, then look no further. This is the epitome of what laptops for serious professionals and professional gamers were always intended to be.



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