The US chip company Nvidia has announced the start of mass production of its next generation of chips. The new platform’s chips, called Vera Rubin, can deliver five times the performance in AI applications such as chatbots compared to the previous generation, said Company boss Jensen Huang at the CES technology trade fair in Las Vegas. The new platform, which consists of six separate Nvidia chips, is expected to come onto the market later this year.
In order to achieve the increase in performance, according to Huang, the so-called ruby chips use a data format developed by Nvidia. “This is how we were able to achieve such a gigantic increase in performance despite only having 1.6 times the number of transistors,” Huang said. The efficiency of generating so-called tokens, the basic unit of AI systems, could be improved tenfold.
In addition, a new storage technology called Context memory storage Help chatbots provide faster answers to long conversations. The cloud provider CoreWeave is expected to be one of the first buyers of the new systems. Nvidia also expects Microsoft, Oracle, Amazon and Google to also use the technology.
Nvidia chips have increased in recent years a key technology for applications with artificial intelligence. With the new generation, Nvidia is responding to increasing competition from rivals like AMD and its own major customers like Google, who are also working on their own AI chips.
Nvidia is planning software for self-driving cars
Huang also announced a new software for self-driving cars. This should be published as open source along with the associated training data so that car manufacturers can understand how it works. Huang promised cars with artificial intelligence that would analyze traffic situations and make decisions like a human behind the wheel. Between 2028 and 2030, Nvidia also wants to introduce the technology into private vehicles.
Next year, a robotaxi service based on the group’s technology will be set up together with a partner. For robotaxis, Nvidia also wants to use laser radar to scan the vehicle’s surroundings. Tesla boss Elon Musk is still alone with his plan to only use cameras for self-driving cars.
Other competition also presented itself at the technology trade fair in Las Vegas. The Uber company showed electric cars from Tesla challenger Lucid, which will be used as robotaxis near San Francisco later this year. The cars with a distinctive structure on the roof are controlled by software from the developer company Nuro. Self-driving vehicles without steering wheels and pedals from the Amazon subsidiary Zoox are already on the streets in Las Vegas.
