- Nvidia is pitching its upcoming Vera CPUs to Chinese clients while advertising availability soon
- Move into data center CPUs pits Nvidia against traditional rivals Intel and AMD, which currently control the bulk of the market in China and other regions
- Nvidia’s move comes at a time when the Chinese government continues to advocate for home-grown chip solutions, and the US’s chip controls have effectively reduced its share to 0% of a lucrative Chinese data center market
Nvidia is apparently pushing to win Chinese customers for what its CEO regards as the next multi-billion dollar frontier for the company: data center CPUs.
The firm has spent the past two years watching the 2nd-most important chip market in the world effectively cut it out with a mix of consumer-grade chips and homegrown solutions such as Huawei’s Ascend offerings, backed by a Chinese government push for self-reliance.
While Chinese officials have held the line with soft barriers – no official restrictions on Nvidia’s chip exports to China exist in the mainland – Nvidia is seemingly betting on a reset in relations when it comes to its Vera CPUs for the data center.
Why CPUs and why now for Nvidia?
Nvidia’s Vera CPU is more than just another competitor in the market. It threatens to upend the existing status quo, with Intel and AMD chips dominating the market, by adopting an AI-first approach to its design.
Nvidia is presenting Vera as a CPU that is up to 1.8 times faster than current x86 CPUs from Intel and AMD in certain workloads, offers 4 times the memory bandwidth, and delivers up to a 50% increase in performance versus traditional rack-scale CPUs.
According to a Reuters report, at least one major unnamed Chinese cloud company intends to purchase 300 servers, each containing 2 Vera CPUs. The CPUs themselves are estimated to cost upwards of $20,000 before bulk discounts kick in.
However, whether this results in an order remains…
