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  • 5 months ago
TaiwanPlus spoke to Olivia Shen, director of the Strategic Technologies Program at the United States Studies Center at the University of Sydney, about US chip giant Nvidia's goal of dominating the entire technology stack. Shen looked at the new partnership with the US Department of Energy to build a groundbreaking 100,000 GPU AI supercomputer and discussed why CEO Jensen Huang's strategy to get China "addicted" to US chips may not work.

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00:00NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang is arriving in South Korea on Wednesday for the APEX Summit,
00:05but he's fresh off giving this keynote speech in Washington, D.C. at the company's GTC event held
00:11in that city for the first time. A lot of new announcements in that speech, Olivia.
00:16What were the things that stuck out most to you?
00:18I thought it was such a fascinating speech with so many different layered announcements.
00:23One thing I took away from it is that NVIDIA is really trying to dominate the entire technology
00:28stack. So not just looking at the opportunities for sales now, but growing their products into
00:34different technology verticals right into the future. The fact that NVIDIA was not just announcing
00:40AI announcements, but telecommunication deals, quantum computing deals, sensing and robotics,
00:47it really demonstrates a convergence of different technologies and NVIDIA's grand ambitions to have
00:54a key part in playing in all of those fields.
00:57Something else announced at the keynote was this new partnership with the U.S. government,
01:02or at least the Department of Energy, to build several new supercomputers. What's the significance
01:07of this partnership and what will these supercomputers actually be used for?
01:12So this announcement about seven different supercomputers to advance science for the United
01:18States was a really critical piece. So the highlight of the number of the seven supercomputers
01:24that were announced, the biggest one is a cluster of 100,000 black whale GPUs. Now,
01:30black whales are the leading product that NVIDIA produces. A cluster of 100,000 GPUs is the largest
01:38that we know of in the world. It is really record breaking. The amount of capacity this will provide
01:44for researchers to do scientific experiments and accelerate progress, progress that you wouldn't
01:51achieve in a normal laboratory. Now, there wasn't actually a huge amount of detail on what these
01:56supercomputers would be used for. We heard them talk about scientific fields, security and energy,
02:04and that's naturally what you would expect from a deal that is really in partnership with Department
02:08of Energy. But it didn't really go down to brass tacks about what those applications could look like.
02:14Jensen Huang is scheduled to meet with US President Donald Trump on Wednesday,
02:18just one day before Trump is set to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping with the hopes of hammering
02:23out a new trade deal. Now, of course, the sale of NVIDIA AI chips to China has been a major sticking
02:30point in US-China trade tensions. What do you think Jensen will be asking Trump for in his meeting?
02:36I'm sure that Jensen will be encouraging greater access for NVIDIA back into the Chinese market.
02:44NVIDIA is missing out on billions and billions of dollars of sales. You have people who say the
02:49right strategy is to get China addicted to US-made chips. That way they won't be pursuing their own
02:56sovereign capability. I'm not entirely convinced that this is going to work. Most of seasoned China
03:02watchers that I know will say, well, China has been striving for sovereign chip manufacturing capability
03:09for over a decade now. The idea that they will suddenly want to get hooked or addicted to foreign
03:15made chips isn't consistent with their strategy to date. And in fact, we should expect to see China
03:21double down on their domestic chip manufacturing investments, including particularly with Huawei.
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