Giants fight against CES: Nvidia and AMD chips were launched in January, and the first year of AI PC began
Source of this article: Times Weekly Author: Yang Lingling
At this year's CES, AI is the absolute protagonist. The day before the opening, the war drums of the chip giants were the first to sound.
In the field of GPU chips, Nvidia (NVDA.NASDAQ) and AMD (AMD.NASDAQ) almost monopolize the global market share and are known as the two leaders in the industry. On January 8, local time, NVIDIA launched the GeForce RTX SUPER series of graphics cards, allowing gamers, designers and other computer users to make better use of artificial intelligence (AI) on personal computers (PCs), and AMD released the highly anticipated Ryzen 8000G series desktop processors, which means that AMD's layout in AI officially covers the desktop platform.
Source: Picture Worm Creative
Specifically, there are three new GeForce RTX SUPER series graphics cards from NVIDIA: RTX 4080 SUPER, RTX 4070 Ti SUPER, and RTX 4070 SUPER.
Justin Walker, vice president of Nvidia, said that the new graphics cards meet export control requirements and can be made available to Chinese consumers, which also provides another option for researchers who don't have access to Nvidia's most powerful chips. But he did not say which product was supplied to the Chinese market.
In terms of price, Nvidia said that the chips are updated versions of existing products and will be offered at "great new prices". Among them, the RTX 4080 Super will be available on January 31, with a price starting at 8099, the RTX 4070 Ti Super will be listed on January 24, with a price starting at 6499 yuan, and the RTX 4070 Super will be listed on January 17, with a price starting at 4899 yuan.
Not only do these graphics cards outperform their predecessors, but they also have the superpowers of NVIDIA's advanced ray tracing and AI technology platform, RTX, to boost the performance of games, applications, and AI tasks. "GeForce RTX SUPER graphics cards support more than 500 RTX games and apps and will prepare users for the wave of generative AI applications on PCs," said Matt Wuebbling, vice president of global GeForce marketing at NVIDIA. ”
It is reported that brands such as Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, MSI and other brands will release AI laptops based on the GeForce RTX SUPER series.
For AMD, the Ryzen 8000G series processors are the desktop processor product line that has been upgraded again after 2 years and 9 months, with a total of four models: Ryzen 7 8700G, Ryzen 5 8600G, Ryzen 5 8500G and Ryzen 3 8300G.
Among them, the 8-core Ryzen 7 8700G and the 6-core Ryzen 5 8600G use a larger area of the Phoenix 2 core and integrate the XDNA1 Ryzen AI accelerator to provide more powerful AI performance. The 6-core Ryzen 5 8500G and the 4-core Ryzen 3 8300G use a smaller area of the Phoenix core, eliminating the Ryzen AI accelerator.
With the gradual popularization of AI applications, AMD has begun to lay out the new battlefield of AI in advance. In addition to last year's Ryzen 7040 debuting to announce the X86 processor's official entry into the AI era, this year's Ryzen 8000G extends this advantage to the desktop platform.
AMD has not yet announced the official launch price of the Ryzen 8000G series processors, only saying that the Ryzen 7 8700G, Ryzen 5 8600G, and Ryzen 5 8500G will be available on January 31, while the Ryzen 3 8300G will not be directly introduced to the retail market, but will be available to system builders within the first quarter of 2024.
2024 is known as the first year of AI PC development. An AI PC is defined as a personal computer equipped with a dedicated chipset/block to carry the load of on-device AI operation.
Source: Picture Worm Creative
"The current development of AI PCs, similar to the development of the early Windows system, makes user interaction more convenient and improves user work efficiency through software updates and iterations under the condition that the hardware performance can meet more abundant applications, and finally realizes the replacement of the earlier DOS system. Fan Zhiyuan, chief analyst of the electronics industry at Guojin Securities, wrote a research report.
According to Canalys, global PC shipments are expected to be 249 million units in 2023, a year-on-year decrease of 12.4%, and PC shipments are expected to be 267 million units in 2024, a year-on-year increase of 7.6%. At the same time, AI PCs will account for 20% of the PC market in 2024, and in 2027, this proportion will grow rapidly to more than 60%.
IN RESPONSE TO THIS TREND, LEADING PC MANUFACTURERS, INCLUDING DELL (DELL.NYSE), HPQ (NYSE) AND LENOVO (00992.HK), PLAN TO LAUNCH A SERIES OF NEW MODELS WITH AI ACCELERATION STARTING IN 2024. These PCs will be equipped with next-generation CPUs and Windows 11 to deliver a better AI experience.
In addition, chip manufacturers such as NVIDIA, Intel (INTC.NASDAQ), and AMD have also continued to show a variety of new software and hardware products to cope with the new era of AI, accelerating the arrival of the AI PC era.
As of the close of the day, Nvidia's U.S. stock price rose 6.43% to $522.53 per share, a new high, with a total market capitalization of $1.29 trillion. At the same time, it drove U.S. chip stocks to rise, with AMD rising more than 5% and Intel rising more than 3%.