Nvidia, the leading provider of AI chips, is set to shake up the industry once again with its highly anticipated H200 Tensor Core GPU. Boasting an impressive 141 gigabytes of memory and delivering a remarkable 60% to 90% performance upgrade compared to its predecessor, the H100 model, this latest release is sure to keep competitors on their toes. Little wonder then, that Nvidia’s stock is soaring to new heights.
Expected to hit the market in the second quarter of 2024, the H200-powered systems will be made available through Nvidia’s trusted hardware partners, as well as major cloud service providers such as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Azure, and Super Micro.
Ian Buck, Nvidia’s vice president of hyperscale and high-performance computing, expressed his excitement about the new offering, stating, “With Nvidia H200, the industry’s leading end-to-end AI supercomputing platform just got faster to solve some of the world’s most important challenges.”
Nvidia’s GPUs have proven to be highly effective in carrying out the parallel computations necessary for training AI models and meeting the evolving demands of customers. The current top-of-the-line H100 GPU launched earlier this year and has been priced at approximately $25,000 per unit. However, it quickly became a sought-after resource in the tech industry due to the growing enthusiasm for generative artificial intelligence—an enthusiasm that ultimately led to product shortages.
While industry experts have acknowledged the potential of AMD’s upcoming MI300 AI product for inference applications, it remains uncertain how these chips will compare to Nvidia’s enhanced H200.
Nvidia has recently revamped its product release strategy, shifting from a two-year cycle to an accelerated one-year cycle for AI chips. In fact, the graphic in Nvidia’s updated investor presentation highlights plans for additional high-end AI products in both 2024 and 2025.
This announcement underscores Nvidia’s commitment to more frequent, higher performing product launches—a strategy that is likely to put its competitors at a disadvantage, but will undoubtedly buoy the company’s stock.
At the time of writing, Nvidia’s stock had surged by 1.4%, reaching $490.15 as of 11:46 a.m. on Monday.