GPUs are the new star of Moore's Law, Nvidia channel boss claims
Richard Jackson claims Intel co-founder Gordon Moore's famous 'law' has passed its sell-by date on CPUs, and that GPUs have superseded CPUs when it comes to increasing technology and speed
GPUs have taken the mantle from CPUs when it comes to Moore's Law, Nvidia's channel boss has claimed, as he outlined the graphic card vendor's ambitions to crack the enterprise channel.
Moore's law was formulated by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in 1965. He predicted that the processing power of a chip would double every two years and that this would continue into the foreseeable future. However, in recent years debate has raged as to whether this still holds true.
CPUs have been the glue of the PC and computer hardware industry for decades, but are no longer capable of keeping up with new applications, claimed Jackson (pictured below).
"If you look at Moore's Law, where [Gordon Moore] said that every year the power of a CPU will double, that's been pretty accurate. But in the last five to six years that has been coming to an end and the CPU is only advancing now at about 10 per cent growth per year. We have seen that the GPU has been accelerating about one and a half to three times per year, so where Moore's Law has been tailing off on CPU, GPU is effectively replacing CPU in terms of increasing technology and speed," he said.
The company has seen a "major change" in the past six months, with big partners, such as Atos, Computacenter and SCC approaching the company to discuss how they can integrate Nvidia's technologies into their strategies.
"In the early days, people weren't sure why they needed graphics and virtualisation but now with things such as Windows 10 becoming much more prominent, everyone is upgrading. You really need a powerful graphics engine to get the most out of your Windows 10 environment."
In its fiscal 2018, Nvidia's revenue jumped 41 per cent to $9.7bn (£7.2bn), compared with CPU giant Intel's six per cent rise to $62.8bn in its last financial year. Jackson said that its datacentre arm is the largest part of the company's growth and has trebled its business in the past two years.
"We're trying to make it easier for partners to get involved in this business, and rather than have to configure it and put it together themselves we've created an AI supercomputer, the DGX," explained Jackson, adding that the company is "cautious" about who it allows to sell the supercomputer.
"It's not a product that we would open up to the general market. We currently have about 40 partners in Europe and that's a mix of boutique-style partners who are more focused just on AI and deep learning, right through to the really big guys who are looking to incorporate it into their wider offerings," he said.
The company also offers a graphics virtualisation product, which "complements" Citrix and VMware, Jackson claimed. "That's been great for partners because it allows those people who sell Citrix and VMware already to differentiate themselves in the market," he added.