Specialist
Former VP at Onto Innovation Inc
Agenda
- AI accelerator design and technology trends
- Market dynamics between fabless players and foundries, plus overall supply chain health
- China’s response to US sanctions and restrictions, discussing directly impacted companies
- Manufacturing and geopolitical posture outlook for H2 2023 and beyond
Questions
1.
Could you share your thoughts on the current AI boom and the explosion we’ve seen in the market? Has anything in all this action surprised you so far?
2.
It’s surprising to note the overall market adoption and openness to adopting AI that we’ve seen so far. Across the board, I’m sure we’ll start to see some synergies and benefits, but are there any specific sectors or areas that you see AI having the biggest impact on?
3.
You mentioned LLMs [large language models] and especially ChatGPT and the inflection point we saw in the industry. Could you expand on the impact we should expect from something such as ChatGPT on not only the industry but the overall worldwide economy?
4.
You mentioned estimates that we’re potentially looking at ChatGPT setting up USD 4.4tn of value to the global economy over the next five years. This is certainly a significant figure. If you had to divide and see where this allocation is coming from, given the demand drivers you’ve mentioned, what type of application or end market do you see holding the lion’s share of this value?
5.
In terms of the growth we’re seeing, something that sticks out is that although Nvidia did beat revenue estimates in Q1 2023, because of AI, the guide for Q2 2023 and a couple of quarters after that seems to be significantly higher – 45% higher, to be specific. What are your thoughts on the sustainability around this growth and explosion?
6.
What are your expectations around the impact of the increasing complexities and demand for newer capabilities on the chips? What’s the impact going to be on chip designers and design costs overall?
7.
You mentioned that as long as the performance and delivery are met, customers are going to continue to be willing to pay. At what point do you see this price elasticity fading and customers’ unwillingness to adopt becoming a risk?
8.
Talking about Nvidia, I’d like to discuss the relationship with the hyperscalers. Although there is a partnership aspect, you mentioned there is also a competition aspect, where we start to see custom silicon perhaps in attempts to displace Nvidia. How do you assess the industry’s dependence on Nvidia and the company’s overall role changing throughout this revolution?
9.
How do you see some of the major players starting to structure their solutions with the power-hungry environment in the back of their minds?
10.
When consumers or customers are looking at the costs they’re going to have to allocate for the power requirements vs the cost of training and inference of the actual AI chips, how might you compare these two factors?
11.
You also mentioned AMD. We saw the recent AI announcement and the products that were unveiled, speaking specifically about the MI300X and A. Early on, a lot of what I’m hearing is that one of the biggest challenges will be customer adoption, winning their trust and getting the software up to the standard of, or at least close to, what Nvidia’s CUDA is today. How do you see AMD overcoming the hurdle of winning these customers and how might its market penetration trend in the next three years?
12.
Going back to the hyperscalers, we see Amazon with its Graviton, Google with the TPUs [tensor processing units] and now Microsoft with the Athena. Over time, do you see this hyperscaler specialisation into custom silicon eventually displacing Nvidia in certain areas?
13.
In what specific use cases or areas do you see the displacement starting to happen? Will it start to do so at all? At which point might Nvidia lower its GPU [graphics processing unit] price? On the other hand, in five years, how much of the company’s market share could be eroded away?
14.
Given the slight erosion over time that you’re mentioning, might we see an environment where Nvidia is forced to lower prices to be more competitive and appealing?
15.
The geopolitical aspect is another relevant, if not the most relevant part of the ecosystem we’re discussing. How do you assess the current build-up in tension between the US and China? How is this cloud attention impacting this landscape so far?
16.
Do you think Nvidia President Jensen Huang’s claims about TSMC’s safety and reliability are a bit far-fetched? If so, would it be wise or likely for Nvidia to seek partnership with a player such as Intel within domestic borders?
17.
Do you think AI has the potential to shift or alter today’s current fabless and foundry model? Why or why not?
18.
Nvidia is certainly at the centre of what we’re discussing, really supplying and fuelling the movement. Given the geopolitical risks we touched on with TSMC and the unreliability with this area, if Nvidia recognises this and needs to move fast, what’s a likely timeline for the company to perhaps partner up with a player such as Intel? What other challenges to do you see around the US maintaining this AI leadership?
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