NVIDIA's odd take on the end of quarters means that we are just seeing their Q4 2017 earnings report along with their fiscal 2018 earnings. The news is good for the green team, with Q4 earnings of $2.91 billion, up 34% from Q4 2016. Total fiscal 2018 earnings are $9.71 billion, an increase of 41% from fiscal 2017 released last January. The success of the Nintendo Switch certainly helped and the $133 million tax cut they received didn't hurt, nor the popularity of graphics cards, which NVIDIA states they would prefer to sell to gamers; though it is unclear how they could enforce this on the open market.
It is too early to see an impact from their removal of consumer class GPUs from data centres, assuming they do not reverse this particular decision we will see a jump in that revenue in the coming quarters. The Inquirer offers their take on the finer points of NVIDIA's earning statement here.
"The firm revealed in its Q4 earnings report 2017 that its total revenues for the quarter swelled by a massive 34 per cent from the previous year, with its revenue for the full fiscal year hitting $9.71bn, up by 41 per cent."
Here is some more Tech News from around the web:
- Intel adopts Orwellian irony with call for fast Meltdown-Spectre action after slow patch delivery @ The Register
- Microsoft ditches passwords in latest build of Windows 10 S @ The Inquirer
- Wish you could log into someone's Netgear box without a password? Summon a &genie=1 @ The Register
- The 2018 Ars Technica Valentine’s Day gift guide
Now ends 2nd year I have
Now ends 2nd year I have put-off a new build due-to expensive RAM and GPU card. Why is NVIDIA so sure no competition will appear? When the casual builder switches GPU-maker the original source is quickly forgotten. Hasta LaVista! Count yo’ blessings NV while you have time and turn GPU prices around.
you waited to long for a last
you waited to long for a last gen GPU. We are going next gen this fall. Then Fall 2019 & 2020, the consoles will join the party. Then 2021 will be the year to get the xx60 consumer model.
so now you need to wait at least 2 to 3 years. DOH
so what are you waiting for? Leisure Suit Larry 4k?
Navi will be released late
Navi will be released late 2018/early 2019. No reason to buy until there’s competition in the market and the mining craze is (hopefully) over.
If the console makers can get
If the console makers can get their hands on Vega they will be damn sure to make use of that Explicit Primitive Shader IP on Vega, ditto for Vega’s HBCC/HBC IP.
The entire gaming/gaming engine industry had better start hiring the qualified programmers now for the DX12/Vulkan graphics APIs and for Vega’s new IP features that will definitely make it into the next generation of console SOC/APU SKUs from AMD.
AMD is having problems with only Implicit Primitive Shaders for that Vega Primitive Shader IP to Help with legacy games also, but the console/console game makers will fund the Explicit Primitive Shader themselvs and have the console games very performant on Vega via Explicit Primitive Shaders, FP16, Vega’s HBCC/HBC IP, etc.
The desktop PC games makers can mostly take agvantage of the GPU makers always increasing their discrete GPU SKUs’ resources so the PC games makers do not have to spend extra for games optimization. But the Console makers will take advantage of every little hardware advantage that the Vega GPU mico-arch has to eke out every last bit of performance from whatever the latest avaiable GPU micro-arch can give. The console SKUs have limited hadrware resources inside of those console SKUs.
Vega is actually a good GPU micro-arch it’s just that AMD with its limited budget could only afford to tapeout one Vega 10(Discrete GPU) base die design that had to do double duty for the professional Compute/AI(Radeon Pro WX 9100 and Radeon Instinct MI25) market and the Flagship Gaming GPU(Vega 56/64) market. And both of those markets make use of the very same Vega 10(Discrete Pro/Consumer) GPU base die tapeout.
So that upcoming Vega Discrete Mobile SKU needs to be examined Thoroughly with regards to its ROP to Shader ratios and its TMU to Shader ratios, with an emphasis on the ROP numbers and that ROP to Shader ratio. This should be directly compared to the Current Vega 56/64 SKUs to see if AND has re-tweaked those ROP to Shader core ratios or the TMU to Shader core Ratios on Vega Discrete Mobile.
Nvidia starting with its Maxwell GPU Micro-Arch went with a mobile first GPU design and Nvidia just scaled up that mobile first design to get its flagship gaming SKUs. So Let’s look at Vega Discrete Mobile when it arrives and look closely at those ROP to Shader Ratios and TMU to Shader ratios and see if AMD has tweaked any ratios for lower power usage, and if so, see if AMD could take the same TMU/ROP to Shader ratio from discret Mobile Vega and scale that up to get a better mainstream to flagship respin of the Vega GPU micro-arch for a New Tapeout more tuned for gaming than professional compute/AI usage.
The Vega APU graphics can also be looked at because that will be scaled differenly for power saving but the ratios of ROP’s to Shader cores and TMUs to shader cores also need a good look-See. Do not use that one Vega 10 Desktop-Professional tapout to judge the Vega GPU micro-arch as That Vega 10 tapeout had to do double duty Professional/Consumer uasge. sSo there needs to be more deeper looks at the discrete mobile Vega SKUs as well as the Vega Integrated variants for Raven Ridge Mobile and Feb 12th the Raven Ridge Desktop SKUs.
I’m really wanting to see that Discrete Mobile Vega SKU with 4GB of HBM2 used to stress test Vega’s HBCC/HBC IP by having some large texture packs installed on the games that are similar to the texture/Mesh resources that come for Vega GPUs with 8GB or more of HBM2.
The big new revenue growth
The big new revenue growth market for GPUs is in the Compute/AI markets and both AMD and Nvidia are moving away from a total dependency on only Consumer/Gaming as the main source of revenue.
Nvidia’s Volta Tensor Processor Cores are where Nvidia spent most of the time developing with the Volta for Gaming in question as there are rumors that Ampere will be the gaming focused GPU micro-arch from Nvidia.
Nvidia and AMD both would rather have the profesional market margins via those large professional SKU markups that the enterprise/cloud services markets have no problems paying. So while gamers are not willing to pay a proper markup the profesional markets will pay both Nvidia and AMD and the higher revenues/margins are what makes the stock values go up the most. The PC market’s stagnent revenue outlook does not offer much in the way of revenue growth potential with both AMD and Nvidia fighting it out for a overall market that is currently barely holding even against the backdrop of declining OEM PC market sales.
JHH over at Nvidia has been talking up GPU AI/Compute for some time along with Automotive/Automotive-AI and giving the least amount of attention to gameing. Nvidia so dominates gaming as to be more dependent on consumer/gaming revenues but as large as Nvidia’s gaming revenues are Nvidia’s non-gaming revenues are growing faster and are almost at the same level and getting ready to surpass Nvidia’s Gaming GPU revenues.
AMD is has currently no incentives to focus on winning the top end GPU gaming crown from Nvidia as AMD has been focused on mainstream Polaris and mobile Vega in Zen/Vega APUs along with Desktop Raven Ridge(Feb 12) and its first mobile diecrete Vega GPU that will be coming this year. So AMD aims to get that low end gaming market via its Raven Ridge APUs for laptops and RR for the desktop and work its way up to discrete mobile Vega and on to replacing mainstream Polaris with some Vega variants. Vega 56/64 and even Polaris(RX580/RX570) has so much coin mining demand that those parts get sold quickly.
Really Nvidia and AMD both have more opportunities for great revenue/revenue growth, Nvidia through Volta’s Tensor Cores and AMD its Epyc Server/Workstation CPU cores with AMD also offering up the Vega 10 die based Radeon Pro Wx 9100s and the Radeon Instinct MI25’s for the professional compute/AI markets. AMD’s first 7nm GPU Vega 20 will be for the AI market and not the gaming market so with that it’s easy to see where AMD see the future for higher revenue/revenue growth, ditto for Nvidia.
If you are a gamer then do not look for AMD to even attempt to take the FPS crown from Nvidia! Why should AMD worry about that currently as AMD’s Vega 64 is often time costing more than even the GTX1080Ti because of that mining demand. I’m sure that by 2019 AMD will have some form of announcement that will excite the flagship gaming fiends but AMD’s revenues will be going up regardless of AMD not fielding a GP102/GTX1080Ti gaming competitor. Those mining folks have been good for both Nvidia’s and AMD’s revenue streams but what about the long term and will mining always be around who knows. AMD sure appears to be as focused on the non gaming markets just as much as Nvidia has been.