Thursday, May 16th 2024
NVIDIA Blackwell GB200 Superchip to Cost up to 70,000 US Dollars
According to analysts at HSBC, NVIDIA's upcoming Blackwell GPUs for AI workloads are expected to carry premium pricing significantly higher than the company's current Hopper-based processors. The analysts estimate that NVIDIA's "entry-level" Blackwell GPU, the B100, will have an average selling price between $30,000 and $35,000 per chip. That's already on par with the flagship H100 GPU from the previous Hopper generation. But the real premium lies with the top-end GB200 "superchip" that combines a Grace CPU with two enhanced B200 GPUs. HSBC analysts peg pricing for this monster chip at a staggering $60,000 to $70,000 per unit. NVIDIA may opt to primarily sell complete servers powered by Blackwell rather than individual chips. The estimates suggest a fully-loaded GB200 NVL72 server with 72 GB200 Superchips could fetch around $3 million.
The sky-high pricing continues NVIDIA's aggressive strategy of charging a premium for its leading AI and accelerator hardware. With rivals like AMD and Intel still lagging in this space, NVIDIA can essentially name its price for now. The premium pricing reflects the massive performance uplift promised by Blackwell. A single GB200 Superchip is rated for five PetaFLOPs at TF32 of AI compute power with sparsity, a 5x increase over the H100's one PetaFLOP. Of course, actual street pricing will depend on volume and negotiating power. Hyperscalers like Amazon and Microsoft may secure significant discounts, while smaller players could pay even more than these eye-watering analyst projections. NVIDIA is betting that the industry's insatiable demand for more AI compute power will make these premium price tags palatable, at least for a while. But it's also raising the stakes for competitors to catch up quickly before losing too much ground.
Source:
Tae Kim (on X)
The sky-high pricing continues NVIDIA's aggressive strategy of charging a premium for its leading AI and accelerator hardware. With rivals like AMD and Intel still lagging in this space, NVIDIA can essentially name its price for now. The premium pricing reflects the massive performance uplift promised by Blackwell. A single GB200 Superchip is rated for five PetaFLOPs at TF32 of AI compute power with sparsity, a 5x increase over the H100's one PetaFLOP. Of course, actual street pricing will depend on volume and negotiating power. Hyperscalers like Amazon and Microsoft may secure significant discounts, while smaller players could pay even more than these eye-watering analyst projections. NVIDIA is betting that the industry's insatiable demand for more AI compute power will make these premium price tags palatable, at least for a while. But it's also raising the stakes for competitors to catch up quickly before losing too much ground.
30 Comments on NVIDIA Blackwell GB200 Superchip to Cost up to 70,000 US Dollars
Even when the competition makes hardware to compete, they won't be CUDA-compatible.
True monopoly is every corporate CEO's biggest wish and Jensen has played his cards just right.
And people wonder why some folks (including me) refer to them as "nGreediya" :)
In other news, water is still wet.
The best choice of words would be what name is given to a person who pays double or triple the price of something because they are manipulated by marketing? Super smart ?
The salesman who sells a pen for 100 dollars would deserve that adjective, the one who bought the opposite.
nvidia is able to charge what they are all able to charge because right now their hardware and CUDA have no real competition. Right now is the key part here. intel was king until AMD kicked them in the nuts. Plenty of companies from intel to AMD to google to Amazon and a slew of others are all hurling money at this.
Like it or not this is the future.
Being a normal human being and not an AI farmer, I'll go back to waiting see how AMD competes with a cut-down GB203 (<5080), and celebrate if there's some nice price/perf to be found there on either side.
...at 1% (or less) of the price.
I just think it's impressive that these chips cost as much as a decently priced new car and these companies are buying up millions, even billions of dollars worth of these chips.
This is about advancing science and research (medical as well drugs are already being quasi made off AI), putting hundreds of millions out of work because it's cheaper than humans, and gaming stock trades. It is not about building skynet, HAL9000, or chatbots. But people are freaking out about Terminator 2 or Space Odessey 2001 or that you can't get a chatbot to say n****r to prevent it from nuking humanity when that is all missing the point. What they are actually trying to do with it is starting to work so far. So it's not money being wasted.
The companies and governments buying these up already spend billions so while this might be sticker shock to you it's not to them. They also make billions so they don't care. And if they aren't constantly spending billions to keep ahead so they can make billions these companies will go under.
"As of May 15, 2024, NVIDIA's net worth, or market cap, is $2.37 trillion, which is a 228.56% increase from the previous year. This makes NVIDIA the third most valuable company in the world by market cap."
Don't get me wrong here. A lot of this stuff is impressive, but the selling point has been convincing people that it is AI. All this work may be something that cultivates and propels us forward to in fact once day achieving actual AI, but right now it is not.
I never said these companies are wasting their money, you seem to think I did or took it as some personal slate against them. I don't care how they spend their money, I just made a comparison in price.
As for your comment about Skynet comparison that people are afraid of. What in human history leads you to believe that nothing bad will come of all of this? If we can imagine it, we'll sure as hell work at making it happen. I think people have a valid point to be fearful about something like that happening. Never under estimate the stupidity of greedy, intelligent people.
What look egregious to you, may look like peanuts for someone that can make more money doing their regular job than they would save by not doing their job and do the research about whether they bought at the right price.
Give me 2 to go please.
While people panicking over things that are a long way out, and rather possibly not in our lives, what's on the horizon should scare them. We aren't that far off where "AI" could say use existing models of actors, writing, and music and shit out the next LoTR or SW movie. Leaving thousands of people unemployed. Or do the same with novels, or music. That right there is an actual threat now to the jobs of millions of people. Then there are things people don't even realize is going where are using AI for physics and medical research but that's nothing more than what we have been doing but on steroids.
People were terrified of all sorts of things. Medicine (hell people are still scared of vaccines), electricity, flying, nuclear power (still are but it kills less people and causes less damage than any other power source we have). So people being scared of things is normal. They are just usually scared of the wrong things.
People being scared of the wrong things works for greedy intelligent people. So while people are hurling fits that they can't train a chatbot to be racist and sexist or someone might built skynet they aren't looking at all the powers that be are slaving away to make go away. And because of capitalism and conservatism they aren't going to give you a basic income when it goes away you're ass is going to be homeless in the street because you were pissed the chatbot wasn't sexist. (I don't mean you specifically)
In order not to deviate too much from the topic and irritate the moderators, I'll just say that in the real world, most people who pay much more for something than it's worth are not millionaires scraping by, they're ordinary people, with debts in the bank, living on rent. etc... I know the world I live in. Just open your eyes and look around, the world is full of people who are easily manipulated, whether by scammers or companies similar to scammers.
If there is no corruptor, there will not be a corrupt person.
If there is no drug addict, there will not be a drug dealer.
If there weren't people with empty minds, most politicians wouldn't be such trash.
:toast:
Until things snapWhile true... these chips are exactly NOT going to the 97% of poor sods.You know what, I see this happening too, but then I look at what we get today.
The vast majority is already fast food quality junk. I doubt AI will do much worse. It appears entertainment is already firmly in the place where game has landed some years ago too: its factory line work for the big corps. There is no need for real creativity or talent, there are just formulas to adhere to. Follow this script, pick a few off the shelf elements, make video/game. From that perspective I totally get how these same companies have now gotten into the idea of automating the whole thing. They were already throwing money at the wall randomly as it was.
It doesn't even happen just in audio/video/game. When I look at a TCG like magic the gathering I'm seeing the same corporate formula, they're spitting out more new sets and cards than ever. At first it looks great: 'Oh man, we get SO MUCH of what we like, this is great!' but shortly after... there's just too much to keep track of and it damages more than it adds to the hobby, because now you're always in FOMO and the next step is 'fck it, I don't care anymore'. Or there's just so much of the samey stuff you stop caring.
You have all of this talk of AI replacing jobs but it seems that just the cost of hardware alone has ballooned to such a comical extent it may soon be cheaper to employee people instead.
People need to understand that the laws of the market for these are completely different from the laws of the consumer market.