NVIDIA at GTC 2025 announced its next-generation flagship AI GPU, the Rubin Ultra. A successor to the Blackwell Ultra unveiled this year, Rubin Ultra is slated for the second half of 2027. A single Rubin Ultra package contains four AI GPU dies joined at the hip with die-to-die bonding and a fast interconnect that enables cache coherency. The package also features a whopping 1 TB of HBM4e memory. NVIDIA is claiming a performance target of 100 petaFLOPs FP4 per package.

The company also unveiled its next-generation CPU for AI supercomputers, called simply the Vera CPU. A successor to Grace, Vera comes with 88 Arm CPU cores. These are custom high-performance cores designed by NVIDIA, and aren't carried over from the reference Arm Cortex family. The cores support SMT, giving the CPU 176 logical processors. The chip comes with a 1.8 TB/s NVLink C2C connection. Lastly, the company announced that the architecture succeeding Rubin will be codenamed Feynman, after Richard Feynman. The company is looking to debut the first silicon based on Feynman in 2028.

During its latest FY2024 earnings call, NVIDIA's CEO Jensen Huang gave a few predictions about future products. The upcoming Blackwell B300 series, codenamed "Blackwell Ultra," is scheduled for release in the second half of 2025. It will feature significant performance enhancements over the B200 series. These GPUs will incorporate eight stacks of 12-Hi HBM3E memory, providing up to 288 GB of onboard memory, paired with the Mellanox Spectrum Ultra X800 Ethernet switch, which offers 512 ports. Earlier rumors suggested that this is a 1,400 W TBP chip, meaing that NVIDIA is packing a lot of compute in there. There is a potential 50% performance increase compared to current-generation products. However, NVIDIA has not officially confirmed these figures, but rough estimates of core count and memory bandwidth increase can make it happen.

Looking beyond Blackwell, NVIDIA is preparing to unveil its next-generation "Rubin" architecture, which promises to deliver what Huang described as a "big, big, huge step up" in AI compute capabilities. The Rubin platform, targeted for 2026, will integrate eight stacks of HBM4(E) memory, "Vera" CPUs, NVLink 6 switches delivering 3600 GB/s bandwidth, CX9 network cards supporting 1600 Gb/s, and X1600 switches—creating a comprehensive ecosystem for advanced AI workloads. More surprisingly, Huang indicated that NVIDIA will discuss post-Rubin developments at the upcoming GPU Technology Conference in March. This could include details on Rubin Ultra, projected for 2027, which may incorporate 12 stacks of HBM4E using 5.5-reticle-size CoWoS interposers and 100 mm × 100 mm TSMC substrates, representing another significant architectural leap forward in the company's accelerating AI infrastructure roadmap. While these may seem distant, NVIDIA is battling supply chain constraints to deliver these GPUs to its customers due to the massive demand for its solutions.

SK hynix has sped up its HBM4 development plans, according to a report from ZDNet. The company wants to start shipping HBM4 samples to NVIDIA this June, which is earlier than the original timeline. SK hynix hopes to start supplying products by the end of Q3 2025, this push likely aims to get a head start in the next-gen HBM market. To meet this sped-up schedule, SK hynix has set up a special HBM4 development team to supply NVIDIA. Industry sources indicated on January 15th that SK Hynix plans to deliver its first customer samples of HBM4 in early June this year. The company hit a big milestone when it wrapped up the HBM4 tapeout in Q4 2024, the last design step.

HBM4 marks the sixth iteration of high-bandwidth memory tech using stacked DRAM architecture. It comes after HBM3E, the current fifth-gen version, with large-scale production likely to kick off in late 2025 at the earliest. HBM4 boasts a big leap forward doubling data transfer ability with 2,048 I/O channels up from its forerunner. NVIDIA planned to use 12-layer stacked HBM4 in its 2026 "Rubin" line of powerful GPUs. However, NVIDIA has moved up its timeline for "Rubin" aiming to launch in late 2025.

NVIDIA kicks off the 2025 International CES with a bang. The company is expected to debut its new GeForce "Blackwell" RTX 5000 generation of gaming graphics cards. It is also expected to launch new technology, such as neural rendering, and DLSS 4. The company is also expected to highlight a new piece of silicon for Windows on Arm laptops, showcase the next in its Drive PX FSD hardware, and probably even talk about its next-generation "Blackwell Ultra" AI GPU, and if we're lucky, even namedrop "Rubin." Join us, as we liveblog CEO Jensen Huang's keynote address.02:22 UTC: The show is finally underway!

The "Rubin" architecture succeeds NVIDIA's current "Blackwell," which powers the company's AI GPUs, as well as the upcoming GeForce RTX 50-series gaming GPUs. NVIDIA will likely not build gaming GPUs with "Rubin," just like it didn't with "Hopper," and for the most part, "Volta." NVIDIA's AI GPU product roadmap put out at SC'24 puts "Blackwell" firmly in charge of the company's AI GPU product stack throughout 2025, with "Rubin" only succeeding it in the following year, for a two-year run in the market, being capped off with a "Rubin Ultra" larger GPU slated for 2027. A new report by United Daily News (UDN), a Taiwan-based publication, says that the development of "Rubin" is running 6 months ahead of schedule.

Being 6 months ahead of schedule doesn't necessarily mean that the product will launch sooner. It would give NVIDIA headroom to get "Rubin" better evaluated in the industry, and make last-minute changes to the product if needed; or even advance the launch if it wants to. The first AI GPU powered by "Rubin" will feature 8-high HBM4 memory stacks. The company will also introduce the "Vera" CPU, the long-awaited successor to "Grace." It will also introduce the X1600 InfiniBand/Ethernet network processor. According to the SC'24 roadmap by NVIDIA, these three would've seen a 2026 launch. Then in 2027, the company would follow up with an even larger AI GPU based on the same "Rubin" architecture, codenamed "Rubin Ultra." This features 12-high HBM4 stacks. NVIDIA's current GB200 "Blackwell" is a tile-based GPU, with two dies that have full cache-coherence. "Rubin" is rumored to feature four tiles.

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang will be leading the keynote address at the coveted 2025 International CES in Las Vegas, which opens on January 7. The keynote address is slated for January 6, 6:30 am PT. There is of course no word from NVIDIA on what to expect, but we have some fairly easy guesswork. NVIDIA's refresh of the GeForce RTX product stack is due, and the company is expected to either debut or expand its next-generation GeForce RTX 50-series "Blackwell" gaming GPU stack, bringing in generational improvements in performance and performance-per-Watt, besides new technology.

The company could also make more announcements related to its "Blackwell" AI GPU lineup, which is expected to ramp through 2025, succeeding the current "Hopper" H100 and H200 series. The company could also tease "Rubin," which it referenced recently at GTC in May, "Rubin" succeeds "Blackwell," and will debut as an AI GPU toward the end of 2025, with a 2026 ramp toward customers. It's unclear if NVIDIA will make gaming GPUs on "Rubin," since GeForce RTX generations tend to have a 2-year cadence, and there was no gaming GPU based on "Hopper."

NVIDIA barely started shipping its "Blackwell" line of AI GPUs, and its next-generation architecture is already on the horizon. Codenamed "Rubin," after Vera Rubin, the new architecture will power NVIDIA's future AI GPUs with generational jumps in performance, but more importantly, a design focus on lowering the power draw. This will become especially important as NVIDIA's current architectures already approach the kilowatt range, and cannot scale boundlessly. TF International Securities analyst, Mich-Chi Kuo says that NVIDIA's first AI GPU based on "Rubin," the R100 (not to be confused with an ATI GPU from many moons ago); is expected to enter mass-production in Q4-2025, which means it could be unveiled and demonstrated sooner than that; and select customers could have access to the silicon sooner, for evaluations.

The R100, according to Mich-Chi Kuo, is expected to leverage TSMC's 3 nm EUV FinFET process, specifically the TSMC-N3 node. In comparison, the new "Blackwell" B100 uses the TSMC-N4P. This will be a chiplet GPU, and use a 4x reticle design compared to Blackwell's 3.3x reticle design, and use TSMC's CoWoS-L packaging, just like the B100. The silicon is expected to be among the first users of HBM4 stacked memory, and feature 8 stacks of a yet unknown stack height. The Grace Ruben GR200 CPU+GPU combo could feature a refreshed "Grace" CPU built on the 3 nm node, likely an optical shrink meant to reduce power. A Q4-2025 mass-production roadmap target would mean that customers will start receiving the chips by early 2026.