Nvidia unveils robot ambitions and powerful recent gaming chips

The boss of US chip giant Nvidia has unveiled the firm’s next-creation of gaming chips and pledged the “ChatGPT instant for general robotics is just around the corner”.

The announcements were part of CEO Jensen Huang’s keynote address at CES, the major annual technology display in Las Vegas.

The recent household of gaming chips will use Nvidia’s Blackwell artificial intelligence (AI) technology to make movie-standard images, he told a packed arena.

The chips will range in worth from $549 (£438) to $1,999, and are twice as quick as their predecessors, he added.

He also introduced an AI model, called Cosmos, which he said could generate video that can be used to train robots and self-driving cars at a much lower expense than current methods.

By creating what is known in the industry as “synthetic” training data, the model can assist robots and cars better comprehend the physical globe.

Users will be able to provide Cosmos a text description that can be used to generate video of a globe that obeys the laws of physics.

“All of the enabling technologies that I’ve been talking about is going to make it feasible for us in the next several years to view very rapid breakthroughs, surprising breakthroughs in general robotics,” he predicted, though he added much more training data would be needed.

Mr Huang carried out a real-period demonstration of the recent gaming chip that showed off highly detailed graphics featuring an array of textures and manoeuvres.

“It was awesome that they can do this in real period,” said Gary Yang, a graduate learner in robotics at the California Institute of Technology.

“Previously we’d ponder of these graphics as pre-rendered.”

The recent chips will commence making their way to consumers starting in late January.

“I thought it was incredible,” said Scott Epstein of technology commence-up Agenovate AI.

“They are continuing to create.”

Mr Yang and Mr Epstein were among thousands of people who watched the talk both in person and virtually on the eve of the official opening of CES.

The convention is expected to draw more than 150,000 attendees and over 4,500 exhibitors over the next week.

Nvidia’s shares touched a recent record high on Monday in the run-up to Mr Huang’s highly anticipated address.

He spent the first part of his talk talking about the corporation’s history.

Founded in 1993, Nvidia was originally known for making the type of computer chips that procedure graphics, particularly for computer games.

Thirty-one years later, Nvidia now stands at the forefront of the advancement of chips that power AI, with a trade worth of more than $3tn.

However, Nvidia still faces some significant challenges, including from regulators around the globe who have raised concerns about its growing dominance of the AI chip trade.

Last year, the corporation said it had been contacted by watchdogs in the US, UK, European Union, South Korea, and China.

Additional reporting by Graham Fraser