NVIDIA unveils 2024-2025 data center product roadmap

Recently, NVIDIA delineated a series of updates during an investor briefing, encompassing the inclusion of HBM3e, the revision of the PCI Express standards (6.0/7.0), and advancements in multi-GPU interconnect technology. Alongside, they unveiled a meticulous product roadmap detailing their strategies for data centers from 2024 to 2025. NVIDIA has adopted a more reticent stance in sharing its roadmaps in recent years, perhaps due to intensifying market competition and challenges associated with manufacturing processes, refraining from revealing precise timelines.

At last year’s Arete Technology Conference, NVIDIA’s Vice President and Chief Director of Accelerated Computing, Ian Buck, reiterated the company’s commitment to refreshing their primary GPGPU architecture biennially. He confirmed that the GPUs based on the Blackwell architecture would debut in 2024. It is anticipated that the GTC in 2024 might witness the premiere of the Blackwell architecture, initially catering to data centers and artificial intelligence products, with consumer-grade GeForce graphics cards likely to follow in 2025.

Per NVIDIA’s recent roadmap for 2024 to 2025 concerning data centers, the current GH200, based on the Hopper architecture, will be succeeded by the GB200 of the Blackwell architecture between 2024 and 2025, with the GX200 to follow a year later. This roadmap substantiates that GB200 is tailored for data centers, debunking earlier speculations regarding a GB100/102. Correspondingly, the product designation is the B100, among others.

The Blackwell architecture heralds a novel generation encompassing a spectrum from data centers to consumers, spanning computational cards, gaming graphics cards, artificial intelligence (AI), and visual computation products. The monikers of other products remain pending confirmation. Following Blackwell, NVIDIA is poised to adopt the “X” designation, although the scientist being commemorated remains uncertain. Typically, NVIDIA’s architectural revision cycle spans approximately two years, yet the transition from Blackwell to “X” is slated within a mere year, an ostensibly brisk pace.

The Blackwell nomenclature pays homage to the late American statistician and mathematician, David Harold Blackwell (1919–2010). Blackwell earned his Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Ph.D. degrees in Mathematics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1938, 1939, and 1941 respectively. By 1947, he ascended to a full professorship at Howard University. In 1954, Blackwell joined the University of California, Berkeley, where he became the institution’s first African-American tenured professor. By 1965, he was inducted as the first African-American member of the National Academy of Sciences.