The market for AI chips is highly competitive. As the largest manufacturer of graphics processors and PC chipsets, Nvidia has established a strong position. But the competition is not sleeping.
High-performance processor and memory chips for AI applications are currently the number one development topic in a heterogeneous group of leading companies. This involves both processors, where the specialist Nvidia from California, which has made a name for itself with gaming and graphics cards and chips, and the chip manufacturers AMD and Intel are setting the tone, as well as high bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, which are becoming increasingly important with the growing popularity of generative AI.
Here, the competing manufacturers SK Hynix and Micron Technology have created a future technological axis and a good starting position for their own position through contracts with the leading AI chip manufacturer Nvidia. Now the giant in conventional memory chips, Samsung Electronics, is also entering this race - but not with its own technology, as reported by Reuters. Samsung Electronics is relying on a chip manufacturing technology developed by its competitor SK Hynix. The strategy behind this is likely to be to be able to play an important role in this market very quickly thanks to its expertise in large production capacities.
As the AI and robotics magazine IT-Boltwise reports, companies such as Microsoft, Meta, OpenAI, Amazon and Google are now starting to work on their own AI processors in order to reduce their dependence on demand bottlenecks for Nvidia products. Easier interchangeability of chips from different manufacturers is also being sought for these reasons. It is lamented that no noteworthy initiatives in this direction have been seen from Europe to date.
Chinese manufacturer Huawei has stated that the development of AI chips is currently being given higher priority than the further development of its top cell phone generations. In this context, it is also noticeable that the Chinese company and its suppliers continue to receive harsh criticism from the USA. SMIC recently found this out: The semiconductor manufacturer, which was founded with state aid and still lags behind its Taiwanese competitor TMSC by several structural generations, but plays an important role in the global market, was accused by the USA of a possible violation of the law when supplying chips to Huawei - although one might think that these are Chinese-Chinese partnerships, SMIC would be severely affected if it were excluded from some important international markets in the same way as Huawei because of such accusations.
www.nvidia.com
www.marketsandmarkets.com
www.reuters.com
www.it-boltwise.de
www.micron.com
www.skhynix.com
