Nvidia’s success is followed by Xilinx, which offers field-programmable gate array FPGA products commonly used for AI inferencing in cloud and data center servers
U.S.-based graphics processing unit (GPU) supplier NVIDIA Corp. has maintained its dominant position in the global market for artificial intelligence (AI) processors used in the cloud and in data centers in 2020, with an 80.6 per cent share of global revenue, according to a new report.
As per Omdia’s AI Processors for Cloud and Data Center Forecast Report, NVIDIA generated cloud and data center AI processor revenue upped from $1.8 billion in 2019 to $3.2 billion in 2020.
The report added that the company continued to benefit from its supremacy in the market for GPU-derived chips, which currently represent the leading type of AI processor employed in cloud and data center equipment, including servers, workstations and expansion cards.
“With their capability to accelerate deep-learning applications, GPU-based semiconductors became the first type of AI processor widely employed for AI acceleration. And as the leading supplier of GPU-derived chips, NVIDIA has established itself and bolstered its position as the AI processor market leader for the key cloud and data center market,” said Jonathan Cassell, principal analyst, advanced computing, at Omdia.
The market for AI processors is undergoing rapid growth, attracting a flood of suppliers vying to challenge NVIDIA’s leadership.
Nvidia’s success is followed by Xilinx, which offers field-programmable gate array FPGA products commonly used for AI inferencing in cloud and data center servers.
Tech giant Google grabbed the third spot with its Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) AI ASIC which is employed extensively in its own hyperscale cloud operations, while Intel and AMD ranked fourth and fifth respectively.
Global market revenue for cloud and data center AI processors rose 79 per cent to reach $4 billion in 2020 with revenue expected to soar by a factor of nine to reach $37.6 billion in 2026, according to Omdia.
“Despite the onslaught of new competitors and new types of chips, NVIDIA’s GPU-based devices have remained the default choice for cloud hyperscalers and on-premises data centers, partly because of their familiarity to users,” Cassell noted.
“NVIDIA’s Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) Toolkit is used nearly universally by the AI software development community, giving the company’s GPU-derived chips a huge advantage in the market. However, Omdia predicts that other chip suppliers will gain significant market share in the coming years as market acceptance increases for alternative GPU-based chips and other types of AI processors.”
