Nvidia is confident that it can take the crown from Intel in terms of processing despite its specialty being graphics processing, as Nivida's CEO concludes that the advancement of Intel's central processing units (CPUs) is slowing down.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has stated that Moore's Law for CPUs is now irrelevant and that graphics processing units (GPUs) are now advancing at a much faster rate than CPUs. Huang announced at the GPU Technology Conference (GTC) 2017 in Beijing, China that due to this lag in development, GPUs will soon replace CPUs.
Moore's Law was an observation by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in 1965 stating that the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits had doubled every year since their invention. Moore predicted that this trend of advancement would continue throughout the future. Huang stated that while CPU transistors have increased at a rate of 50 percent every year, the performance increase has only been at 10 percent, which is completely disproportionate, therefore no longer abiding by Moore's Law.
Huang also boasted that GPU advancements have has significantly bigger leaps compared to CPU advancements in the past years, noting the growth of GPU computational capacity and how it is better suited for artificial intelligence (AI) than CPUs.
Intel on the other hand, expressed disagreement with the graphics card company, saying that the progression of their processors from 14 nanometers (NM) down 7 NM, 5 NM, and beyond is proof enough that Moore's Law is still being practiced. Stacy Smith, Intel's Manufacturing, Operations, and Sales group president, further added, "Intel manufacturing processes advance according to Moore's Law, delivering ever more functionality and performance, improved energy efficiency and lower cost-per-transistor with each generation."
Regardless, Nvidia has already made major maneuvers into the AI and cloud computing market, particularly at the recent GTC in Beijing, where Nvidia took the lead in accelerated neural network processing and accelerated neural network research and development, trumping both Google and Microsoft in their AI attempts.
Still, Huang wasn't necessarily stating that GPUs will completely nullify the need for CPUs. His main message was that GPUs will play a larger role in supercomputers, AI, cloud computing, and the like. Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has yet to comment on the issue, being a direct competitor of both Intel and Nvidia in their respective CPU and GPU markets.
