Nvidia’s tiny $3,000 computer steals the show at CES

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was hailed as a rock star this week at CES in Las Vegas, after an artificial intelligence boom which made the chipmaker the second most valuable company in the world.

In his nearly two-hour presentation Monday that kicked off the annual conference, Huang packed a 12,000-seat arena, drawing comparisons to the way Steve Jobs used to unveil products Apple events.

Huang concluded with an Apple-like trick: a surprise product reveal. He presented one of Nvidia’s server racks and, using a bit of stage magic, held a much smaller version, which looked like a small cube of a computer.

“This is an AI supercomputer,” said Huang, wearing an alligator skin jacket. “It runs the entire Nvidia AI stack. All of Nvidia’s software runs on it.”

Huang said the computer is called Project Digits and runs a relative of Grace Blackwell’s graphics processing units (GPUs) that currently power the most advanced AI server clusters. The GPU is paired with a ARM-based Grace central processing unit (CPU). Nvidia worked with the Chinese semiconductor company MediaTek to create the system-on-a-chip called GB10.

Formerly known as the Consumer Electronics Show, CES is typically the place to launch flashy and futuristic consumer gadgets. At this year’s show, which began on Tuesday and ends on Friday, several companies announced AI integrations with appliances, laptops and even grills. Other major announcements include a laptop from Lenovo that has a rollable screen that can expand vertically. There were also new robots, including a Roomba competitor with a robotic arm.

Unlike traditional Nvidia GPUs for gaming, Project Digits is not aimed at consumers. instead, it’s aimed at machine learning researchers, smaller companies and universities that want to develop advanced AI but don’t have the billions of dollars to build massive data centers or buy enough cloud credits.

“There’s a gap for data scientists and ML researchers and they’re actively working, they’re actively building something,” Huang said. “Maybe you don’t need a giant cluster. You just develop the first versions of the model, and you constantly iterate. You can do it in the cloud, but it just costs a lot more money.”

The supercomputer will cost about $3,000 when it becomes available in May, Nvidia said, and will be available from the company itself, as well as some of its manufacturing partners. Huang said that Project Digits is a place name, indicating that it may change by the time the computer goes on sale.

“If you have a good name for it, contact us,” Huang said.

Data center sales account for 88% of Nvidia’s $35 billion in revenue in the U.S the last quarter.

Wall Street is focused on Nvidia’s ability to diversify its business so that it is less dependent on a handful of customers who buy massive AI systems.

“It was a little scary to see Nvidia come out with something so good for such a low price,” Melius Research analyst Ben Reitzes wrote in a note this week. He said Nvidia may have “stole the show,” thanks to Project Digits as well as other announcements, including gaming graphics cards, new robot chips and a deal with Toyota.

Project Digits, which runs Linux and the same Nvidia software used in the company’s GPU server clusters, represents a major increase in capabilities for researchers and universities, said David Bader, director of the Institute of Science Data at New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Bader, who has worked on research projects with Nvidia in the past, said the computer appears to be able to handle enough data and information to train larger and more advanced models. He told CNBC Anthropic, Google, Amazon and others “will pay $100 million to build a supercomputer for training” to get a system with these kinds of capabilities.

For $3,000, users can borrow a product that they can plug into a standard electrical outlet in their home or office, Bader said. It is particularly exciting for academics, who are often left for private industry to access larger and more powerful computers, he said.

“Any student who is able to have one of these systems that cost about the same as a high-end laptop or a gaming laptop, they will be able to do the same research and build the same models,” Bader said.

Reitzes said the computer may be Nvidia’s first move into the $50 billion market for PC and laptop chips.

“It is not too difficult to imagine that it would be easy to just do it themselves and allow the system to run Windows one day,” wrote Reitzes. “But I guess they don’t want to step on too many toes.”

Huang did not rule out that possibility when asked by Wall Street analysts on Tuesday.

He said that MediaTek may be able to sell the GB10 chip to other computer manufacturers in the market. He made sure to leave some mystery in the air.

“Obviously, we have plans,” Huang said.

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