There is an AI chip frenzy for sure. However consumers aren't buying those - data centers are - those owned by Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Tesla and Apple. I therefore question the sustainability.
What happens if AI is a bubble and those companies don't get an ROI? What if they can't find a way to monetize AI because consumers just see it as a commodity? What if after ramp up AI chip purchase dies down because models are already trained and inference doesn't need that much compute?
AI is going to drive huge demand for new silicon for inference mostly but also for training. Every device needs to have new processors that are optimized for running ML. For example, when the new iPhones integrate LLMs directly onto iPhones, you'll need to keep buying new iPhones because Apple will drastically increase the size of Neural Engine every generation.
AI is going to cause a huge uplift in chip demand from clouds to small devices.
Hmm. For iPhones and Android, Apple and Samsung already have that covered. Their AI chips already exist and production must already be planned for the coming years. NVIDIA isn't going to contribute.
I heard predictions for increase in AI PC sales but I don't buy it. That remains to be proven.
So we are left with data centers. Isn't that right?
They need to drastically increase the size of the NPU every year to keep up. We are a long way away from running GPT4 on an iPhone.
Every chip will eventually need to be replaced with one that can do inference for a massive AI model. And we will need more chips to put in more places.
What happens if AI is a bubble and those companies don't get an ROI? What if they can't find a way to monetize AI because consumers just see it as a commodity? What if after ramp up AI chip purchase dies down because models are already trained and inference doesn't need that much compute?