Nvidia (NVDA 1.56%) invented the graphics processing unit (GPU) in 1999, revolutionizing the video game industry with ultrarealistic visuals. Unlike central processing units (CPUs), GPUs are designed to perform thousands of calculations simultaneously, meaning they excel at compute-intensive tasks involving big data and artificial intelligence.
In this Backstage Pass video, which aired Sept. 27, 2021, Motley Fool contributor Jose Najarro shares his thoughts on NVIDIA, and how the company will play a role in defining the future of technology.
Jose Najarro: Yeah, Toby. This is probably a fan favorite. I definitely talk about it a lot and that is going to be NVIDIA. Both John and Trevor talked about great tools of [Alphabet's] Google and UiPath. But these types of ability, so I want to say, they need some form of maybe brain, some form of nervous system. NVIDIA creates what I want to say is that efficient hardware that is needed to make everything happen, and that's going to be through their graphics cards GPUs, their graphics processing units. I'm going to talk a little bit about the GPUs in a bit. But first let me explain NVIDIA.
NVIDIA, right now, is hitting almost every market we talked about. We talked about the augmented reality, virtual reality, and the metaverse. NVIDIA hits a good portion of the gaming markets with it's GPUs. If you are some form of gamer, you probably have a nice discrete graphics card on your computer right now to be able to run certain types of games. To be able to run Virtual Reality, you need to have more than entry-level graphics card. They're doing it there in the data center. One of the huge data centers, for example, would be what John mentioned, Google. One of their platforms like YouTube. If you click on YouTube and every time you click on a new video, you're going to get suggested, more videos with what YouTube thinks you like. That's a perfect example of machine learning to some aspect.
These data centers need these graphics cards to improve their results, to improve their processing power. We're going to see that in a bit. They also deal with professional visualization. We mentioned augmented reality. You need to create some form of 3D model. NVIDIA creates graphics cards that go on workstations for those creating these types of 3D assets. Then they're also in the autonomous vehicle, where they're creating simulations or machine learning styles to improve the autonomous vehicle; the ability of cars to self-drive. Just a quick look at why GPUs are super impressive, is their ability to do parallel processing. Many people might know the CPU, the brain of the computer. I'm not saying is the end of the CPU era. I'm just saying that this is a different semiconductors for different task. For the task of artificial intelligence, you would prefer a GPU, and here you can see GPU performance compared to single-threaded performance, which are more CPU products has increased dramatically and this continues to increase at dramatic level. People are super excited about the products that NVIDIA have.
Another concept is, I talked a little bit about supercomputers and how data centers are using it. For example, as you're a gamer, you probably have one GPU in your system. This is pretty much a slide of a supercomputer and there is multiple slides. Here right now there is 16 NVIDIA graphics cards, in here that are going to be used to improve our data center, to be able to improve their artificial intelligence or whatever type of speed they need. These data centers have multiple slides like this and there is multiple computers within or servers within it.
I do want to say outside of hardware NVIDIA is also creating more software solutions as well. There is numerous example, I could probably spend the whole 30 minutes here, but one example is this NVIDIA Morpheus, which is more of a cybersecurity platform, which enables cybersecurity developers to create optimized AI pipelines. If you are some form of cybersecurity company and you want to use artificial intelligence to your benefit. You can use this, it's still an early access, but uses data and improve the way you detect artificial cybersecurity risks within some type of platform that you're using.
For me, NVIDIA is definitely one of my favorite plays here. Hopefully that show a little bit about this huge company.
