VOA科学技术2024--Demand for AI Computing Power Makes Nvidia a Top Valued Company

Shares in American technology company Nvidia have risen sharply during the past year. The increases have given the company a market valuation of more than $3 trillion.

Last week, the price of Nvidia's shares made it the world's most valuable company for a short time, ahead of Microsoft and Apple. On June 20, Nvidia's estimated market value reached $3.34 trillion. At that time, Microsoft's market value was listed at $3.30 trillion, while Apple's valuation was $3.22 trillion.

But Nvidia's share price then dropped sharply, reducing the company's valuation. Later the share price rose again, including a five percent increase during Tuesday's trading.

Some financial experts said the recent movements in Nvidia's share price helped drive gains across the U.S. stock market. They noted¹ that Nvidia has grown to become one of the largest and most influential² companies on the stock market.

What path did the company take to get where it is today?

The company was formed by three engineers - Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem - who first discussed their ideas for the business over dinner. Their main goal was to design and build a computer chip that would make graphics³ used for video games faster and more realistic.

Nvidia was founded in 1993. At the time, the business centered on the production of chips built to support high-level graphics operations. This development continued and in 1999, the California-based company invented the graphics processor unit, or GPU. This move was widely seen as helping⁴ to drive a big increase in computer gaming and redefine computer graphics.

Nvidia's business expanded during the COVID-19 pandemic when gaming increased in popularity while people were under stay-at-home orders.

Today, the company is centered on producing specialized⁵ computer chips designed to support artificial intelligence (AI) operations. The chips run powerful processing systems used to train AI systems. These tools - such as OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Gemini and Apple's Apple Intelligence - are trained and developed on huge amounts of internet data.

Huang currently serves as Nvidia's chief executive officer (CEO). During a conference call last month with industry experts, he predicted that companies using Nvidia chips would be looking to build new data centers called "AI factories."

Huang added that training AI models is becoming a faster process as the systems learn to become "multimodal." He said this means they are able to understand text, speech, images, video, and other forms of data and can also "reason and plan."

"People kind of talk about AI as if Jensen just kind of arrived like in the last 18 months, like 24 months ago all of a sudden figured this out," said Daniel Newman. He heads the technology research company The Futurum Group. "But if you actually go back in time and listen to Jensen talking about accelerated computing⁶, he's been sharing his vision for more than a decade," Newman told the Associated Press.

Newman said Nvidia's GPUs have played an important part in the company's recent success by filling an immediate⁷ need for specialized AI chip products.

"They took an architecture that was used for a single thing, to maybe enhance gaming, and they figured out how to network these things," Newman said. He added, "They basically ended up creating a market that didn't exist, which was GPUs for AI, or GPUs for machine learning."

Technology experts say GPUs are designed to more easily process the specific kind of math involved in AI computing. By comparison, other processing systems are built to deal with a wider range of operations, but with less efficiency.

OpenAI's ChatGPT, for example, was created with thousands of Nvidia GPUs. And Tesla CEO Elon Musk⁸ has reportedly secured GPUs from Nvidia for his startup company, xAI.

Words in This Story

chip - n. a small part of a computer that stores and helps process information

graphics - n. images shown on a computer screen

figure out - v. (phrasal) to finally understand something or someone after a lot of thought

accelerate - v. to start to happen more quickly

decade - n. a period of 10 years

enhance - v. to improve something

efficient - adj. working well and not wasting time or energy

1 noted   

adj.著名的，知名的

参考例句：

• The local hotel is noted for its good table.当地的那家酒店以餐食精美而著称。
• Jim is noted for arriving late for work.吉姆上班迟到出了名。

2 influential   

adj.有影响的，有权势的

参考例句：

• He always tries to get in with the most influential people.他总是试图巴结最有影响的人物。
• He is a very influential man in the government.他在政府中是个很有影响的人物。

3 graphics   

n.制图法，制图学；图形显示

参考例句：

• You've leveraged your graphics experience into the video area.你们把图形设计业务的经验运用到录像业务中去。
• Improved graphics took computer games into a new era.经改进的制图技术将电脑游戏带进了一个新时代。

4 helping   

n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的

参考例句：

• The poor children regularly pony up for a second helping of my hamburger. 那些可怜的孩子们总是要求我把我的汉堡包再给他们一份。
• By doing this, they may at times be helping to restore competition. 这样一来, 他在某些时候,有助于竞争的加强。

5 specialized   

adj.专门的，专业化的

参考例句：

• There are many specialized agencies in the United Nations.联合国有许多专门机构。
• These tools are very specialized.这些是专用工具。

6 computing   

n.计算

参考例句：

• to work in computing 从事信息处理
• Back in the dark ages of computing, in about 1980, they started a software company. 早在计算机尚未普及的时代（约1980年），他们就创办了软件公司。

7 immediate   

adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的

参考例句：

• His immediate neighbours felt it their duty to call.他的近邻认为他们有责任去拜访。
• We declared ourselves for the immediate convocation of the meeting.我们主张立即召开这个会议。

8 musk   

n.麝香, 能发出麝香的各种各样的植物，香猫

参考例句：

• Musk is used for perfume and stimulant.麝香可以用作香料和兴奋剂。
• She scented her clothes with musk.她用麝香使衣服充满了香味。