For years, chipmaker Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) dominated the computer and server processor market, easily remaining ahead of rival Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ: AMD), and seemingly positioned to lead whatever was next for the business.
Then, something unexpected happened
The technology industry realized that graphics cards — while not as well suited as traditional central processing units (CPUs) for performing the most common types of computing tasks that PCs might face in everyday use — could be effectively used to handle repetitive processing tasks on large data sets. That made them ideally suited for data-rich artificial intelligence (AI) work. The rest, as they say, is history.
Nvidia’s (NASDAQ: NVDA) graphics processing units (GPUs), which already enjoy a commanding lead in that niche, were easily adapted to provide parallel processing muscle for AI applications. While all servers still need CPUs, too, in the data center market, they were, for a time, an afterthought. Most estimates put the company’s current share of the artificial intelligence accelerator market at a minimum of 80%.