NVIDIA is apparently proceeding too fast with AI, as with the GTC 2025 end, we now know that Blackwell's Ultra lineup, along with Vera Rubin, is set to be dropped onto the markets at a "concerning" pace.
NVIDIA's Blackwell AI Generations Are Six Months Apart When It Comes To Volume Production; An Attempt To Give Competitors No Space
Well, we are all pretty aware of the fact that NVIDIA, in its current dominance over the AI market, is simply due to how the firm managed to capitalize on the AI hype "early on," and not just this, but with the company's product roadmap, competitors didn't manage to catch on, and the AI bandwagon kept running with NVIDIA in the driver seat. According to an analysis by the renowned analyst Dan Nystedt, Team Green's current product cadence might just exhaust the supply chain, and we have already seen some signs of the flaws present in Blackwell GB200.
Back in May 2024, at Computex, NVIDIA announced that it would accelerate its AI roadmap, pushing out new architectures with a one-year difference, to catch up to market expectations and ensure that competitors don't get their "breathing space." Following the announcement, we saw the instead "forced" release of NVIDIA's Blackwell GB200 AI servers in Q4 2024, which was said to be in "limited quantities," only to ensure that the markets remain confident with NVIDIA as the leader, but did that pay off?
We saw Blackwell facing a massive yield rate issue that halted the supply chain, and NVIDIA's CEO Jensen Huang admitted to the flaw in the architecture. The problems weren't sorted out until early Q1 2025, with server manufacturers like Foxconn ramping up production by late Q1 2025. After the supply chain finally got some grip on the Blackwell AI lineup, NVIDIA announced the Blackwell Ultra GB300 lineup, which is said to come into production by H2 2025, which means that the yearly cadence has now halved, which is certainly something to note.
Maybe that is what NVIDIA is planning. Dominating the AI computing markets by forcing the industry to need the newer architectures, and ultimately, not allowing competitors to step up with their solutions. Since AMD's Instinct MI300 lineup, we saw NVIDIA release almost three new lineups, if you include the Hopper generation. So, it is safe to say that Team Green is leading itself into an AI supply chain exhaustion, or the other probability is that this is what the firm has wanted from the start.
To top it all off, Vera Rubin, the architecture announced at GTC 2025 and will drop in the market by late 2026, is rumored to be released six months earlier. This is due to the fact that SK Hynix already plans to mass-produce HBM4 by Q3-Q4 of 2025, which means that NVIDIA can potentially drop Rubin in the market by Q1 2026 or a "small-scale" launch by the end of this year. Memory manufacturers can't wait for their HBM4 to be integrated with a delay after production, and the only firm to announce the utilization of the standard is NVIDIA for now.
It will be interesting to see how NVIDIA's AI roadmap turns out by the end of the year. As Jensen says, "the more you buy, the more you save." Whether this turns out true or not is something for the future.
