NVIDIA's new business unit: custom-chip development for AI chips, next-gen consoles, cars, more

NVIDIA is forming a new business unit that has the goal for next-gen chips for AI processors, consoles, cloud computing, and more.

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The news is coming from 9 different sources of Reuters; NVIDIA wants to help companies make their own custom AI chips... businesses that otherwise go to their competitors like Broadcom and Marvell. Right now, custom silicon design for data centers is "dominated" by the likes of Broadcom and Marvell, so NVIDIA wants a slice of that pie (and many others).

Research firm 650 Group says that the data center custom chip market will grow by up to $10 billion this year, and then double that in 2025. The broader custom chip market was worth around $30 billion in 2023, amounting to around 5% of annual global chip sales, says Needham analyst Charles Shi.

NVIDIA would most likely be a design partner for a company, offering its intellectual property (IP) and technology, with chip fabrication, packaging, and other procedures left to the likes of TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) or Intel, with its future process nodes.

NVIDIA is reportedly targeting the automotive and video game markets, "according to sources and public social media postings," adds Reuters. We should see NVIDIA's custom chip inside of Nintendo's next-gen Switch 2 console, which I really hope Nintendo calls the Super Switch.

650 Group analyst Alan Weckel expects the custom audio market to grow from its current $6 billion to $8 billion range at 20% per year, while the console custom chip market with next-gen PlayStation 6 and Xbox consoles would increase from $7 billion to $8 billion. Inside of the current Nintendo Switch handheld console, is a custom NVIDIA Tegra X1 SoC... we should expect something much better inside of the Switch 2.