Jensen Huang press Q&A: Nvidia's plans for the Omniverse, Earth-2, and CPUs

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently hosted yet another spring GTC event that drew more than 200,000 participants. And while he didn't succeed in acquiring Arm for $80 billion, he did have a lot of things to show off to those gathering at the big event. He gave an update on Nvidia's plans for Earth-2, a digital twin of our planet that -- with enough supercomputing simulation capability within the Omniverse –could enable scientists to predict climate change for our planet. The Earth 2 simulation will require the best technology -- like Nvidia's newly announced graphics processing unit (GPU) Hopper and its upcoming central processing unit (CPU) Grade. Huang fielded questions about the ongoing semiconductor shortage, the possibility of investing in manufacturing, competition with rivals, and Nvidia's plans in the wake of the collapse of the Arm deal. He conveyed a sense of calm that Nvidia's business is still strong (Nvidia reported revenues of $7.64 billion for its fourth fiscal quarter ended January 30, up 53% from a year earlier). Gaming, datacenter, and professional visualization market platforms each achieved record revenue for the quarter and year. He also talked about Nvidia's continuing commitment to the self-driving vehicle market, which has been slower to take off than expected. Huang held a Q&A with the press during GTC and I asked him the question about Earth-2 and the Omniverse (I also moderated a panel on the industrial metaverse as well at GTC). I was part of a large group of reporters asking questions. Question: With the war in Ukraine and continuing worries about chip supplies and inflation in many countries, how do you feel about the timeline for all the things you've announced? For example, in 2026 you want to do DRIVE Hyperion. With all the things going into that, is there even a slight amount of worry? Jensen Huang: There's plenty to worry about. I have to observe, though, that in the last couple of years, the facts are that Nvidia has moved faster in the last couple of years than potentially its last 10 years combined. It's quite possible that we work better, actually, when we allow our employees to choose when they're most productive and let them optimize, let mature people optimize their work environment, their work time frame, their work style around what best fits for them and their families. It's very possible that all of that is happening. It's also true, absolutely true, that it has forced us to put a lot more energy into the virtual work that we do. For example, the work around OmniVerse went into light speed in the last couple of years because we needed it. Instead of being able to come into our labs to work on our robots, or go to the streets and test our cars, we had to test in virtual worlds, in digital twins.