Anonymous industry analysts cited by DigiTimes have revised down their 2025 forecast for Nvidia GB200-based NVL72 machines by more than 50%. This contradicts almost every AI hardware shipment forecast this year. One key issue is that analysts only revised down sales forecasts for machines powered by Nvidia’s Arm processors. We expect sales of x86-based machines with B200 GPUs for AI and HPC to be strong.
Millions of Blackwell AI GPUs to ship
The 2025 shipment forecast for the GB200 NVL72 cabinet has been lowered from 50,000-80,000 units to 25,000-35,000 units. Volume shipments are expected to begin in the second quarter and increase throughout the year. While a 56% reduction seems pretty dramatic, 35,000 cabinets with 72 GPUs per cabinet means 2.52 million GPUs will be shipped, which is surprising. You need to be careful. Also, these are the only Grace Blackwell machines with Nvidia’s Armv9-based processors. There will also be a Blackwell acceleration system running x86 processors.
It’s unclear why analysts cut their forecast for Arm-based GB200 NVL72 cabinet shipments in half.
Their industry research may have revealed that public interest in Arm-based machines for AI training and inference was overestimated. Or some companies may decide to stick with good old x86 and not rewrite their software for the Armv9 instruction set architecture.
Perhaps some customers decided not to use the NVL72 cabinet due to power and cooling requirements and switched to a less dense cabinet.
Also, in light of rumors that NVIDIA will launch 50% more powerful GB300 and B300 GPUs six months after the 200 series Blackwell products ship, some companies may have decided to delay sourcing GB200 machines. There is also. Of course, the GB300 and B300 products will also take time to launch, so it’s unlikely that Blackwell Refresh will eat into sales of the original Blackwell design as dramatically.
The AI hardware industry is thriving
Forecasts by analysts are somewhat at odds with what’s happening in the industry. TSMC, which makes Nvidia’s Blackwell AI GPUs and most other high-profile AI processors, saw first-quarter sales up nearly 35% year-over-year at midpoint, primarily due to increased demand for AI hardware. I expect that.
Leading AI server manufacturers Foxconn and Quanta have confirmed that the GB200 shipping schedule is on track and that significant orders continue as expected. Foxconn is said to have achieved its delivery goals while contributing to improvements in the development and validation process for the GB200 NVL72 cabinet. Additionally, to strengthen its AI server production capacity, Foxconn, through its subsidiary Ingrasys Technology USA, will invest $128 million to acquire a new facility in California and expand existing AI server production sites in Mexico and Texas. Complemented.
Similarly, Wistron, a major supplier of baseboards for Nvidia’s GPUs, is confident of sustained growth in AI server demand through 2025. The company expects double-digit growth in AI server shipments in the first quarter of 2022 and triple-digit growth in the first quarter of 2025. All year round. In late 2024, the company received shipments of NVL72 server cabinets from a number of competitors.
