Tag Archives: nvda

Oculus Rift VR Sales Pit Nvidia, Advanced Micro In GPU Battle

Facebook ( FB )-owned Oculus has pledged to release more than 100 virtual reality games by year’s end, a move that will buoy Tesla Motors ( TSLA ) partner Nvidia ( NVDA ), MKM analyst Ian Ing wrote Tuesday as he reiterated a buy rating on shares. Intraday on the stock market today , Nvidia stock jumped 3.2% ahead of the chipmaker’s scheduled fiscal Q4 earnings report. Late Wednesday, Nvidia is expected to report record-breaking sales, but earnings that fall for the first time in two years. For Nvidia’s fiscal Q4, the consensus of 29 analysts model $1.31 billion in sales, up 5% year over year, and 32 cents earnings per share ex items, down 9% vs. the year-earlier quarter. Three months ago, Nvidia guided to $1.3 billion in sales, plus or minus 2%. Analysts view $4.92 billion in sales and $1.05 EPS minus items for Nvidia’s fiscal 2016 — up 5% and down 6%, respectively, vs. fiscal 2015. Nvidia’s Q4 guidance implies a full-year outlook of $4.91 billion in sales. MKM’s Ing expects Nvidia to outperform its peers “in a challenging earnings season.” Other chipmakers have suffered Apple ( AAPL ) fatigue in December and ahead of the weak March quarter. “Nvidia remains our top pick based on strength in its core gaming business (58% of October quarter sales) plus abundant ‘call options’ where GPUs could become the ideal solution in coming years,” Ing wrote in a research report. Tesla, Audi, Volkswagen ( VLKAY ), Honda ( HMC ) and BMW use Nvidia graphics processing units (GPUs), according to a November Canaccord report. Continuing infotainment and autonomous-driver efforts will boost Nvidia, Ing wrote. With the release of the Oculus Rift VR headset in March, Nvidia and rival Advanced Micro Devices ( AMD ) are poised to “leapfrog each other” to supply gamers’ video cards, Ing wrote. The Rift website specifies the Nvidia GTX 970 or AMD R9 290. Pricing trends have been relatively benign lately, Ing wrote. Average sales prices for the GTX 980 and 970 are flat sequentially, with the GTX 960 down 1% quarter over quarter. All three are year-old cards. ASPs for the GTX Titan X are up 7% quarter over quarter with only three SKUs now available. “This suggests that demand is outstripping supply for these cards, which include scientific and academic applications,” Ing wrote. He expects prices to surge as Nvidia refreshes its Pascal series later this year. Ing reiterated a 39 price target on Nvidia stock. He noted that bears are “overly focused” on Nvidia gaming’s high exposure to China — about 40% of gaming sales in August. “Gaming growth is more driven by share gains against traditional entertainment consumption rather than macro,” he wrote. “We note that original equipment manufacturer sales were less than 10% of sales last quarter.” Nvidia stock surged 70% over four months between August and December. But shares have fallen lately, and Nvidia stock is now 24% off its 2015 high of 33.94 achieved Dec. 30.  

Apple Supplier ARM Topples On Mobile Decline; Eyes IoT, Cloud

U.K.-based  Apple ( AAPL ) supplier ARM Holdings ( ARMH ) stock toppled Wednesday, as its earnings disappointed despite Q4 sales topping Wall Street expectations, amid a strategic shift into the Internet of Things and cloud markets. ARM stock fell 8.8% Wednesday, to 37.74, and touched its lowest point since July 2013. Shares under-performed IBD’s 41-company Electronic Semiconductor-Fabless industry group, which fell a fraction after touching a 16-month low this week. ARM isn’t pretending the smartphone market hasn’t stalled, Rene Haas, the company’s executive vice president and chief commercial officer, told IBD. But ARM still has headroom for growth, he said. “It’s nothing we haven’t been expecting nor planning for,” he said. “But about half our revenue comes from outside smartphones.” For Q4, ARM reported $407.9 million in sales and 8.2 pence (12 cents) earnings per share ex items. Both measures were up 14% year over year, ARM said. The consensus of 11 analysts polled by Thomson Reuters modeled $398.1 million and 38 cents (26.2 pence). The designer of mobile chips saw sales rise 15% for the year, to $1.49 billion. EPS rose 25% to 30.2 pence (44 cents). Fourth-quarter licensing sales fell 2% to $1.58 million, but royalty sales rose 31% to $216.7 million. Software/tool sales rose 19%. However, smartphone-chip sales fell 3%. ARM guided to 2016 sales “broadly in line with market expectations” at roughly 9.7% year-over-year growth to $1.63 billion in sales, William Blair analyst Anil Doradla wrote in a research report. Doradla reiterated his outperform rating on ARM stock, but Canaccord Genuity analyst Matthew Ramsay cut his price target to 55 from 60, citing continued macroeconomic semiconductor uncertainty. He maintained his buy rating on ARM stock. ARM Finagles Stalled Mobile Industry Roughly 45% of ARM’s sales stem from smartphones, down from 60% in 2010. The smartphone slowdown won’t slug ARM nearly as hard as its rivals, Haas told IBD. During Q4, ARM shipped 4 billion chips. Half of the smartphone chips shipped contained ARM’s 64-bit processor, which commands higher royalty fees than ARM’s older, 32-bit processor. About 40% of smartphone chips shipped contained ARM’s graphics processing unit (GPU), Mali, and 10% held eight or more cores. “What that means is that even as growth slows from a unit standpoint, we still have good room to grow because underneath the hood we have three strong factors that drive growth in the market,” Haas said, referring to processors, GPUs and cores. ‘Cars Are Just Getting Smarter’ In 2016, ARM expects to grow further into the cloud and Internet of Things markets, Haas said. Licensing in both segments could be a boon. Networking market share grew to 15% in 2015 vs. 10% in 2014, and ARM now counts Broadcom ( AVGO ) and Marvell Technology Group ( MRVL ) among its networking chip clients. Advanced Micro Devices ( AMD ), Nvidia ( NVDA ) and Qualcomm ( QCOM ) also use ARM-based server chips, according to ARM. “That (5% jump in networking) is a pretty big jump, given what’s going on in that marketplace and given that those markets have some stickiness once you’re inside,” Haas said. In the Internet of Things market, Haas expects ARM to benefit from burgeoning automotive intelligence. Most “embedded technologies” — thermostats, motors, drones and vehicles — use older technology. But the 8-bit micro-controllers powering those technologies are rapidly being replaced by the 32-bit architecture, Haas says. “The fact is cars are just getting smarter,” he said. “There are cars today that could have 100-plus chips inside them. A smartphone might only have one or two chips using ARM technology.”

Feds Tell Google: AI Brain Can Be ‘Driver’ In Self-Driving Car

Hold onto your seats — the whole self-driving car revolution just accelerated. Feds have told Alphabet ’s ( GOOGL ) Google Car chief that under federal law, a computer can count as the “driver” in vehicles that lack things like steering wheels and brakes built for humans to control. “We agree that Google’s Self-Driving System may be deemed to be the driver” for purposes of compliance with certain provisions of law, the feds’ letter to Google says, “given that there will be no foot (or even hand) control to be activated, indeed, given that the SDS will have neither feet nor hands to activate brakes.” The Feb. 4 Google Car letter from the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration  amounts to an abrupt shift in thought after years of carmakers’ developing autonomous cars by focusing on the human driver as final decision maker on the road (which actually means semi-autonomous cars). The letter makes a fork in the road, with both paths likely going forward. Will cars free of human drivers get a final go? Some issues still “must be resolved through rule-making or other regulatory means,” the letter notes. Besides Alphabet,  Apple ( AAPL ) is rumored to be working on self-driving cars in its Project Titan. Electric carmaker Tesla Motors ( TSLA ) has rolled out advanced semi-autonomous driving and inched into full autonomy. The Tesla Summon feature even lets cars maneuver largely alone to pick up owners in their driveway as owners keep an eye on what’s happening. BMW has a Remote Control Parking function on its 7 Series cars, too. Automakers  Toyota ( TM ), Volkswagen ( VLKAY ), Ford ( F ), Volvo, Daimler ( DDAIF ) and others have been testing self-driving cars. Tech firms working on aspects of the innovations include Nvidia ( NVDA ), NXP Semiconductors ( NXPI ), Mobileye ( MBLY ) and others, in partnership with carmakers. How Does A Google Car Work? Google’s approach has stood largely alone, sans humans. Addressed to Chris Urmson, director of the Self-Driving Car Project at Google, the NHTSA letter responds to the company’s November request for interpretation of federal motor vehicle safety standards. “According to Google, those self-driving vehicles (SDVs) are fully autonomous motor vehicles, i.e., vehicles whose operations are controlled exclusively by a Self-Driving System (SDS). The SDS is an artificial-intelligence (AI) driver, which is a computer designed into the motor vehicle itself that controls all aspects of driving by perceiving its environment and responding to it. Thus, Google believes that the vehicles have no need for a human driver,” the letter says. It goes on to say, “In this response, NHTSA addresses each of Google’s requests for interpretation and grants several of them.” A Reuters report Wednesday delved into the details of the NHTSA letter to Google . Safety Worries In Human-Computer Handoff So what happens with insurance when AI is driving? “The insurance aspects of this gradual transformation are at present unclear,” the Insurance Information Institute (III) said in a February 2015 topic paper on self-driving cars . It summed up the special case with Google at the time this way: “Google, the company that has been the public face of self-driving cars in the United States for the past few years, announced in May 2014 that it is building a fleet of vehicles without a steering wheel or role for a driver because its technology has not been able to successfully switch control back and forth from automated driving to the driver in an emergency and does not expect to be able to accomplish that soon. The prototype will have a top speed of 25 mph and will be summoned by a smartphone, in effect serving as an automated taxi service.” The III went on, “Other companies building autonomous cars said that they will continue to work on vehicles that will be able to safely make that switch.” But before mass production of such cars would be possible, it added, the size and cost of sensors powered by lasers used to steer the cars must come down. In the NHTSA response to Google this month, the agency says that Google has been concerned that giving human occupants controls to operate things like steering and braking “could be detrimental to safety” amid human attempts to override a self-driving system. Feds Budget Billions For Autonomous Car Tests Tuesday,  President Obama’s $4.1 trillion federal budget proposal for fiscal 2017 lays out $3.9 billion to test, over 10 years, how connected cars and self-driving cars can operate with infrastructure and each other. The budget, which would levy a $10.25-a-barrel tax on oil, “calls for a 21st Century Clean Transportation initiative ,” Obama said in his budget message, “that would help to put hundreds of thousands of Americans to work modernizing our infrastructure to ease congestion and make it easier for businesses to bring goods to market through new technologies such as autonomous vehicles and high-speed rail, funded through a fee paid by oil companies.” Autonomous car testing is planned, the Department of Transportation said last month, in “corridors throughout the country” in order to accelerate development and adoption of “safe vehicle automation through real-world pilot projects.”