Last night NVIDIA published its fourth quarter and fiscal 2014 results. The results for Q4 and forecasts for Q1 were largely positive, driven by PC gaming inspired GPU sales and processors sold to the automotive industry. However year on year comparisons weren't as favourable.
GeForce GTX GPU revenue up nearly 50 per cent
Among Nvidia's highlights for Q4 the most striking is that the firm managed to grow GeForce GTX GPU revenue nearly 50 per cent in the face of global PC shipment declines. Also Nvidia launched the Tegra K1, a new SoC which makes use of the Kepler architecture, in which it has great hopes. Other highlights of the quarter include; Denver – a 64-bit ARM core, the Audi in-car Tegra-powered infotainment partnership, the launch of the Tesla K40 accelerator and the IBM supercomputer partnership.
"Quarterly revenue came in well above our outlook, driven by PC gaming, capping an outstanding year for our GPU business," said Jen-Hsun Huang, president and chief executive officer of NVIDIA. "Tesla and Quadro both achieved record annual revenue. GRID cloud technology is being evaluated at hundreds of large enterprises worldwide. And Tegra K1 is disrupting the auto industry, paving the way to self-piloted cars. The groundbreaking work we are doing in visual computing is expanding the opportunities for our GPUs."
Speciality PC market
Seeking to explain the difference between its performance and that of the wider PC market Huang added that "We're not really in the mainstream PC market, we're really in the speciality PC market." He also referred to the PC as the gaming console of China.
Silicon Valley campus, with triangular buildings, put on hold
We also hear that Nvidia's plans to rival the likes of Facebook and Apple in Silicon Valley, by constructing a campus with triangle shaped eco-friendly buildings, has been put on hold. Reuters notes the significance of the triangle to the graphics industry – as a basic building block in 3D computer graphics.
Analysts think this is a prudent move and Huang said the company is still in "pretty good shape", using its existing facilities for now.