Last week, news came out that Portal is available for SHIELD, which involved NVIDIA sending various members of the press a presumably tasty little cake. (And no, I’m not the least bit disgruntled about not getting one.) It turns out that Port…
Computer processors for PC like devices fall into four broad categories, starting with the smartphone/tablet, then the notebook, the desktop and finally the extreme desktop/server. These segments have different cadence formats from each of the compa…
This afternoon NVIDIA announced their quarterly earnings for Q1 2015. Overall GAAP revenue came in at $1.1B, up 16% year over year and down 4% sequentially. Gross margin was up slightly to 54.8%, up from 54.3% from Q1 2014, and up 0.7% from the previous quarter.
Most impressive of the numbers was the rise in net income, up 75% from Q1 2014 and coming in at $137M. Operating expenses were relatively flat sequentially, but up 4% from a year ago. This lead to an Earnings Per Share (EPS) of $0.24, an 85% increase from Q1 2014, although down $0.01 from last quarter. Non-GAAP EPS came in at $0.29, handily beating the analysts’ estimates of $0.17.
| NVIDIA Q1 2015 Financial Results (GAAP) | |||||
| In millions except EPS | Q1’2015 | Q4’2014 | Q1’2014 | Q/Q | Y/Y |
| Revenue | $1103 | $1144 | $955 | -4% | +16% |
| Gross Margin | 54.8% | 54.1% | 54.3% | +0.7% | +0.5% |
| Operating Expenses | $453 | $452 | $436 | flat | +4% |
| Net Income | $137 | $147 | $78 | -7% | +75% |
| EPS | $0.24 | $0.25 | $0.13 | -4% | +85% |
| NVIDIA Q1 2015 Financial Results (Non-GAAP) | |||||
| In millions except EPS | Q1’2015 | Q4’2014 | Q1’2014 | Q/Q | Y/Y |
| Revenue | $1103 | $1144 | $955 | -4% | +16% |
| Gross Margin | 55.1% | 53.8% | 54.6% | +1.3% | +0.5% |
| Operating Expenses | $411 | $408 | $396 | +1% | +4% |
| Net Income | $166 | $187 | $114 | -11% | +46% |
| EPS | $0.29 | $0.32 | $0.18 | -9% | +61% |
The GPU business is still the dominant division of NVIDIA, coming in at over 81% of the company’s entire revenue with $898M. GPU sales were strong for Q1, with revenue up 14% year over year, but down from Q4 2014. Most impressively, GeForce GTX GPUs for both desktops and notebooks grew 57% with strong demand for the newly released GTX 750 which is the first GPU based on Maxwell. NVIDIA stated that demand was strong in all markets for Desktop GPUs, and high-end notebook GPU volume also grew, but overall notebook GPU revenue was down. NVIDIA stated the seasonal decline in the desktop market more than offset the GTX GPU sales, contributing to the quarter over quarter decline.
Also on the GPU side, Quadro revenue increased with demand from all major OEM desktop and mobile workstation vendors. GRID sales were strong, and Tesla was also up. Tesla and GRID revenue increases was attributed to GPU acceleration opportunities, VDI deployments supporting Citrix, and streaming gaming providers.
Tegra Processor sales, which account for 12.6% of revenue, were up 35% year over year, and unlike GPU sales they were also up quarter over quarter 6%. The strong quarter for Tegra was attributed to a volume increase for smartphone and auto infotainment systems, but Android tablet SoCs were down partially offsetting the revenue gains. Automotive systems was up a healthy 60% year over year. Game consoles and embedded devices were down from Q1 2014, but the sequential growth of the Tegra division was attributed to the strong auto infotainment and embedded devices, so while embedded is down year over year, it’s recovered somewhat from the previous quarter.
NVIDIA has one other source of revenue which it reports on, which is $66M from patent license agreements with Intel.
| NVIDIA Quarterly Revenue Comparison (GAAP) | |||||
| In millions | Q1’2015 | Q4’2014 | Q1’2014 | Q/Q | Y/Y |
| GPU | $898 | $947 | $786 | -5% | +14% |
| Tegra Processor | $139 | $131 | $103 | +6% | +35% |
| Other | $66 | $66 | $66 | flat | flat |
NVIDIA is projecting their Q2 revenue will be flat at $1.1B plus or minus 2%.
Overall it was a good quarter for NVIDIA. The strong demand for their new Maxwell GPUs. NVIDIA’s share of notebook computers is the highest since 2010. Although uptake of the Tegra 4 has been slow in tablets, NVIDIA has seen growth in Smartphone adoption as well as a strong automotive presence which is becoming more important with the growth in automotive infotainment systems in every single automotive brand. I’m sure they are hoping for some design wins with the Tegra K1, which looks like a nice upgrade over the Tegra 4, however there was no mention of it in the earnings release. We still have a few months for them to hit their target for the first half of 2014.
Samsung today announced the worldwide commercial availability of its updated Enterprise Security and Management suite for Android – KNOX 2.0 – which is available first on the Galaxy S5, and with other Galaxy devices to follow via OS updates.
Th…
Back at CeBit 2014 we ran a news item regarding a couple of Sapphire branded AMD GPUs that used double the video memory of the standard R9 290X. It was going to be an interesting exercise to see if Sapphire were merely showing units and gauging interest, or if they were actually going to come to market with these 8GB behemoths. It would seem the Vapor-X model is at least hitting the shelves, although with only one retailer for a worldwide exclusive.
For normal 1080p gaming, most graphics cards come with 1GB or 2GB of video memory alongside the GPU. This for all intents and purposes covers most games at this resolution. When the resolution starts increasing, to 1440p, 1600p, 4K UHD or even multi-monitor, then numbers such as 3GB and 4GB become more relevant, especially when running the high resolution texture packs on games such as Skyrim. In these situations, the more video card memory you have, the less likely it is to be a bottleneck in performance. Up until this point, the biggest single graphics processor cards on the market had 6GB (GTX Titans and a Sapphire HD7970), and to get higher required the professional level workstation cards. However Sapphire has once again released a double memory GPU, giving their R9 290X Vapor-X 8GB model.
Specifications give us a 2816 SP Hawaii XT GPU overclocked to a core speed of 1060 MHz in turbo mode. The memory is set at 5.6 GHz, with two dual-link DVI ports, a HDMI port and a DisplayPort. It requires two 8-pin connections for power, and the use of a 600W PSU is a recommended minimum. The Vapor-X cooler is there to reduce temperatures, and Sapphire is also promoting a patent-pending choke design to offer 25% more power efficiency than the standard. A new addition to the Vapor-X line is Sapphire’s Intelligent Fan Control, which means that only one fan will spin while under simple 2D workloads.
The price for this card is £600 inc. VAT (or £500/$848 ex. VAT), compared to the 4GB model which retails for £492 or the R9 290X Matrix for £540. Part of this price will be the memory, and another part of it might be the exclusivity. I’m currently asking how long the exclusive is for. It comes with a two year warranty and six free games.
The retailer is OverclockersUK, who just happen to employ the world’s number one overclocker Ian ‘8Pack’ Parry. We interviewed him last year at the launch of his personalised 8Pack range of ‘world’s fastest systems’. Part of me wonders if some of the OcUK stock is going to be funnelled into a new project for high performance combined with resolution gaming. In the meantime, OcUK seem to have plenty of stock for users willing to pay the premium.
Source: OverclockersUK
Additional 5/8: I have been told that the entire stock of 8GB Sapphire models are solely for OcUK (and possible partners outside the UK), meaning that if there is interest outside the UK, Sapphire will have to make some more. Unfortunately what I am hearing suggests that no more will be made.
