Behind the Scenes of Nvidia’s Server and Networking Empire

The Next Platform reports that Nvidia’s server and network businesses are growing, but numbers are not clear. Computer & Networking revenues increased by 36.4% on a year-over-year basis to $15.07 Billion, while Data Center revenues were just over $15 Billion in the 12 months leading up to January 2023. It has been speculated that Nvidia’s systems business is around $15.005billion. Mellanox, a company that was valued at $1.45billion and grew at 27.2%, was acquired by Nvidia in the past year. Mellanox accounted for about 30% of Nvidia Datacenter Division revenue. Estimates put the sales of switches and NICs for the past 12 months at $4.5 billion. This leaves just over $10 billion for data center computing.

This number crunching assumes that PCI-Express cards of all kinds accounted for around 40% of Datacenter computer revenues. This is thought to be dominated by T4, A40 and L4 cards that are not compatible with NVLink modules. PCI Express versions of A100 and H100 accelerators that are available on SXM4 or SXM5 modules with their NVLink ports, NVSwitch interconnects and SXM4 and SXM5 SXM5 modules, contributed $4.2 billion in revenue. More than 840,000 units were sold, with the remainder of $6.3 billion going to DGX servers and HGX parts.

If we assume that the DGX machines are 20% of revenues, then the total number of Nvidia accelerated systems, regardless of where they were sold, was under $180,000. The average server SXM style, NVLink capable GPU sold for a little over $19,000 and the average Nvidia data center GPU from any time sold for a little less than $9,200. The report suggests that hyperscalers may have accounted for 40% of Datacenter Division revenues. However, it is unknown if this is a significant number.