Nvidia at J.P. Morgan Tech Conference May 24, 2006

Geo

Mostly Harmless
Legend
J.P. Morgan Tech Conference, May 24th 2006

Mike Hara, VP Investor Relations

Usual disclaimers: What geo found interesting, as best I heard it.

Year ago organized into 5 business units. GPU, Chipset (MCP), Professional Systems (workstation + broadcasting + imaging), Video game market, handheld.

Growth Drivers: Vista, HD, BRD. Do not believe typical cpu/igp can play back full screen 1080 without fault. Think it helps them on the notebook side going forward and are begining to see that with design wins being announced. NV chipset business unique because of high margins blended. Think MCP will be biggest growth for them this year both percent and dollars. Currently 17% of the business.

Ode to performance per mm2, and expecting this to be long term trend.

Q&A

CY Q2? A: Q2 is always down, notebook not quite as much because of overall growth. May and June is always slow, July is the "back to school" ramp up.

Global PC growth 7-11%? A: Our estimate is 5-8%.

2007 depending on Vista? A: Actual Vista date isn't the driver. The eco-system is already ramping up long before that. Expects "Vista ready" hardware sales campaigns "well before" January. [which implies to me they plan to have their Vista parts ready "well before" too]

When's your next gen part? A: "Well, you know GPUs are getting so large and so complex the timing of it is almost one of those things that the timing of it is 'it comes out when it comes out'. . .as much as you try to plan it for a certain event it really is on a schedule that says 'when it's done it's done'. . .now the reason why that works, at least for the high-end. . .the first high-end gpu that comes out. . .is because it is going to get purchased by enthusiasts who really don't care if it is Christmas, the middle of summer, or spring. If it has a discernible advantage over the last gpu, they'll buy it. So our schedule right now on the next generation GeForce [Hmm, that's the first time we've heard them confirm it is still 'GeForce'?] is going to be second half, and the objective is to hit it for 'back to school'. But fundamentally we're really just targeting second half. Which means that the current GeForce 7 family, with the exception of the high-end, is really the family you're going to see in the back to school cycle. [So what I got out of that: if next spin goes well, they hit 'back to school' for a high-end part. If not, it'll be later. And no full family simultaneous launch.] But this one is. . .we kind of describe it inside the company as. . . 'this is probably the biggest architectural change in the company's history from one generation to the next' [Hmm!] I'll give you a little bit of insight. . .this device is going to be over half a billion transistors large. It will, without doubt, be the most complex device being built in the semi-conductor business today. So the current schedule right now is to have it in the second half. And we'll do typical, which is a 'hard launch', which means we'll launch it when it's actually available in retail.

Chipset, and Intel market? A: Always looking to add value, and be the technology leader. That's what people will pay for. In Intel you're competing on price. Own 42% of AMD market. Chiset business has changed, and is following the graphics business. . .in graphics business, complexity went up, number of players reduced, and profitability increased. Happening in chipsets now. Becoming much more important in platform, and bandwidth is becoming high I-O. Requires investment which requires revenues. Expects consolidation in the chipset space, leading to higher stability and profits for the survivors. 'This is an inflection point for the chipset business'.

Consumer? A: Product cycles are long. Not really interested in HDTV for them, don't see the value they could bring and competing on price is not their bag, baby. Huge opportunities in handhelds tho.

Cutting wafer production? A: 'We manage wafer starts all day long'. Very comfortable with current inventory. We look at quality of inventory more than quantity. Stopped producing GF6, and inventory of them is very low. Will be moving GF7 high-end inventory down in preparation for "GeForce 8" [Bingo, another public confirmation of name]. MCP sales were somewhat lower, but quality of inventory is very fresh.

Expanding chipset functionality? A: We take features out too when not necessary. New chipset in the fall reduces silicon and will increase margins. Comfortable long-term chipset margins will be at least in the high-30s.

New Sony projects? A: Can't say. Expects "many NRE projects" with Sony over the next few years. NRE & license $75M year this year. Sony expects for PS3 2M by launch, 2M by Christmas, 2M by March.
 
Excellent, cheers G. Rep if I could :)

So, we have 500M+ transistors, (pretty solid) confirmation of GeForce 8 as the product name, intent to ship well before the end of the year, and NV4x is dead in terms of wafer production. Nothing new there then :LOL:
 
Thanks G, this seems to be becoming a regular feature....want a "Geo's Financial Corner" spot over at EB? I'll give you your own column...

Oh, I could rep. Please don't hate me for it, you keep earning it.
 
"geo is a shameless rep whore!"

Oh, Wavey, you ingrate! I just repped you too! :LOL:
 
'this is probably the biggest architectural change in the company's history from one generation to the next'

Could this mean a move to Unified Shaders?

Or is it more likely he means the architectural changes required for D3D10?
 
NV3 (3.5 million)
NV4 (7 million) 100%
NV5 (15 million) 114%
NV10 (23 million) 53%
NV15 (25 million) 9%
NV20 (57 million) 128%
NV25 (63 million) 10%
NV30 (125 million) 98%
NV35 (135 million) 8%
NV40 (222 million) 64%
G70 (302 million) 36%
G71 (278 million) 8%
G80 (500+ million) 80%+
 
Neeyik said:
Oh. I've never noticed before that the G71 dropped 24M transistors from the G70 - what disappeared?

I believe they pointed at "optimizations of the pipeline" for that in going to 90nm, and the experience with G70. Given that I think they also added a fillip or two here and there, the "total subtracted" (as opposed to net) would actually be greater than that.
 
Might have had something to do with prepping it for RSX and shortening the pipelines whilst being able to increase the clockspeed due to process maturity.

What do you, Geo, make of the way NVIDIA shares have been falling over the last month or so?
 
Tahir2 said:
What do you, Geo, make of the way NVIDIA shares have been falling over the last month or so?

Despite Digi nominating me as a financial analyst, I'm not. I just like listening to these calls for the nuggets that can be gleaned directly or indirectly. And enuf of a community guy to figure I might as well share since I'm going to do it anyway. So anybody who buys or sells stock based on my comments is being very reckless. :D

Having said that, I suspect there are several factors there. Things like the inventory report Jawed linked upstream probably contribute. There was at least one analyst who turned against them awhile back too. I think the "daily gallon of sh*t" (fairly or unfairly, and my own opinion is it is reaching 'piling on' status) that has been falling on Sony's/PS3's head since E3 cannot help there either.

And I tend to think they had an awesome run in 2005 and early 2006, and possibly some investors and analysts (the analyst who turned against them, if I remember correctly, said something similiar) think they reached a high-water mark and some retrenchment was more likely than continued increases at the pace they had achieved for awhile there. When a significant portion of the "momentum guys" who had been in your corner take a walk on you, it can have a significant short term effect on your stock price.

Edit: Come to think of it, the AMD/ATI rumor couldn't help NV's stock price either, to the degree it was given any credence by individual investors.
 
geo said:
Expanding chipset functionality? A: We take features out too when not necessary. New chipset in the fall reduces silicon and will increase margins. Comfortable long-term chipset margins will be at least in the high-30s.

that's how they got their moronic idea of having only one IDE port supported by nforce 5? ;)
 
Blazkowicz_ said:
that's how they got their moronic idea of having only one IDE port supported by nforce 5? ;)

That would be Intel's influence, for sure.
Santa Clara is a tiny place, it seems...
 
Now if it was less than 500M+ then the dual core theory would be shot down in flames ... but it isn't so the dual core peeps can still spread their heresy ...

Excellent.
 
Interesting they are still trying to shoot for an end of summer release of the G80. I would have never guessed it with the GX2 being released.
 
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