Comment "Central" is probably overstating it. (Score 2) 16
It's definitely interesting that Nvidia thinks RISC-V is big enough to be worth the port; but describing the CPU as 'central' to Nvidia's preferred design is deeply overselling it. The recommended layout is basically a bunch of GPUs chatting with one another over NVLink within the chassis; and using GPUDirect RDMA on Nvidia infiniband cards located on the same PCIe switch that the GPUs are for scaleout; with Nvidia ethernet DPUs handling the remaining high speed networking; and the CPU doing housekeeping.
Given that porting and maintaining on another ISA isn't free the fact that Nvidia bothered is certainly a vote of confidence is at least middling RISC-V options actually being attractive to enough potential buyers to be worth it; but the CPU is not intended to be a major player in a CUDA-oriented system, especially one of the larger ones.
Given that porting and maintaining on another ISA isn't free the fact that Nvidia bothered is certainly a vote of confidence is at least middling RISC-V options actually being attractive to enough potential buyers to be worth it; but the CPU is not intended to be a major player in a CUDA-oriented system, especially one of the larger ones.