Nvidia's new graphics chips are finally here after a long two-year wait.
On Monday the chipmaker unveiled its latest eighth-generation Turing graphics architecture at a conference in Vancouver.
"Turing is NVIDIA's most important innovation in computer graphics in more than a decade," Nvidia CEO and founder Jensen Huang said at the SIGGRAPH conference according to a company release. "Hybrid rendering will change the industry, opening up amazing possibilities that enhance our lives with more beautiful designs, richer entertainment and more interactive experiences. The arrival of real-time ray tracing is the Holy Grail of our industry."
Nvidia shares rose 1.5 percent in Tuesday's premarket session. Its stock is up 32 percent so far this year through Monday versus the S&P 500's 6 percent gain.
One Wall Street analyst is optimistic the new chips will drive the company's sales later this year.
"NVIDIA launched the Quadro RTX line of workstation cards, featuring the new Turing GPU core. Compared to Pascal, Turing is 1.7x larger in terms of size / transistors," Raymond James analyst Chris Caso said in a note to clients entitled "Utterly Awesome - NVDA Announces Turing GPU" Monday. "While GeForce gaming cards were not launched Monday night, we do expect gaming cards featuring Turing to be launched shortly. … We expect the new gaming product cycle to be a catalyst for NVIDIA's stock in 2H18."
Caso reiterated his outperform rating and $300 price target for Nvidia shares, representing 17 percent upside to Monday's close.
Earlier this week Cowen noted Nvidia's gaming business sales rose by 46 percent in the year after it launched the last big chip Pascal in May 2016.
Nvidia said Quadro professional workstation graphics cards with Turing technology will be available in the fourth quarter.
The company is slated to deliver its July quarter earnings report Thursday.
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