If someone told you that you could have the power of a thousand computers in a box the size of a video game console, you'd think the person you were talking to was crazy. What if that person was Jensen Huang? No, because that's exactly what Nvidia presented al CES 2025: I'm talking about Project Digits, a personal supercomputer that promises to bring AI from the clouds of cloud computing right to your desk.
The Supercomputer That Looks Like a (Small) PlayStation
I was telling my colleagues that this is the era of mini computers. Some laughed. Now it makes me smile to think that Project Digits looks more like a gaming console than a supercomputer. But don't be fooled by appearances: this little beast hides the new chip GB10 Grace Blackwell Superchip, developed in partnership with MediaTek, which offers mind-blowing performance. Just think: it can handle AI models with up to 200 billion parameters. It's like having an entire research lab in one box. And if you really want to go overboard, you can connect two of them together and reach 405 billion parameters. The beauty is that you can use it as a standalone workstation or connect it to your Windows PC or Mac. Total flexibility. Need I go on? Oh, I'll go on: then, who wants to read.
Project Digits, brute power in numbers
A petaflop of computing power. I know that said like that it doesn't mean much to the layman. Let's put it this way: as mentioned, it's the equivalent of having a thousand latest-generation gaming PCs working in sync. All this thanks to the perfect marriage between a Blackwell GPU and cpu grace to 20 cores. Supporting this power are 128GB of memory and up to 4TB of flash storage. Numbers that would make the supercomputer that sent man to the moon pale in comparison (well, I like to win easily). And to think that it all fits in a desktop case.
And now, the elephant in the room: the price. Who's actually going to buy it?
Let's be clear: $3.000 is not peanuts. It's the price of a decent used car or a very luxurious vacation. But it's still less than an Apple Vision Pro (Tim, damn you: but what have you done?). Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, in a nutshell, has a clear vision:
It's a cloud computing platform that sits on your desk.
It couldn’t be clearer. For those who work with AI, it could be a sensible investment. Think about how much is spent on cloud computing to train complex models. In some cases, Project Digits could pay for itself in a few months. Back to the question that gives the title to this paragraph: who will actually buy it? Project Digits, which will hit the market in May through selected partners, will make the fortune of AI researchers, data scientists and students. It makes me think of when as kids we dreamed of the perfect computer to play with. Today, “kids” dream of the perfect computer to train AI models.
It won't be for everyone, that's true. But that's not the point. Project Digits represents a paradigm shift: it brings the computing power of large research centers into the hands of individual innovators. And this is quite newsworthy, because it brings with it a completely crucial issue.
Project Digits, the democratization of AI
There’s something poetic about watching technology evolve. From room-sized mainframes to PCs, from smartphones to cloud computing, and now the circle is closing: the supercomputer is back on the desktop. Miniaturized like Alice drinking the wrong potion. Project Digits could be the first of a new generation of tools that democratize access to AI. Just as the PC revolutionized personal computing in the 80s, these devices could do the same for artificial intelligence.
The future of AI will not only be in the hands of tech giants with their massive data centers, but also in the hands of independent researchers, brilliant students, and innovators of all kinds. And that, perhaps, is the true value of Project Digits. Devil of a Jensen: now let me explain better those "prophetic" words of yours.
