Source item

Nvidia LPU/LPX racks set for order-of-magnitude growth: application trends, ecosystem integration, and a new PCB cycle 1. My latest supply-chain checks suggest that following Nvidia’s investment in Groq, LPU shipment forecasts have moved significantly higher. Total shipments in 2026–2027 are estimated at 4–5 million units (with 30–40% in 2026 and 60–70% in 2027). Relative to historical annual volumes, this implies order-of-magnitude growth, roughly 10×+. 2. Fast-growing LPU demand reflects two key factors: (1) Deep integration with Nvidia’s ecosystem (e.g., CUDA), significantly lowering barriers to application development and deployment. (2) Rapid expansion of ultra-low-latency inference workloads, including AI agents (such as coding agents) as well as emerging real-time, consumer-facing, and physical-AI applications. 3. Nvidia is expected to increase LPU density per rack from 64 to 256 units. This helps preserve ultra-low latency during the decode stage of inference while accommodating expanding KV-cache requirements driven by long-context inference. The new rack architecture is expected to enter mass production in 4Q26–1Q27, with rack shipments projected at 300–500 units in 2026 and 15,000–20,000 units in 2027. 4. Three key areas to monitor regarding LPU integration into the Nvidia ecosystem: (1) Network architecture: rack-level interconnect via NVLink Fusion and RealScale. (2) Developer interface: whether Nvidia NIM allows developers to deploy workloads without needing to distinguish between GPUs and LPUs. (3) Compiler integration: whether TensorRT-LLM supports the compile-first architecture of LPUs. 5. The ramp of LPU/LPX racks also has important implications for the PCB supply chain, with WUS Printed Circuit playing a key role. LPU/LPX racks represent the first large-scale deployment of M9-grade CCL materials. A successful ramp would not only contribute meaningfully to WUS’s 2027 earnings, but also confirm the company’s breakthrough in quartz-glass fabric processing for high-layer-count boards—potentially catalyzing a new growth cycle across the PCB industry.