GTC Spring announcements aim for AI computing at the top and bottom of the spectrum. Monday, on the first day of Nvidia’s GTC Spring 2021 event, all eyes were on the announcement of the first Nvidia CPU, codenamed “Grace,” and rightfully so. Grace is a direct shot at Intel’s x86 processor architecture’s market share, which has dominated the data center for decades. Performance advantage with AI applications is one of the few standout characteristics of the latest Intel Ice Lake server chips, but, if Nvidia is to be believed, its upcoming CPU would easily blow past Ice Lake’s performance with AI models.