What is NVLink72? Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang debuts RTX Blackwell "GPU shield" at CES 2025

At CES 2025, Nvidia showed off the power and scaling capabilities of NVLink72, the company's 5th gen chip-to-chip interconnect bridge. The NVLink72 is the key to achieving an excellent level of computing horsepower in combination with Nvidia's Blackwell architecture.

Jensen Huang, Nvidia's CEO, also showed off a Blackwell "GPU shield" at CES 2025, leaving a lot of people wondering what it was.

To simplify things, this article will shed more light on the NVLink72, its features, and more.

Note: Some aspects of this article are subjective and solely reflect the writer's opinions.

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What is NVLink72?

NVLink72 in a GB200 server rack (Image via Nvidia)

The NVLink72 is a 5th-generation serial chip-to-chip multi-lane interconnect bridge that can link a total of 72 Blackwell GPUs and 36 Grace CPUs in a rack-scale design. This allows all 72 GPUs to act as a single giant compute chip to tackle some of the most complex and large AI models.

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Features of the NVLink72

Here are some of the most prominent features of the NVLink72:

• It can connect up to 72 Blackwell GPUs and 36 Grace CPUs.
• It can deliver a total bandwidth of 1.8TB/sec bidirectionally, which is double the previous generation.
• The total bandwidth of the NVLink72 is over 14 times higher than that of PCIe Gen 5.
• You can connect multiple NVLink72s via NVLink Switch.

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Technological breakthroughs enabled by NVLink72

Here are some of the technological breakthroughs enabled by the NVLink72:

• Nvidia Blackwell architecture: The NVLink72 is designed to handle the high-performance and high-bandwidth requirements of the Nvidia Blackwell architecture.
• Nvidia Grace CPU: It can provide 1.8TB/sec of bidirectional bandwidth, thanks to the combination of Blackwell architecture and Nvidia Grace CPUs.
• Fifth-Gen Bridge: NVLink72 is Nvidia's fifth-gen bridge that enables access to the full potential of exascale computing.
• Nvidia networking: Nvidia's networking capabilities play a huge role in delivering some of the performance breakthroughs delivered by the NVLink 72.

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What is the RTX Blackwell "GPU shield"?

GPU Shield with the GB200 NVLink72 rack (Image via Nvidia)

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was seen carrying a huge GPU Shield at CES 2025, which had a picture of the Blackwell architecture. The shield was created to demonstrate the true size of the GB200 NVLink72 server rack if it was designed in one silicon chip.