GPU manufacturer Nvidia posted record revenues of $3.21 billion for the three months ending April 29th.

The figure is up 66 per cent year-on-year from $1.94 billion. A good year for gaming remained a key part of Nvidia’s strategy, boosted by a strong showing for cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence sectors.

Gross profit reached $2.07 billion, up from $1.15 billion in 2017.

Strong year for games

Tegra Processor business revenue, which includes SOC modules for the Nintendo Switch gaming console, was $442 million. This is up 33 percent from a year ago.

Games hardware remains the biggest market for Nvidia by far. A strong period for the Nintendo Switch - which uses the manufacturer’s Tegra chips - combined with Geforce GTX cards generated $1.7 billion for Nvidia. That’s 62 per cent up from last year’s $1.03 billion.

Nvidia’s fastest-growing sector was in datacenters. The company’s TensorRT 4 and DGX-2 hardware and software pairing has proven popular in AI research and development.

Earnings in this space are up 71 per cent year-over-year to a record $701 million. These datacenter GPUs are significantly pricier than Nvidia’s gaming hardware. With the DGX-2 selling at over $400,000, the manufacturer doesn’t have to sell nearly as many to keep pace.

“We had a strong quarter with growth across every platform,” said Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.

“Our datacenter business achieved another record and gaming remained strong.”

Cryptocurrency remained a key sector for Nvidia. The company brought in $289 million from mining-related activity in Q1, even as supply and demand for GPUs in crypto machines has stabilised.