Nvidia’s successor to the Ampere architecture has been called Hopper since 2020. The name is a nod to Grace Hopper, a pioneer of computer science and a Navy officer. Among her achievements was the co-creation of UNIVAC, the first fully electronic computer; the co-creation of COBOL, the first enterprise programming language; and the coining of the term "bug" to describe a computer malfunction.

However, Hopper is also the name used by Dish Network for some of its products and its use is in reference to a kangaroo. In April last year, they contested Nvidia’s trademark of the name, claiming that it infringes on their trademark of it in relation to telecommunications services.

Nvidia’s trademark of the name is broad. It mentions telecommunications services once, in the context of providing software. Hopper is used more often to talk about data services, artificial intelligence and gaming products.

Since legal proceedings began, the companies have requested five suspensions to negotiate a settlement. The current suspension will expire on February 22, which doesn’t leave enough time for a court case if Nvidia wants to announce the Hopper architecture at GTC 2022 in March.

It seems likely that it would want to, given that it’s been two years since they announced the Ampere architecture. According to some leaks, Hopper will be an enterprise-focused architecture, like the older Volta architecture. AMD and Intel have announced their superseding architectures.

A reliable leaker recently shared that he believes the GH100 processor, based on the Hopper architecture, will have a die size of almost 1000 mm2. It could have up to 288 SMs, or 2.6 times more cores than the Ampere-based GA100 processor.