Nvidia reported high quarterly sales growth powered by strong demand for the company's processors used in gaming computers and in data centers. Nvidia has emerged as a dominant player in the high-end PC gaming market. The gaming division accounts for more than half of the company's total revenue.

Nvidia has been diversifying into fields such as self-driving cars, virtual reality and into making processing units for deep learning, a fast-growing field of artificial intelligence that helps computers crunch and make sense of huge amounts of data.

"Strong demand for our new Pascal-generation GPUs and surging interest in deep learning drove record results," Chief Executive Jen-Hsun Huang said in a statement.

Data centers have emerged as a growth engine for the company, notching a near 110 percent jump in sales in the latest quarter from a year earlier.

Revenue from the company's gaming business, which makes chips that render graphics in video games, rose 18.3 percent to $781 million in the second quarter ended July 31.

Nvidia forecast revenue to increase to $1.68 billion plus or minus two percent in the current quarter.

Revenue rose about 24 percent to a record $1.43 billion in the three months ended July. Nvidia's net income soared to $253 million, in the latest quarter from $26 million a year earlier.

Deal with Samsung?

In related news, Samsung Electronics has won a contract manufacturing order to make new GPU products for Nvidia, South Korea's Chosun Biz newspaper reported on Friday, citing unnamed sources.

The paper said Samsung would start making the next-generation GPUs using its 14-nanometre production technology before year-end, based on the U.S. company's Pascal architecture. It did not specify the value of the order.