Shares rallied Thursday across Asia, tracking gains on Wall Street after pressure from the bond market eased and oil prices fell back.

The advance was also powered by a stronger-than-expected quarterly report from chipmaker Nvidia, whose profit rocketed more than 200 per cent higher in the February-April quarter from a year earlier, while revenue jumped 85 per cent.

Nvidia has been one of the biggest beneficiaries from the boom in artificial intelligence, thanks to powerful demand for its high-end AI chips. Its shares rose 1.3 per cent on Wednesday before its earnings report was released, but they fell 1.3 per cent in afterhours trading after the announcement.

South Korea's Kospi soared 8 per cent to 7,787.74, helped by strong buying of technology shares such as Samsung Electronics, which gained 7.5 per cent after its labour union and management reached an agreement late Wednesday that averted a strike. Shares in SK Hynix, a computer chipmaker partnering with Nvidia, surged 11.3 per cent.

The Kospi has been breaching records, recently exceeding 8,000 for the first time.

Taiwan's Taiex, also heavily weighted toward technology shares, gained 3.9 per cent as major chipmaker TSMC's stock gained 3 per cent.

In Tokyo, the Nikkei 225 index jumped 3.6 per cent to 61,930.44. The government reported that Japan's exports rose nearly 15 per cent in April from a year earlier, despite shocks from the Iran war.

Chinese markets were virtually unchanged, with Hong Kong's Hang Seng flat at 25,648.28, while the Shanghai Composite index also was nearly flat at 4,162.37.

Australia's S&P/ASX 200 picked up 1.6 per cent to 8,628.80.

Oil prices were higher early Thursday, a day after Brent crude dropped 5 per cent. Brent, the international standard, gained 95 cents to $105.87 per barrel, while US benchmark crude added 92 cents to $99.18 per barrel.

Brent remains well above its roughly $70 level from before the war with Iran. Prices have been yo-yoing on rising and falling hopes that the United States and Iran can reach an agreement to allow oil deliveries to fully resume from the Persian Gulf to customers worldwide.

On Wednesday, US stocks bounced back, with the S&P 500 gaining 1.1 per cent for its first rise in four days. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 1.3 per cent and the Nasdaq composite rallied 1.5 per cent.

Stocks got a lift from easing yields in the bond market, as the yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.57 per cent from 4.67 per cent late Tuesday. That's a significant move for a market that measures things in hundredths of a percentage point.

The 10-year Treasury yield had been rising from less than 4 per cent before the war with Iran began, along with other government bond yields around the world, because of worries that the fighting will keep oil prices high, among other factors.