13 ms·

Nvidia CEO says Google is the only customer building its own silicon at scale

222 points by lawrenceyan 7y ago

giacaglia 7y ago
For people that are interested in Nvidia and AMD's strategy, there is an interesting podcast about it: https://ark-invest.com/research/podcast/nvidia-podcast-crypto-implosion https://ark-invest.com/research/podcast/nvidia-podcast-crypt...
- nootka 7y ago
  > Notably forecasted the global Crypto crash of 2k18... an opinion against the grain in his field. Was his field /r/bitcoin? I'm pretty sure the entire world saw that one coming.
  - penagwin 7y ago
    Hindsight is 20/20 and all but - I'm sure most everyone knew it would crash (just like todays stock market) but the speculation was on when.
    - edmundsauto 7y ago
      Even for someone who correctly predicted the when, how can we know if it was luck or skill?
      - mrlala 7y ago
        >how can we know if it was luck or skill? Easy, it's luck.
jonplackett 7y ago
Nvidia really lucked out with VR, crypto and AI all happening at once and all just happening to need exactly what they make (surly they can’t have seen all that coming deliberately?) I wonder if consumer VR would have faired better if gamers didn’t have to compete with miners and data centres for chips and had more reasonably priced cards a few years back.
- andromeduck 7y ago
  I don't think they saw crypto but AI and VR was definitely not just luck.
  - option 7y ago
    Of course, AI wasn’t just luck. NVIDIA have been a player in super computing way before deep learning wave started. CUDA was released in 2007
- TomVDB 7y ago
  I don’t think there is any significant money in VR today in terms of revenue. As for crypto and AI: I don’t think anyone saw that coming, but it was a safe bet that, one day, a technology would emerge that could use this kind of calculation power. And that promoting and investing in GPU computing in general was thus a smart thing to do. IOW: making your own luck.
- aloer 7y ago
  I don’t think it affected the adoption of VR much. OTOH it might be very beneficial in the long run that VR had a slow start. Probably the most dangerous thing to happen here is if customers are forever scared away due to bad but expensive early experiences. As far as I can tell, the hardware development continued and the next wave of VR will have much higher quality and more performant GPUs to make a good first impression. It would look differently if the entire VR field would’ve collapsed due to low sales but tbh it looks like it’s maturing slow and steady and that’s how it should be So essentially high gpu prices might have given the field just enough time to mature with patient early adopters before it goes main stream. At least that’s how I hope it will be
  - metalliqaz 7y ago
    My own experience with VR was that it is held back by an extremely clunkly interface. Nobody wants to wear those huge headsets for long periods of time, and you can't even move around in the virtual world because of all the claptrap that is connected to it. I had much better luck getting people to try things like Daydream, which have extremely limited processing power but could do cartoony graphics just fine. I think the industry really missed an opportunity to start with lightweight AR. Let the users walk around by showing them where they are and overlay things on top. There are plenty of useful applications; many require precision sensing that phones don't have, but there are others that can be done with just an accelerometer and a camera.
verdverm 7y ago
A well known Googler once told me that if you aren't building you own silicon, you don't know security. This is one of my main reasons for being all in on GCloud.
- ohaideredevs 7y ago
  Can you elaborate on this please, or link me? I am genuinely interested - do they build their own servers or something? I know they lay down their own network cables.
  - mav3rick 7y ago
    You can see from recent news about speculation of backdoors in hardware that any sort of trust has to start from the bottom up.
    - mda 7y ago
      Hence, https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/gcp/titan-in-depth-security-in-plaintext https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/gcp/titan-in-depth-se...
  - mattlondon 7y ago
    They certainly build their own networking gear (1) and their own TPU silicon, as well as laying down their own cables and even transatlantic cables (2). Then there are the pixel phones and laptops etc. I cant readily find a link, but their rack-mount servers are I believe "custom" designs just for them (presumably done in-house too), although from what I know they use off-the-shelf CPUs from Intel and AMD (there was an announcement very recently that they were using Epyc now for example) & GPUs etc. It would not surprise me if only the x86 CPUs & GPUs were the only external things they use, and I bet they're looking at their own custom ARM chips for certain workloads (like they use their custom TPUs for certain workloads). 1 - https://www.wired.com/2015/06/google-reveals-secret-gear-connects-online-empire/ https://www.wired.com/2015/06/google-reveals-secret-gear-con... 2 - https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/07/18/google_dunant_cable/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/07/18/google_dunant_cable...
jjtheblunt 7y ago
Is Apple not counted because they're not favoring Nvidia at the moment?
- blobster 7y ago
  That's exactly what I thought as well
- dmoy 7y ago
  I think Apple is not counted because this article was only about datacenter stuff, and Apple doesn't factor in there yet. It's not to say that Apple doesn't matter to nvidia as a customer or potential customer, just that it has nothing to do with this article because Apple doesn't have as much datacenter footprint... yet. But just as a point of scale, Apple spending $10B on datacenters globally over 5 years is less than Google spends in a single year in just the US.
  - dmoy 7y ago
    And on the flip side, if this was an article about consumer gpus for computers, then Apple would probably feature in the article as a customer (or obvious non-customer), whereas nobody would even consider mentioning Google.
- stuntkite 7y ago
  Apple has basically bailed out of building modern developer workstations for the time being because of their rejection of Nvidia. It's so frustrating. I miss the perfect tool that my 2013 macbook pro was when I bought it. eGPUs are not an option and neither side is supporting drivers anymore. Eventually something like CUDA might come to the platform and they'll get back in it but IMO Nvidia holds so many of the cards right now it's crazy. The next couple years are going to be an interesting shift after nearly a decade of amazing workstation standardization.
  - wil421 7y ago
    It depends on what you’re developing. I have 0 need for anything except an on chip GPU for my development. That’s only because I developed for the web. If I need horsepower on the go I can VPN into my home workstation or server. If you’re doing ML or even Video editing a multi-GPU desktop will be so much faster than any portable laptop. However, I agree that eGPUs aren’t a solution. I had a bad experience with Nvidia on my 2011 MBP but my 2017 MPB with an AMD chip is as good as the 2011 in its day.
qes 7y ago
The only customer of NVIDIA, contracting NVIDIA to fab chips for them. Microsoft's also been developing and using ASICs in Azure. I guess they're just not contracting NVIDIA for any part of the process.
- PeCaN 7y ago
  >The only customer of NVIDIA, contracting NVIDIA to fab chips for them. Nvidia doesn't own fabs. The article says nothing about Google contracting Nvidia to make chips for them, only that Nvidia is not particularly concerned about competition from Google.
syshum 7y ago
When you are trying to build Skynet to take over the world you have to build your own Silicon
shmerl 7y ago
Hopefully higher competitive pressure on Nvidia including from Intel joining high end GPU market, will finally push Nvidia to upstream their Linux driver or at the very least to unblock Nouveau, to use GPU reclocking properly. Google mentioned open source drivers as one of the reasons for picking AMD GPUs for Stadia.
- techntoke 7y ago
  Stadia is going to be huge for open source. I just hope both AMD and NVIDIA will provide a virtual GPU driver like Intel offers for it's embedded graphics. That might actually be the end of Window's dominance.
- sipherhex 7y ago
  There are many good reasons to embrace better integration with open source. I think the benefits like helping users with custom/broad distro needs and increasing the velocity of collaboration with the ecosystem and partners outweighs factors like 'competition.' The cogs do turn, albeit slower than people prefer. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NVIDIA-Open-GPU-Docs https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NVIDIA-O...
tylerl 7y ago
Itd be interesting to see where Google fits in the list of the worlds largest computer manufacturers. I suspect that if they made their numbers public they'd be way higher up than anyone expected.

222 points by lawrenceyan 7y ago

For people that are interested in Nvidia and AMD's strategy, there is an interesting podcast about it: https://ark-invest.com/research/podcast/nvidia-podcast-crypto-implosion https://ark-invest.com/research/podcast/nvidia-podcast-crypt...

nootka 7y ago
> Notably forecasted the global Crypto crash of 2k18... an opinion against the grain in his field. Was his field /r/bitcoin? I'm pretty sure the entire world saw that one coming.
- penagwin 7y ago
  Hindsight is 20/20 and all but - I'm sure most everyone knew it would crash (just like todays stock market) but the speculation was on when.
  - edmundsauto 7y ago
    Even for someone who correctly predicted the when, how can we know if it was luck or skill?
    - mrlala 7y ago
      >how can we know if it was luck or skill? Easy, it's luck.

jonplackett 7y ago

Nvidia really lucked out with VR, crypto and AI all happening at once and all just happening to need exactly what they make (surly they can’t have seen all that coming deliberately?) I wonder if consumer VR would have faired better if gamers didn’t have to compete with miners and data centres for chips and had more reasonably priced cards a few years back.

andromeduck 7y ago
I don't think they saw crypto but AI and VR was definitely not just luck.
- option 7y ago
  Of course, AI wasn’t just luck. NVIDIA have been a player in super computing way before deep learning wave started. CUDA was released in 2007
TomVDB 7y ago
I don’t think there is any significant money in VR today in terms of revenue. As for crypto and AI: I don’t think anyone saw that coming, but it was a safe bet that, one day, a technology would emerge that could use this kind of calculation power. And that promoting and investing in GPU computing in general was thus a smart thing to do. IOW: making your own luck.
aloer 7y ago
I don’t think it affected the adoption of VR much. OTOH it might be very beneficial in the long run that VR had a slow start. Probably the most dangerous thing to happen here is if customers are forever scared away due to bad but expensive early experiences. As far as I can tell, the hardware development continued and the next wave of VR will have much higher quality and more performant GPUs to make a good first impression. It would look differently if the entire VR field would’ve collapsed due to low sales but tbh it looks like it’s maturing slow and steady and that’s how it should be So essentially high gpu prices might have given the field just enough time to mature with patient early adopters before it goes main stream. At least that’s how I hope it will be
- metalliqaz 7y ago
  My own experience with VR was that it is held back by an extremely clunkly interface. Nobody wants to wear those huge headsets for long periods of time, and you can't even move around in the virtual world because of all the claptrap that is connected to it. I had much better luck getting people to try things like Daydream, which have extremely limited processing power but could do cartoony graphics just fine. I think the industry really missed an opportunity to start with lightweight AR. Let the users walk around by showing them where they are and overlay things on top. There are plenty of useful applications; many require precision sensing that phones don't have, but there are others that can be done with just an accelerometer and a camera.

verdverm 7y ago

A well known Googler once told me that if you aren't building you own silicon, you don't know security. This is one of my main reasons for being all in on GCloud.

ohaideredevs 7y ago
Can you elaborate on this please, or link me? I am genuinely interested - do they build their own servers or something? I know they lay down their own network cables.
- mav3rick 7y ago
  You can see from recent news about speculation of backdoors in hardware that any sort of trust has to start from the bottom up.
  - mda 7y ago
    Hence, https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/gcp/titan-in-depth-security-in-plaintext https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/gcp/titan-in-depth-se...
- mattlondon 7y ago
  They certainly build their own networking gear (1) and their own TPU silicon, as well as laying down their own cables and even transatlantic cables (2). Then there are the pixel phones and laptops etc. I cant readily find a link, but their rack-mount servers are I believe "custom" designs just for them (presumably done in-house too), although from what I know they use off-the-shelf CPUs from Intel and AMD (there was an announcement very recently that they were using Epyc now for example) & GPUs etc. It would not surprise me if only the x86 CPUs & GPUs were the only external things they use, and I bet they're looking at their own custom ARM chips for certain workloads (like they use their custom TPUs for certain workloads). 1 - https://www.wired.com/2015/06/google-reveals-secret-gear-connects-online-empire/ https://www.wired.com/2015/06/google-reveals-secret-gear-con... 2 - https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/07/18/google_dunant_cable/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/07/18/google_dunant_cable...

jjtheblunt 7y ago

Is Apple not counted because they're not favoring Nvidia at the moment?

blobster 7y ago
That's exactly what I thought as well
dmoy 7y ago
I think Apple is not counted because this article was only about datacenter stuff, and Apple doesn't factor in there yet. It's not to say that Apple doesn't matter to nvidia as a customer or potential customer, just that it has nothing to do with this article because Apple doesn't have as much datacenter footprint... yet. But just as a point of scale, Apple spending $10B on datacenters globally over 5 years is less than Google spends in a single year in just the US.
- dmoy 7y ago
  And on the flip side, if this was an article about consumer gpus for computers, then Apple would probably feature in the article as a customer (or obvious non-customer), whereas nobody would even consider mentioning Google.
stuntkite 7y ago
Apple has basically bailed out of building modern developer workstations for the time being because of their rejection of Nvidia. It's so frustrating. I miss the perfect tool that my 2013 macbook pro was when I bought it. eGPUs are not an option and neither side is supporting drivers anymore. Eventually something like CUDA might come to the platform and they'll get back in it but IMO Nvidia holds so many of the cards right now it's crazy. The next couple years are going to be an interesting shift after nearly a decade of amazing workstation standardization.
- wil421 7y ago
  It depends on what you’re developing. I have 0 need for anything except an on chip GPU for my development. That’s only because I developed for the web. If I need horsepower on the go I can VPN into my home workstation or server. If you’re doing ML or even Video editing a multi-GPU desktop will be so much faster than any portable laptop. However, I agree that eGPUs aren’t a solution. I had a bad experience with Nvidia on my 2011 MBP but my 2017 MPB with an AMD chip is as good as the 2011 in its day.

qes 7y ago

The only customer of NVIDIA, contracting NVIDIA to fab chips for them. Microsoft's also been developing and using ASICs in Azure. I guess they're just not contracting NVIDIA for any part of the process.

PeCaN 7y ago
>The only customer of NVIDIA, contracting NVIDIA to fab chips for them. Nvidia doesn't own fabs. The article says nothing about Google contracting Nvidia to make chips for them, only that Nvidia is not particularly concerned about competition from Google.

syshum 7y ago

When you are trying to build Skynet to take over the world you have to build your own Silicon

shmerl 7y ago

Hopefully higher competitive pressure on Nvidia including from Intel joining high end GPU market, will finally push Nvidia to upstream their Linux driver or at the very least to unblock Nouveau, to use GPU reclocking properly. Google mentioned open source drivers as one of the reasons for picking AMD GPUs for Stadia.

techntoke 7y ago
Stadia is going to be huge for open source. I just hope both AMD and NVIDIA will provide a virtual GPU driver like Intel offers for it's embedded graphics. That might actually be the end of Window's dominance.
sipherhex 7y ago
There are many good reasons to embrace better integration with open source. I think the benefits like helping users with custom/broad distro needs and increasing the velocity of collaboration with the ecosystem and partners outweighs factors like 'competition.' The cogs do turn, albeit slower than people prefer. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NVIDIA-Open-GPU-Docs https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NVIDIA-O...

tylerl 7y ago

Itd be interesting to see where Google fits in the list of the worlds largest computer manufacturers. I suspect that if they made their numbers public they'd be way higher up than anyone expected.