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I wouldn't say they failed. I'd say they gave up on it before product maturity.
by johncalvinyoung 6y ago
I wouldn't say they failed. I'd say they gave up on it before product maturity.
- ethbro 6y agoI'd say they aimed for the wrong market (graphics processing, where they were competing against very specialized and experienced competitors) and failed to partner. Maybe Intel ~1998 could have solo-launched a new architecture, but the only way they'd get uptake now is something in cooperation with AMD. And maybe the AMD partnership bridge is burnt from previous shenanigans, but it seems like both AMD and Intel would have incentive in more tightly coupling graphics compatibility to CPU ISA, vs Nvidia designing their own. That said, in that hypothetical reality, Nvidia wouldn't have been able to innovate and execute nearly as fast as they have. As one of my Comp-E professors once quipped, "If a structural engineer ever tells you programming close to processors is easy, ask them how they'd like their job if the physical properties of lumber changed every 2 years."
- lliamander 6y ago> I'd say they aimed for the wrong market (graphics processing, where they were competing against very specialized and experienced competitors) Also, the game they were using to validate the performance of their hardware (Doom, I think?) ended up being so different from other software in how it used the GPU that their optimizations didn't really transfer.
- jabl 6y agoThey pivoted it to HPC (the Xeon Phi product line), produced a couple of generations of products, but that didn't really pan out either so they cancelled it. I suppose some of the "DNA" lives on in AVX-512..