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>I'm still stumped by nvidia rise and how gaming propelled them into HPC/Supercomputing. Who knew playing video games who amplify research that much ? Jensen H
by ChuckNorris89 5y ago
>I'm still stumped by nvidia rise and how gaming propelled them into HPC/Supercomputing. Who knew playing video games who amplify research that much ?
Jensen Huang did. When people think of tech visionaries they think of Jobs or Musk, but Huang is just as great. He's been bang on the money on the future of this industry since he founded Nvidia, which is how they managed to not just consistently stay ahead of their competition (ATI) or put them out of business (3dfx), but leapfrog them (AMD) by branching in several fields (AI/ML, PhysX, computer vision, self driving, compute etc.) He saw early on that GPUs should push into general-compute and not just be for video games, and he executed well on that.
There are interviews on Youtube with Huang at Standford IIRC, where he discusses his vision of the GPU industry from the early days of Nvidia. Check them out, the guy's not your typical CEO suit focused on the share price, but he's basically a tech genius.
So, to answer your other question about why only Nvidia manage to win compute and not the other GPU companies, it's simple. Huang had the vision for the entire ecosystem from GPU chips, to drivers, to APIs and SW libraries, to partnerships and cooperation with the people and the companies who will use them. Building great GPUs for compute is not enough if you're just gonna throw them on the market without the ecosystem and support behind them, and expect it to be a success. That's what Nvidia gets and the rest (AMD/Intel) don't. So while ATI/AMD had tunnel vision and was focused only on building gaming chips, Huang was busy building a complete GPU-compute ecosystem for their gaming chips with the rest of the industry.
- pjmlp 5y agoSame applies to Khronos APIs, they behave just like that, throwing the APIs out there and hoping for the best. No wonder they are always a shadow of what proprietary ones bring in the box.
- rchiang 5y agoTo be fair, Nvidia hired a lot of people who at some point worked at SGI and 3dfx, so there was already a lot of HPC/server/supercomputing talent working there. There are articles (e.g. https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/239078-ten-years-ago-today-nvidia-launched-g80-powered-geforce-8800-changed-pc-gaming-computing-forever https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/239078-ten-years-ago-toda...) showing the transition from having fixed vertex/pixel shaders in the GeForce 7000 GTX series to the generalized stream processors starting with the GeForce 8000 GTX series going forward. And it's easy to see that Huang and Nvidia put their money where their mouth was. The first GTC was 2009. That's 3 years before the famous AlexNet paper that's often credited with kicking off the current AI on GPUs trend.
- Keyframe 5y agoNot to take anything from what you've said because Huang is really all that and more. Find his interview with Morris Chang to get some more insight. Nvidia, ATI and other players for the most part were seeded by ex-SGI crew however. SGI had an instrumental role in those companies that ate it.
- Melatonic 5y agoThe guy really is a visionary - although I gotta say he really needs to diversify his wardrobe. How long are we gonna see him in the same exact look with the black leather jacket?
- ChuckNorris89 5y agoHis wardrobe is a meme at this point, and Elon proved memes make a great cult following.
- fomine3 5y agoRecent interview: https://stratechery.com/2022/an-interview-with-nvidia-ceo-jensen-huang-about-manufacturing-intelligence/#interview https://stratechery.com/2022/an-interview-with-nvidia-ceo-je...
- rasz 5y ago>He's been bang on the money on the future of this industry since he founded Nvidia by wasting two years on Quad rendering? Wonder how much VC money got burned in NV1 and cancelled NV2 debacle.