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Your implied chronology of "crypto died, _then_ NVIDIA lucked out with AI" is off, in that case. Peak of ETH mining was 2021.
by sevagh 3y ago
Your implied chronology of "crypto died, _then_ NVIDIA lucked out with AI" is off, in that case. Peak of ETH mining was 2021.
- chongli 3y agoSorry, my points are rather disorganized since I just woke up this morning, but I think Nvidia CEO's claim of "betting the farm on AI" is questionable. The chronology is this: 2007: CUDA released 2012: AlexNet (which runs on CUDA) turns heads and everyone (in the research world, not the public) starts getting really excited about AI 2012-2021: NVidia invests in CUDA while getting carried by gaming and crypto 2022-2023: AI explodes into the public consciousness and NVidia valuation balloons to absurd levels Now, I don't think anyone can argue that NVidia was not smart to build CUDA. What no one would have predicted was how important it would turn out to be back when they started. It was more like "hey, these gaming devices are pretty good at matrix/vector math, let's build an API for people who want to do that" and then it turning out that AI is all matrix/vector math. The point is that all of NVidia's investment in CUDA and AI was subsidized by the gaming and crypto cash cows. They didn't have to "bet the farm", they just had to keep it going as a side project and increase their investment as they saw the momentum build.
- 15155 3y agoI learned CUDA because of ETH mining, this was back in 2017.