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Simply because of there is too much money on the table, news from today: https://qz.com/intel-microsoft-new-chip-semiconductor-nvidia-1851275354 https://qz.com

Simply because of there is too much money on the table, news from today: https://qz.com/intel-microsoft-new-chip-semiconductor-nvidia-1851275354 https://qz.com/intel-microsoft-new-chip-semiconductor-nvidia... NVDA's margin is too high, it attracts competitors to eat into that.

chatmasta 3y ago
But how are competitors going to magically start creating market leading specialized hardware in 2-3 years? Manufacturing chips is not a core competency of any of the cloud providers, and to the extent they've been trying to make it one, they're focused on CPU.
- karmasimida 3y ago
  Well there is TPU, and it is at least as good as GPU for training, all Google's models are trained TPU, it is the best class of training chips in industry. Second, there is no need to be market leading, it just needs to be cost efficiently to be successful, even if it is slower, as long as it is cheaper. All cloud providers have huge chip design/manufacturing history, AWS/Azure and Google. I would argue it IS indeed the core competency for those cloud providers, because of price. The inhouse chips exist because they can reduce the cost. I know for a fact, there is huge momentum in some big clouds to replace Nvidia GPUs with their own chips, at least for their internal compute needs at first.
- HDThoreaun 3y ago
  All the cloud megasclaers already have in house chip design teams that have released successful products. Designing a GPU is easier than a cpu, they just need to figure out CUDA.
  - chatmasta 3y ago
    They have some small manufacturing operations that are producing a minority of the chips they actually use in their servers. Maybe they'll be able to produce enough GPUs for their use cases eventually, but there is no way they'll get there in "2-3 years" as OP suggests. Also, if GPUs are easier to make than CPUs, then why isn't Intel leading the market in GPUs by now? Surely it's been clear they should compete with Nvidia there for at least the past half a decade. Or do they need more than 2-3 years to catch up?
    - HDThoreaun 3y ago
      They dont manufacture themselves so ramping up is as simple as "here's another billion build 10 times as many." If they design GPUs that they think have significant cost advantages without downsides they will absolutely make that call.
      - chatmasta 3y ago
        I think you're making a lot of assumptions about specialist employees and hardware suddenly materializing in the place where they're needed to manufacture the stuff. I'm not disagreeing they can catch up within 10 years. But 2-3 years is an insane estimate IMO.
        HDThoreaun 3y ago
        > specialist employees and hardware suddenly materializing in the place where they're needed to manufacture the stuff. The beauty of being fabless is that they dont need to worry about that. When theyve got a design they like they just call TSMC and buy out all their capacity, they could pay double what nvidia does and still save a boatload. I agree that 2 years seems impossible and 3 a stretch, but I do think its possible for at least one cloud company to have something by then.
seec 3y ago
Considering how long it took apple to design a competent chip I think Nvidia will be fine for quite a while. Really their current hardware design is unparalleled and they even have some software lock-in with CUDA…

chatmasta 3y ago

But how are competitors going to magically start creating market leading specialized hardware in 2-3 years? Manufacturing chips is not a core competency of any of the cloud providers, and to the extent they've been trying to make it one, they're focused on CPU.

karmasimida 3y ago
Well there is TPU, and it is at least as good as GPU for training, all Google's models are trained TPU, it is the best class of training chips in industry. Second, there is no need to be market leading, it just needs to be cost efficiently to be successful, even if it is slower, as long as it is cheaper. All cloud providers have huge chip design/manufacturing history, AWS/Azure and Google. I would argue it IS indeed the core competency for those cloud providers, because of price. The inhouse chips exist because they can reduce the cost. I know for a fact, there is huge momentum in some big clouds to replace Nvidia GPUs with their own chips, at least for their internal compute needs at first.
HDThoreaun 3y ago
All the cloud megasclaers already have in house chip design teams that have released successful products. Designing a GPU is easier than a cpu, they just need to figure out CUDA.
- chatmasta 3y ago
  They have some small manufacturing operations that are producing a minority of the chips they actually use in their servers. Maybe they'll be able to produce enough GPUs for their use cases eventually, but there is no way they'll get there in "2-3 years" as OP suggests. Also, if GPUs are easier to make than CPUs, then why isn't Intel leading the market in GPUs by now? Surely it's been clear they should compete with Nvidia there for at least the past half a decade. Or do they need more than 2-3 years to catch up?
  - HDThoreaun 3y ago
    They dont manufacture themselves so ramping up is as simple as "here's another billion build 10 times as many." If they design GPUs that they think have significant cost advantages without downsides they will absolutely make that call.
    - chatmasta 3y ago
      I think you're making a lot of assumptions about specialist employees and hardware suddenly materializing in the place where they're needed to manufacture the stuff. I'm not disagreeing they can catch up within 10 years. But 2-3 years is an insane estimate IMO.
      - HDThoreaun 3y ago
        > specialist employees and hardware suddenly materializing in the place where they're needed to manufacture the stuff. The beauty of being fabless is that they dont need to worry about that. When theyve got a design they like they just call TSMC and buy out all their capacity, they could pay double what nvidia does and still save a boatload. I agree that 2 years seems impossible and 3 a stretch, but I do think its possible for at least one cloud company to have something by then.

seec 3y ago

Considering how long it took apple to design a competent chip I think Nvidia will be fine for quite a while. Really their current hardware design is unparalleled and they even have some software lock-in with CUDA…