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This misses the forest from the trees IMO: - The datacenter GPU market is 10x larger than the consumer GPU market for Nvidia (and it's still growing). Winning

by arkmm 1y ago

This misses the forest from the trees IMO: - The datacenter GPU market is 10x larger than the consumer GPU market for Nvidia (and it's still growing). Winning an extra few percentage points in consumer is not a priority anymore. - Nvidia doesn't have a CPU offering for the datacenter market and they were blocked from acquiring ARM. It's in their interest to have a friend on the CPU side. - Nvidia is fabless and has concentrated supplier and geopolitical risk with TSMC. Intel is one of the only other leading fabs onshoring, which significantly improves Nvidia's supplier negotiation position and hedges geopolitical risk.

behringer 1y ago
Intel just released a halfway decent workstation (eg data center) card and we were expecting an even better set of cards by Xmas before this happened.
throwaway2037 1y ago
> Nvidia is fabless and has concentrated supplier and geopolitical risk with TSMC. Intel is one of the only other leading fabs onshor[e] TSMC is building state of the art fabs in Arizona, USA. Samsung in Texas, USA. I assume these are being done to reduce geopolitical risk on all sides. Something that I never read about: Why can't NVidia use Samsung fabs? They are very close to TSMC state of the art.
- mrheosuper 1y ago
  Maybe after being bitten by Samsung on their RTX3000 GPU. Power Spike and a lot of heat.
- re-thc 1y ago
  > They are very close to TSMC state of the art. They're not. Most have tried at 1 point. Apple had a release with TSMC + Samsung and users spotted a difference. There was quite a bit of negativity.
- high_na_euv 1y ago
  TSMC will not have state of the art on US soil. Taiwanese gov prevents them from doing it. Leading node has to be on Taiwanese soil
  - throwaway2037 1y ago
    > Taiwanese gov prevents them from doing it. Leading node has to be on Taiwanese soil This is bold claim. Do you have a public evidence to share? I have never once seen this mentioned in any newspaper articles that I have read about TSMC and their expansion in the US.
    - high_na_euv 1y ago
      https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/semiconductors/taiwans-government-strengthens-silicon-shield-restricts-exports-of-tsmcs-most-advanced-process-technologies https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/semiconductors/ta...
tw04 1y ago
> Nvidia doesn't have a CPU offering for the datacenter market and they were blocked from acquiring ARM. It's in their interest to have a friend on the CPU side. Someone should tell nvidia that. They sure seem to think they have a datacenter CPU. https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/data-center/grace-cpu-superchip/ https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/data-center/grace-cpu-superchip...
- kimixa 1y ago
  I wonder if this signal a lack of confidence in their CPU offerings going forward? But there's always TSMC being a pretty hard bottleneck - maybe they just can't get enough (and can't charge close to their GPU offerings per wafer), and pairing with Intel themselves is preferable to just using Intel's Foundry services?
- gpm 1y ago
  > Someone should tell nvidia that To be fair from what I hear someone really should tell at least half of nvidia that.
- high_na_euv 1y ago
  Jensen was literally talking about the need for x86 CPU on yesterdays webcast
trhway 1y ago
>Nvidia is fabless and has concentrated supplier and geopolitical risk with TSMC. East India Company has been conducting continental wars on its own. A modern company with $4T valuation and a country-GDP-size revenue and possessing key military technology of today and tomorrow wars - AI software and hardware, including robotics - can successfully wage such a continental war through a suitable proxy, say an oversized private military contractor (especially if it massively armed with drones and robots), and in particular is capable of defending an island like Taiwan. (or thinking backwards - an attack on Taiwan would cause a trillion or two drop in NVDA valuation. What options get on the table when there is a threat of a trillion dollar loss ... To compare - 20 years of Iraq cost 3 trillions, ie. 150B/year buy you a lot of military hardware and action, and efficient defense of Taiwan would cost much less than that.)
- purpleflame1257 1y ago
  Defending against territorial conquest is considerably easier than defending against kinetic strikes on key manufacturing facilities
  - AtlasBarfed 1y ago
    If China bombs tsmc, we blockade the Malacca straits. China's economy shuts down in a month, their population starves in another month
  - trhway 1y ago
    Not necessarily. Territorial war requires people. Defense from kinetic strikes on key objects concentrated on smallish territory requires mostly high-tech - radars and missiles - and that would be much easier for a very rich high-tech US corporation. An example - Starlink antenna, sub-$500, a phased array which actually is like a half or a third of such an array on a modern fighter jet where it cost several millions. Musk naturally couldn't go the way of a million-per-antenna, so he had to develop and source it on his own. The same with anti-missile defense - if/when NVDA gets to it to defend the TSMC fabs, NVDA would produce such defense systems orders of magnitude cheaper, and that defense would work much better than the modern military systems.

by arkmm 1y ago

behringer 1y ago

Intel just released a halfway decent workstation (eg data center) card and we were expecting an even better set of cards by Xmas before this happened.

throwaway2037 1y ago

> Nvidia is fabless and has concentrated supplier and geopolitical risk with TSMC. Intel is one of the only other leading fabs onshor[e] TSMC is building state of the art fabs in Arizona, USA. Samsung in Texas, USA. I assume these are being done to reduce geopolitical risk on all sides. Something that I never read about: Why can't NVidia use Samsung fabs? They are very close to TSMC state of the art.

mrheosuper 1y ago
Maybe after being bitten by Samsung on their RTX3000 GPU. Power Spike and a lot of heat.
re-thc 1y ago
> They are very close to TSMC state of the art. They're not. Most have tried at 1 point. Apple had a release with TSMC + Samsung and users spotted a difference. There was quite a bit of negativity.
high_na_euv 1y ago
TSMC will not have state of the art on US soil. Taiwanese gov prevents them from doing it. Leading node has to be on Taiwanese soil
- throwaway2037 1y ago
  > Taiwanese gov prevents them from doing it. Leading node has to be on Taiwanese soil This is bold claim. Do you have a public evidence to share? I have never once seen this mentioned in any newspaper articles that I have read about TSMC and their expansion in the US.
  - high_na_euv 1y ago
    https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/semiconductors/taiwans-government-strengthens-silicon-shield-restricts-exports-of-tsmcs-most-advanced-process-technologies https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/semiconductors/ta...

tw04 1y ago

> Nvidia doesn't have a CPU offering for the datacenter market and they were blocked from acquiring ARM. It's in their interest to have a friend on the CPU side. Someone should tell nvidia that. They sure seem to think they have a datacenter CPU. https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/data-center/grace-cpu-superchip/ https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/data-center/grace-cpu-superchip...

kimixa 1y ago
I wonder if this signal a lack of confidence in their CPU offerings going forward? But there's always TSMC being a pretty hard bottleneck - maybe they just can't get enough (and can't charge close to their GPU offerings per wafer), and pairing with Intel themselves is preferable to just using Intel's Foundry services?
gpm 1y ago
> Someone should tell nvidia that To be fair from what I hear someone really should tell at least half of nvidia that.
high_na_euv 1y ago
Jensen was literally talking about the need for x86 CPU on yesterdays webcast

trhway 1y ago

>Nvidia is fabless and has concentrated supplier and geopolitical risk with TSMC. East India Company has been conducting continental wars on its own. A modern company with $4T valuation and a country-GDP-size revenue and possessing key military technology of today and tomorrow wars - AI software and hardware, including robotics - can successfully wage such a continental war through a suitable proxy, say an oversized private military contractor (especially if it massively armed with drones and robots), and in particular is capable of defending an island like Taiwan. (or thinking backwards - an attack on Taiwan would cause a trillion or two drop in NVDA valuation. What options get on the table when there is a threat of a trillion dollar loss ... To compare - 20 years of Iraq cost 3 trillions, ie. 150B/year buy you a lot of military hardware and action, and efficient defense of Taiwan would cost much less than that.)

purpleflame1257 1y ago
Defending against territorial conquest is considerably easier than defending against kinetic strikes on key manufacturing facilities
- AtlasBarfed 1y ago
  If China bombs tsmc, we blockade the Malacca straits. China's economy shuts down in a month, their population starves in another month
- trhway 1y ago
  Not necessarily. Territorial war requires people. Defense from kinetic strikes on key objects concentrated on smallish territory requires mostly high-tech - radars and missiles - and that would be much easier for a very rich high-tech US corporation. An example - Starlink antenna, sub-$500, a phased array which actually is like a half or a third of such an array on a modern fighter jet where it cost several millions. Musk naturally couldn't go the way of a million-per-antenna, so he had to develop and source it on his own. The same with anti-missile defense - if/when NVDA gets to it to defend the TSMC fabs, NVDA would produce such defense systems orders of magnitude cheaper, and that defense would work much better than the modern military systems.