4 ms·

Just because customers use their hardware for AI does not mean the hardware maker is an AI company.

naasking 1y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45487334 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45487334 When more of their revenue comes from AI than graphics, and they're literally removing graphics output from their hardware...
dotnet00 1y ago
There's a lot of software involved in GPUs, and NVIDIA's winning strategy has been that the software is great. They maintained a stable ecosystem across most of their consumer and workstation/server stack for many years before crypto, AI and GPU-focused HPC really blew up. AMD has generally better hardware but poor enough software that "fine wine" is a thing (ie the software takes many years post-hardware-launch to actually properly utilize the hardware). For example, they only recently got around to making AI libraries usable on the pre-covid 5700XT. NVIDIA basically owns the market because of the stability of the CUDA ecosystem. So, I think it might be fair to call them an AI company, though I definitely wouldn't call them just a hardware maker.
- hansvm 1y ago
  *barely passable software while their competitors literally shit the bed, but I take your point.
  - pklausler 1y ago
    Literally?
    - mrguyorama 1y ago
      "Literally" as an intensifier predates the United States. You aren't even "dying on this hill", people like you are inventing a hill made out of dead bodies.
      - pklausler 1y ago
        Literally inventing a hill made out of dead bodies, or figuratively?
        deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
  - dotnet00 1y ago
    As someone who codes in CUDA daily, putting out and maintaining so many different libraries implementing complex multi-stage GPU algorithms efficiently at many different levels of abstraction, without having a ton of edgecase bugs everywhere, alongside maintaining all of the tooling for debugging and profiling, and still having regular updates, is quite a bit beyond "barely passable". It's a feat only matched by a handful of other companies.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45487334 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45487334 When more of their revenue comes from AI than graphics, and they're literally removing graphics output from their hardware...

dotnet00 1y ago

There's a lot of software involved in GPUs, and NVIDIA's winning strategy has been that the software is great. They maintained a stable ecosystem across most of their consumer and workstation/server stack for many years before crypto, AI and GPU-focused HPC really blew up. AMD has generally better hardware but poor enough software that "fine wine" is a thing (ie the software takes many years post-hardware-launch to actually properly utilize the hardware). For example, they only recently got around to making AI libraries usable on the pre-covid 5700XT. NVIDIA basically owns the market because of the stability of the CUDA ecosystem. So, I think it might be fair to call them an AI company, though I definitely wouldn't call them just a hardware maker.

hansvm 1y ago
*barely passable software while their competitors literally shit the bed, but I take your point.
- pklausler 1y ago
  Literally?
  - mrguyorama 1y ago
    "Literally" as an intensifier predates the United States. You aren't even "dying on this hill", people like you are inventing a hill made out of dead bodies.
    - pklausler 1y ago
      Literally inventing a hill made out of dead bodies, or figuratively?
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
- dotnet00 1y ago
  As someone who codes in CUDA daily, putting out and maintaining so many different libraries implementing complex multi-stage GPU algorithms efficiently at many different levels of abstraction, without having a ton of edgecase bugs everywhere, alongside maintaining all of the tooling for debugging and profiling, and still having regular updates, is quite a bit beyond "barely passable". It's a feat only matched by a handful of other companies.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]