Huang: "Nvidia is a Software Company"

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Harrisson

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http://www.chw.net/2009/10/chw-entrevista-a-jen-hsun-huang/2/#

JHH is losing the plot IMO, they dont have any kind of software which could be a major source of income. Comparing to Google and Apple is mildly speaking off base. I respect their CUDA and HPC, but they earned from it... 10 mln. only, while spending ~50x more. Maybe this market will suddenly explode and offset losing a billion from chipset market, another billion or more from consumer GPU market, but honestly I doubt it. Even if they'll manage it, intel will take it away soon with even better HPC solution, vastly better resources and influence on high-profile corporations.

CHW: How do you plan to always be the best? How do you achieve this?
JHH: The best way to do it is to have no backup plan
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Its bold but insane strategy, shareholders should really replace him, soon, or Nvidia will go down under a la 3DFX.
 
Yeah read that last night just before sleep (caused disturbing dreams of wood screw in my software, they got software in my peanut butter !).

But actually I think it is the proper direction for the company, I just think it's a little early to be doing it without having not so much a back-up plan but more support from their existing products.

They pretty much have to work to find a way around the X86 barrier, so they need to get help or make their own help, or help those who can help them. Sound like Jerry McGuire "Help me Help you" (and I'm sure we can ascribe 'Show me the Money!' to some other player in this).

I think it's their life strategy, but I do think it also means, that like Apple, they won't be about their core GPU business anymore and would be starting the transition to the processor and software side of things at the cost of being leaders in the GPU realm.

It kinda confirms to me that they will be doing alot of their DX11 stuff in software emulation mode, and that this will likely be a performance issue in some things.

Now ATi and intel are heading in a similar hardware direction, but unlike nV, they can rely on others to do the software in either an X86 or other direction.

I just wonder if nV realizes how much competition they have from the likes of Samsung, Toshiba and IBM (and SUN more so prior to Oracle) if they just go to the processor making role? IBM's got far more and far better software guys, and I'd argue SUN was probably in a better position to influence the market place and had little success in staying afloat.
I think the only advantage to nV is timing compared to SUN, but I think it's still a generation early to be producing product for that market upon which you build your consumer solutions as well. I think they should've done the Tegra/Fermi line separate at first, with maybe the Workstation market, and then next generation combine the two.

Oh, well, we'll see, but this essentially confirming what alot of us kinda thought their exit strategy was once they started down the CUDA road, which is likely also why they will hold up PhysX to prop up CUDA as long as they can hoping in the end all the things propping it up give it momentum into wider adoption.
 
Well, lately NVidia was bothering me with their PhysX crap and their no DX11 approach, but now I understand. They cannot continue to face ATI like this. It's sad in a certain way because ATI will be able to rip us off easily.

It's funny to see that ATI came back from their death after the fiasco of the 3XXX series and now NVidia is about to fall to their doom. I would have never think of something like that 6 months ago.

If ATI is the sole DX11 chip maker for the next-gen consoles, we are yet to see the real ATI as a corporation... the company will easily double... it's frightening.
 


So is that an nVidiot attempt at a back-handed compliment?
ATi can't really jack up the price now that it's out there, and they still have pressure from intel, who are far more of a concern than nVidia would've been.

It's funny to see that ATI came back from their death after the fiasco of the 3XXX series
Click to expand...

I think you're thinking the 2K series, it was the quick jump to the 3k series that saved them from death.

If ATI is the sole DX11 chip maker for the next-gen consoles, we are yet to see the real ATI as a corporation... the company will easily double... it's frightening.
Click to expand...

Pretty st00pid myopic view on your part.
They could use a doubling, to both compete against or replace what nV recently was and hope to be, and to keep healthy for competing with intel in their Fusion future.
 


It's clear you have little in regards to intelligence regarding reality in the gpu world.
 
Haha, I like that though...NV is a software company. All this time I thought they were a GPU company...my bad. Sounds like an attempt to make a graceful bow out. I am curious if this is also an attempt to gracefully sidestep any shortcomings with Fermi.
 



CHW: Are Gamers the most profitable market for NVIDIA?
JHH: I would say probably not, 2/3 of our revenue come from games but 2/3 of our profit comes from Quadro workstations, you know NVIDIA is the words largest workstation technology provider, our market share is about 95% in this market, every single company, every single country, every single car, oil, plane, train, shoes, etc… uses Quadro technology, this is the highest market share of any workstation company in the history of making but the workstation is not very large but is very important.

They make more profit from the Quadro series...and one of the reasons why Quadros are so expensive is due to the specialized software and support associated with it. So it 'kinda' makes sense.


Anyways, this article doesn't really imply Nvidia is going to abandon the gaming market. We have to stop speculating and wait and see.
 

Quadro is offspring from consumer GPUs, i.e. they wouldnt make as much profit (or even profit at all) from it if they would build exclusively for workstations, all R&D would for niche market. Where are 3Dlabs, SGI?... It seems Nvidia heading to this direction. Even if they dont abandon gamers market, they definitely shifted focus from it to HPC.

All signs show Nvidia is giving up consumer market, with increasing speed (chipsets, integrated graphics, notebooks, now PCs as well). Soon Nvidia would have huge R&D costs lying on niche markets shoulders (even though Quadro still very profitable, ATI is gaining share), and HPC market is giving huge benefits... like loses of hundreds of millions :sarcastic: As I said above, even if Nvidia will manage to create HPC market, they'll face Intels Larrabee which is even better fit for this niche, plus all the other advantages Intel has over Nvidia, poor green goblins doesnt stand a chance in the long run with its current direction.
 
CHW: Are Gamers the most profitable market for NVIDIA?
JHH: I would say probably not, 2/3 of our revenue come from games but 2/3 of our profit comes from Quadro workstations, you know NVIDIA is the words largest workstation technology provider, our market share is about 95% in this market, every single company, every single country, every single car, oil, plane, train, shoes, etc… uses Quadro technology, this is the highest market share of any workstation company in the history of making but the workstation is not very large but is very important.

Hmmmm... so 2/3s comes from DT gfx of all monies, but 2/3s profits comes from HPC/gpgpu?
Ummmm, is thats sales aginst R&D for both? So, if brken down, the 2/3s for gfx is still needed for R&D, and propels the HPC direction.
This sounds like hes covering every step for his investors, knowing this is a huge change in direction, and trying to satisfy those investors all the while.
Its definately going to happen, and how the DT gfx market shakes down will be the real big question going forwards.
If LRB is capable in gpgpu usage and also dt gfx, itll be a huge row to hoe for nVidia, and we havnt even seen ATI/AMDs entry in this field , tho theres some info regarding BullDozer and fusion, but not alot.
This just doesnt look good for them at all
 
NVIDIA is a integrated complete visual computing and parallel computing solution technology company.
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Orly?

Who else noticed that the journalist wasn't allowed to talk about fermi, ATI, dx11 etc etc?

This is the end for Nvidia for sure. We will be reading this sort of stuff for the next 6 months. Game Over.
 
Well, nVidia isnt leaving this market, not at all, but may, down the road do like theyre sort of doing now, make large chips for high powered cards, and maybe not scale down to the lower ends of the market.
I read somewheres in their talks on Fermi, that theyd be combining both at first, and later have smaller, more gfx oriented cards, possibly making 2 types of cards.
They arent dead yet, and LRB will also be here to muddy the picture further, as people will buy it, just because its Intel, just like some only buy nVidia (alot), and thatll cut the overall market down, as the pies only so big
 
I think you have to look at it logically. Nvidia can only just match ATI by having gpu's that are 40-50% bigger. That means almost twice the failure rate at TSMC.

AMD have already proven that they will take tiny profits on one card in order to drive Nvidia into big losses.

Geforce cannot match Radeon transistor for transistor. Nvidia aren't willing to take the losses in a prolonged fight, what's more Nvidia were based on huge margins for the same gpu's only 2-3 years ago. They will never, ever get those margins back.

Something had to give and Nvidia have been pushed out of the gaming sector because it is no longer profitable nor sensible for them to fight an overwhelming opponent. Nvidia are finished, they cannot compete with ATI in this sector any more and they will never be able to. No matter what they do, AMD has a simple answer because they can just cut prices making the Nvidia equivalent look ridiculously overpriced.
 
Actually, going to GF will be cheaper for ATI, as its all in house, not like before with TSMC.
Also, that all depends on LRBs ability as well.
Somehow, I dont think LRB is going to come in and change everything, and itll be doing everything gfx cards has had to do since the beginning, and thats a tough climb.
When I think of LRB, the word competent comes to mind
 

IMO Larrabee will be an amazing HPC solution from the gate. For gamers we will have to wait at least few generations till Intel catches up with ATI/Nvidia in games support/drivers.
 
CHW: What are the plans for the Chipset business unit?
JHH: Our chipset business unit is going to introduce some very exciting technology in the future, next year is going to be a grow up year for this unit but because of Intel claims in the market place, it’s very disruptive tactics in the market it is impossible for us to be successful building chipsets with DMI for the next generation CPUs, so we will exit the market, our chipset unit business will continue to work for well over 1.5 or 2 years, we will introduce some interesting new technology that is not a Chipset or a GPU so we are very excited about that, for enhancing Atoms and enhancing the current generation of CPUs, we are excited about this but we haven’t announced it yet.
We are going to support the Pentium 4 Front side bus for as long as they are in the market place.
Click to expand...


Is this him hinting that Nvidia are planning on releasing a CPU???


@ Nvidia not having a backup plan: What a load of BS....why are they spreading into the HPC market then?
Because there isnt enough money to be made in the graphics industy....sounds like a backup plan to me.
 

Nvidia dont have x86 licence, so they cant build cpu's, even if they wanted it. If they build proprietary cpu, it will be strictly small niche market, without any kind of impact for PC users. Thats why I think Nvidia is planing something else.
 


Like I mentioned;

"They pretty much have to work to find a way around the X86 barrier, so they need to get help or make their own help, or help those who can help them."

"
Now ATi and intel are heading in a similar hardware direction, but unlike nV, they can rely on others to do the software in either an X86 or other direction.

I just wonder if nV realizes how much competition they have from the likes of Samsung, Toshiba and IBM (and SUN more so prior to Oracle) if they just go to the processor making role? IBM's got far more and far better software guys, and I'd argue SUN was probably in a better position (with JAVA) to influence the market place and had little success in staying afloat."

Add to this their mobile platform where X86 is less of an issue, they are definitely moving away from GPUs (which are just processors with a role focused on graphics) towards other markets, since the GPU market is moving somewhere nB currently can't follow with LRB and Fusion derivatives.

They are definitely looking to compete with the other big processor makers, but they are entering the game for the GPU market and still need to rely on core CPUs to do alot of the work, they need to figure out stand-alone solutions in order to be successful.

They've lost the option to continue doing what they're doing (IMO the whole Motherboard fight was a testing of the waters of an X86 fight, and they realized they weren't going to go anywhere anytime soon with that, so they needed to change direction before their market disappeared, like 3DFX's Glide obsolescence took them from top to bottom.

They will likely 'survive' but it's unlikely that they will have as lofty views of their own future as they had, and they will definitely be a less visible company over time, since the general processor market doesn't take out big ads on enthusiast websites or in magazines to promote their latest solution. "Hey Gamers, come take a look at our new Rack-mount blade server solution with support for up to 1024 simultaneous clients* " * not responsible for increased ISP bandwidth costs. 😉
 
I wonder if JHH realizes how risky and lean this future is, and that's the reason he dumped his shares, not the whole short term poor production, DX11 and Fermi situations? :??:

Get your profit out now so you have a personal back-up plan.

It's actually what I'd do, look after your family's health before embarking on what might fail. He's definitely earned a golden parachute, I just think the investors should've been made aware of these plans / feelings before he was allowed to sell.
 
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