Comments from Nvidia CEO

[kimmel]

http://blogs.barrons.com/techtrader...-ceo-huang-car-aficionado-ponders-the-future/

For example, I asked Huang about smartphones, where Nvidia used to be a contender. Last spring, Huang indicated to the Street during the company’s analyst day meeting that Nvidia was no longer a contender in mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones. “We’re still open to things, if customers come to us,” he said, pointing to Nvidia chips running Google’s (GOOGL) “Nexus 9“ smartphone. But the company is not actively pursuing the phone. Huang’s general view, repeated several times, is that it is a slowing market that is not nearly as exciting as autos.

I also asked about servers. Nvidia, I said, had in past talked up prospects as a vendor of CPUs for servers based on ARM Holdings (ARMH) server chips. That was my impression, at least, in the years leading up to the release of its “Denver” project, which turned into the Tegra “K1” processor last year. As Qualcomm (QCOM) enters the server market, Nvidia seems to have dropped any ambition to be a vendor of general-purpose server CPUs.

I asked if Huang had changed his thinking on the server market.
“I may have changed my thinking,” said Huang. “I think Intel (INTC) has done a very good job in improving the power-performance of Xeon,” Intel’s main server-chip line.

“So, the question is, Why do you need an ARM-based chip?” to run a server. “Why do you need it? The reason used to be that you needed to improve the power efficiency of the server. And there will be some, there will be some business for it [ARM-based chips], maybe Cavium (CAVM) and others. But I think Intel has made a lot of progress.”

 

[erunion]

yikes

 

[blastingcap]

NV is a company willing to try something and fail. As much as you may dislike JHH or NV, I think that's praiseworthy. Many companies reward short-term success ONLY, and punish failure, with the result that the company's staff become conservative and less creative and willing to take risks. When NV got kicked out of chipsets they didn't just lay everyone off, many people got put onto other projects. They also weathered the 2009 storm pretty well without as massive of layoffs as other firms saw.

That said, I'm wondering why I should buy a car with a "NV inside" CPU as opposed to, say, an Intel CPU. The last part of the article OP didn't quote... that's problematic. Intel effectively owns x86, so what's NV's "in"? They don't even have AMD's leverage in x86. If cars wind up on x86, why not just buy an Intel CPU with iGPU and be done with it?

"On the other hand, Huang is excited about what his company’s “Tesla” line of GPUs can do inside of whatever servers are running in the data center. Tesla provides the ability to sift and sort large data sets for tasks such as Big Data and analytics. “We’ll work with whatever ISA [instruction set architecture] is out there, be it ARM or x86,” said Huang. “We’ll work with whatever people want to use. It might even be POWER [IBM’s (IBM) chip flavor]. We’ll be open.”

 

[NTMBK]

Which is why they made a deal with IBM for NVLink.

 

[NTMBK]

That said, I'm wondering why I should buy a car with a "NV inside" CPU as opposed to, say, an Intel CPU.

NV's car push is largely about the software, not the hardware- they could get comparable hardware from almost any ARM vendor, but Nvidia offer a complete solution. It looks pretty good.

 

[Qwertilot]

Also I guess GPU compute for the cars? Image recognition and stuff. That really could get rather large if/when automated cars take off.

 

[blastingcap]

NV's car push is largely about the software, not the hardware- they could get comparable hardware from almost any ARM vendor, but Nvidia offer a complete solution. It looks pretty good.

Eh, I don't know, I wish them good luck but I think competition will be fierce on the software side and NV is not the first company I think of when I think of mission-critical software. If a computer crashes that sucks but whatever; if a car crashes that's huge.

 

[NTMBK]

Eh, I don't know, I wish them good luck but I think competition will be fierce on the software side and NV is not the first company I think of when I think of mission-critical software. If a computer crashes that sucks but whatever; if a car crashes that's huge.

NVidia has a solid reputation in the pro sector- Quadro support is top notch.

 

[thilanliyan]

 

[ShintaiDK]

Very honest interview. I do think their focus on cars etc is a good thing. The "smart car" concept is growing fast for example.

Its quite clear that JHH knwos his stuff. he is not trying to compete on grounds he cant compete on. Note the references to Qualcomm and Intel. Smart business decisions is how you make money.

Sure he tried some things and failed. But he didnt fail for trying something silly without chance of success.

 

[tweakboy]

shinlDK Have a good run with your nice rig.

 

[Yuriman]

It's just strange to find a CEO being open and honest about what he's doing, even if it's only a little.

 

[bullzz]

i recommend reading the full article. not many CEOs can be this honest

 

[Flapdrol1337]

I guess posting record profits allows you to be brutally honest.

 

[DrMrLordX]

It might even be POWER [IBM’s (IBM) chip flavor]. We’ll be open.”

There's no might about it. ORNL's next supercomputer (Summit) coming in 2017 is POWER9 + Volta.