Axman
VP of Extreme Liberty
- Joined
- Jul 13, 2005
- Messages
- 17,357
This just makes it seem like Nvidia would be better off making their software more hardware-agnostic. There's way more money in licensing than in hardware, if you're not singling out hardware and jacking up its pricing.
So the way it stands they have hardware that costs, let's say $4K, and gets free software, but only sells one unit per every 100 general-purpose GPUs. If they sold the same software for $100 and only hit 4 percent of the market, they'd break even, and not have to cover any hardware. That's a straight profit, even before optimization.
Now Nvidia can still produce optimized hardware for that software, and if they're smart, they can let AMD do it, too. They can sell expensive parts that do it better, and so can AMD. But only Nvidia will make money on the software, cutting AMD out entirely. Sure, it's possible that AMD will invest literally decades into the same stack, but that's extra-extra long-term losses, and it's not even guaranteed if Nvidia maintains a software advantage.
Just like how it makes sense for AMD to open up smart memory to Nvidia parts, it makes sense for Nvidia to open up software to AMD.
It's just a matter of if Jensen will kowtow to pragmatism.
Su and AMD would. They'd sell plenty of CPUs to Nvidia owners.
So the way it stands they have hardware that costs, let's say $4K, and gets free software, but only sells one unit per every 100 general-purpose GPUs. If they sold the same software for $100 and only hit 4 percent of the market, they'd break even, and not have to cover any hardware. That's a straight profit, even before optimization.
Now Nvidia can still produce optimized hardware for that software, and if they're smart, they can let AMD do it, too. They can sell expensive parts that do it better, and so can AMD. But only Nvidia will make money on the software, cutting AMD out entirely. Sure, it's possible that AMD will invest literally decades into the same stack, but that's extra-extra long-term losses, and it's not even guaranteed if Nvidia maintains a software advantage.
Just like how it makes sense for AMD to open up smart memory to Nvidia parts, it makes sense for Nvidia to open up software to AMD.
It's just a matter of if Jensen will kowtow to pragmatism.
Su and AMD would. They'd sell plenty of CPUs to Nvidia owners.