logoalt Hacker News

mjr00 • yesterday at 10:39 PM • 3 replies • view on HN

> Because if Huang is removed it's very likely they will face challenges finding and reacting the next big use-case for GPUs

Huang has done a fine job managing NVidia, but he's also the poster child for "better lucky than good."

It's not like he led NVidia out of dire straits to pivot into the cryptocurrency/blockchain, and then AI, bubbles. They were making hardware for computer graphics, and that just so happened to be the same foundational hardware for the two biggest technology bubbles of the 21st century, twice in a row.

I find it hard to believe NVidia's incredible success can be attributed exclusively to him. Sometimes you're just in the right place at the right time.


Replies

cameronh90 • yesterday at 11:08 PM

They’ve been in the right place at the right time too many times.

It’s a bit like when you watch a fantastic FPS player play, they just always seem to be in the right place to catch the other guy off guard.

Huang didn’t know exactly what was coming - but he knew enough and managed to put NV into a position where it could quickly exploit whatever did emerge.

sdenton4 • yesterday at 11:02 PM

I'm not a fan of Jensen by any means, but he did start the CUDA program some eight years before it was actually useful (the alexnet moment). He called the need for high performance linear algebra for scientific computing, it just took a while for it to find its first killer app.

➕ show 3 replies
fc417fc802 • yesterday at 11:04 PM

Meanwhile intel (as but one prominent example) was also researching and manufacturing GPUs for most (all?) of that timeline yet somehow managed to fumble it. Quite often IMO simply not screwing up while already holding all of the necessary cards is a lot harder than it looks.