[HN Gopher] Nvidia to join Dow Jones Industrial Average, replaci...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Nvidia to join Dow Jones Industrial Average, replacing Intel
        
       Author : koolba
       Score  : 367 points
       Date   : 2024-11-01 22:43 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.cnbc.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.cnbc.com)
        
       | talldayo wrote:
       | > Intel shares were down 1% in extended trading on Friday. Nvidia
       | shares rose 1%.
       | 
       | Riveting
        
       | jameslk wrote:
       | DJIA is not taken very seriously outside of mainstream media it
       | seems. The news loves to quote big drops or increases to the DJIA
       | due to the index being price weighted. "Wow the news is saying
       | the DJIA dropped 1000 points today! That's huge." Nah, that's
       | like 2%
       | 
       | This seems like another media opportunity about a nothing burger
       | event for an index that has lost relevance, when other indices
       | like the S&P 500 and QQQ have already incorporated NVIDIA a while
       | ago. They're just playing catch up.
        
         | Terr_ wrote:
         | > DJIA is not taken very seriously outside of mainstream media
         | it seems
         | 
         | AFAIK its only real utility is if you want to make very long
         | term comparisons over the years _against old values of itself_
         | , where its long baseline may be valuable compared to other
         | metrics that don't stretch as far.
         | 
         | Everything else is just flim-flam for getting views/clicks or
         | comforting very old viewers with something that is a familiar
         | staple.
        
         | Apocryphon wrote:
         | Do any index funds track it?
        
           | phil21 wrote:
           | Quite a few, pretty much every major ETF provider should have
           | one. I recall Vanguard not, and a quick google seems to
           | confirm that. I do wonder why?
           | 
           | The one I know of off the top of my head is DIA.
        
             | staticman2 wrote:
             | The dow is price weighted. Vanguard, being a sort of non
             | profit, probably doesn't want people investing in an
             | obviously horrible index that should have gone away decades
             | ago.
        
               | Ekaros wrote:
               | They don't care about people investing in losing bets.
               | But they care about wasting resources on running stuff
               | that does not sell. And not having a plus followed by big
               | number and percentage sign in column next to name is bad
               | seller.
               | 
               | In the end how funds are marketed and presented is
               | important part to understand. Also it is better for them
               | to sell actively managed fund with bigger number on it
               | than index with negative one.
        
             | quickthrowman wrote:
             | > I recall Vanguard not, and a quick google seems to
             | confirm that. I do wonder why?
             | 
             | It's a crappy price weighted benchmark with 30 stocks
             | invented over 100 years ago, that's why Vanguard doesn't
             | offer a fund.
             | 
             | The largest DJIA ETF is small potatoes, SPY's average daily
             | volume is higher than DIA's _total assets under
             | management_.
             | 
             | VOO tracks the S&P 500 and VTI tracks the US total market,
             | both of these are much better, more diversified options for
             | equity investing.
        
         | stocknoob wrote:
         | 100%. It's a good example of how the media wants to entertain,
         | not inform.
         | 
         | The DJIA is a price-weighted index and doesn't track dividends,
         | yet is somehow supposed to reflect investor sentiment.
        
           | bradleyjg wrote:
           | _the media wants to entertain, not inform_
           | 
           | The media wants to not go bankrupt. It's the customers that
           | decide whether and how that's possible.
        
             | thimabi wrote:
             | > The media wants to not go bankrupt.
             | 
             | I'd say that depends. Many media organizations operate
             | without profits -- or even incurring losses -- in order to
             | serve the public good, promote an ideology, engage in
             | activism, spread misinformation, etc.
        
               | hackernewds wrote:
               | spread misinformation? which major media operations are
               | operating at a loss how for the public good (discounting
               | state run) and how?
        
               | thimabi wrote:
               | > spread misinformation?
               | 
               | Yes, several state-run and private media organizations
               | operate without profits or at a loss in order to spread
               | misinformation.
               | 
               | > which major media operations are operating at a loss
               | how for the public good (discounting state run) and how?
               | 
               | Sorry, I was unable to properly understand your question.
               | 
               | In any case, I never said the organizations that are not
               | primarily concerned with chasing profits are "major"
               | ones. I believe that applies best to lesser-well-known
               | entities, like those who live on social media or the
               | blogosphere. Though there are some instances of major
               | state-run companies, even on TV and on the radio, that
               | operate in a similar fashion.
               | 
               | Also, I am surely not equating the spread of
               | misinformation with serving the public good -- these are
               | just distinct objectives that may be sought by media
               | organizations, rather than avoiding bankruptcy.
        
               | dredmorbius wrote:
               | As one example, the Chicago NPR affiliate, WBEZ, acquired
               | the Chicago _Sun-Times_ as what was widely described as a
               | "no-cash" deal.[1] A rather more truthful description is
               | that WBEZ was _paid_ $61 million (largely through
               | philanthropic support) to take over a long-ailing
               | newspaper, as described by the city 's _other_ long-
               | ailing paper, the _Chicago Tribune_ :
               | 
               | "Chicago Sun-Times becomes nonprofit newspaper with $61
               | million in backing as WBEZ merger closes"
               | 
               | <https://www.chicagotribune.com/2022/01/31/chicago-sun-
               | times-...>
               | 
               | Of newspapers operating at a loss or as philanthropies,
               | there are the _Baltimore Banner_ ,[2] _The Guardian_ ,[3]
               | and ProPublica,[4] which all operate as non-profits,
               | relying on a mix of advertising, subscriptions, and
               | philanthropy. The privately-held, for-profit _Washington
               | Post_ is a for-profit paper that 's operated at a loss
               | for years, and this before losing ~10% of its subscribers
               | due to recent editorial decisions.[4][5]
               | 
               | There are numerous propaganda institutions (usually
               | labeled as "think tanks") promulgating various ideologies
               | or interests, with the Atlas Network being amongst the
               | largest and most influential:
               | 
               | <https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Atlas_Networ
               | k>
               | 
               | ________________________________
               | 
               | Notes:
               | 
               | 1. See for example the WSJ's coverage: "Chicago Public
               | Media to Acquire Chicago Sun-Times, Creating a Nonprofit
               | Local-News Powerhouse"
               | <https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/chicago-public-media-
               | to-acq...> archive/paywall: <https://archive.is/LP3Q6>.
               | 
               | 2. A non-profit newspaper established in 2022:
               | <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Baltimore_Banner>.
               | 
               | 3. A slightly dated take on 2016 turmoil at _The
               | Guardian_ : "Everything you need to know about the
               | Guardian's giant bust-up" (2026-5-18)
               | <https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/london-
               | life/fueding-and...> and Wikipedia's entry on the Scott
               | Trust Limited which underwrites the paper:
               | <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Trust_Limited>.
               | 
               | 4. ProPublica was established as a 501(c)(3) in 2007,
               | with funding from the Sandler, Knight, MacArthur, and
               | Ford foundations, along with the Pew Charitable Trusts,
               | Carnegie Corporation, and Atlantic Philanthropies:
               | <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ProPublica>.
               | 
               | 5. "The Washington Post publisher disclosed the paper
               | lost $77 million last year. Here's his plan to turn it
               | around" (2024-5-23)
               | <https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/23/media/washington-post-
               | will-le...>
               | 
               | 6. "Washington Post cancellations hit 250,000 - 10% of
               | subscribers" (2024-10-29) <https://www.theguardian.com/me
               | dia/2024/oct/29/washington-pos...>
        
               | bradleyjg wrote:
               | That's just a different set of customers ("patrons").
        
               | dredmorbius wrote:
               | No.
               | 
               | For most of the listed orgs, it's a different business
               | organisation (not-for-profit rather than shareholder-
               | based), the organisations aren't intended to run an
               | operating profit, and the content is available to far
               | more than just those who pay directly for access.
               | 
               | Mind that in the case of ad-supported print media, the
               | principle customers (the advertisers) weren't identical
               | with the set of readers. But access was _largely_ limited
               | to those who subscribed directly, bought a newsstand
               | copy, or could access a copy obtained by either method.
               | In either case the operation was generally intended to
               | run a profit.
               | 
               | There have also been free papers, either supported
               | _entirely_ by advertising (frequently  "entertainment
               | weeklies"), _or_ published as propaganda organs for a
               | given organisation, frequently religious or political.
        
               | pessimizer wrote:
               | The Guardian has turned a profit in maybe 4 of the last
               | 30 years.
        
           | refulgentis wrote:
           | Or it's a time-honored way, neutral, way to communicate the
           | impact of business news. YMMV, in my experience not based not
           | on facts, but how willing I am to catastrophize things in
           | order to make things I don't like simple to blame on someone.
        
           | JumpCrisscross wrote:
           | > _It's a good example of how the media wants to entertain,
           | not inform_
           | 
           | It's a good example of the media being split into two
           | populations. The free media, which is filler for ads. And
           | media one pays for. The financial press isn't really
           | headlining this story; it's on CNBC.
        
         | worstspotgain wrote:
         | > nothing burger event for an index that has lost relevance
         | 
         | This argument has been around since time immemorial. The right
         | way to think of it is more like a country club or a who's who,
         | rather than a survey or a directory.
         | 
         | As for the news at hand, it's really more about Intel than
         | Nvidia. Sic transit gloria mundi.
        
           | lotsofpulp wrote:
           | Intel hasn't been in the country club for 10+ years.
        
             | worstspotgain wrote:
             | If you exclude its pre-Athlon Nvidia-like era, Intel's
             | market cap earlier this year was only ~20% below its
             | 2020ish peak.
             | 
             | It has engineers. It might yet surprise. Nvidia hasn't
             | proven it can turn a ridiculous amount of capital into a
             | matrix-multiplication moat.
        
         | rty32 wrote:
         | This could be very wrong, but I thought DJIA is relevant mostly
         | due to WSJ? Most publications care about S&P 500, but in WSJ
         | they always quote DJIA first (for obvious reasons) and maybe
         | mention S&P 500.
        
           | anonu wrote:
           | The Dow Jones corp used to own the index and the newspaper
           | prior to the mid 2000s. Now, News Corp runs the WSJ and the
           | index is mostly owned and run by S&P. So there is a
           | historical connection and probably some legacy ownership
           | today.
        
       | chillingeffect wrote:
       | Symbolic of the times. The new wizzy guy edges out the old school
       | lumbering giant.
        
         | mananaysiempre wrote:
         | For some value of "new", anyway. I remember attending a talk on
         | how GPU programming was cool and how GPGPU was the next big
         | thing--in the mid 2000s, as a middle schooler. I don't believe
         | CUDA was a thing yet (looking at Wikipedia, the first release
         | might have been several months later?), instead Cg and
         | NV_fragment_program4 were the new hotness.
        
         | kelnos wrote:
         | Eh, not really? Nvidia is 31 years old, that's hardly new or
         | wizzy. Sure, Intel is a bit older at 56, but I feel like Nvidia
         | has been around more than long enough.
        
       | markus_zhang wrote:
       | Does that mean it's gonna top...
        
       | bhouston wrote:
       | The symbolism here is pretty nice.
        
       | m463 wrote:
       | I wonder if they have enough clout to change DJIA -> DJAI ?
        
         | MengerSponge wrote:
         | Only if they can make it French too
        
       | knowitnone wrote:
       | So you can just replace underperforming/flailing companies and
       | still call it an average?
        
         | kristopolous wrote:
         | Yes that's how it's always worked
         | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_components_of_the...
        
           | tedsanders wrote:
           | According to this, the original DJIA was 11 stocks,
           | comprising 9 railroad companies, 1 steamship company, and 1
           | telegraph company. Capital was deployed very differently 140
           | years ago.
        
             | dredmorbius wrote:
             | It was and wasn't.
             | 
             | Those were the telecoms, transport, and infrastructure
             | companies of their day. They connected the industrial and
             | agricultural output of the United States in much the way
             | Apple, Amazon, Boeing, Verizon, and Walmart (all current
             | components of the DJIA) do today.
             | 
             | That said, yes, it's interesting to watch how the
             | components and industrial sectors represented change over
             | time.
             | 
             | The first DJIA proper (26 May 1896) featured cotton oil,
             | sugar, tobacco, gas & coke (coal), cattle feed, electrical
             | utility, lead, railroads, leather, rubber, and a holding
             | company (trust) largely engaged in utilities and
             | transportation, and dropped later the same year, along with
             | US Rubber. Changes to the average have been a consistent
             | feature to its origins.
             | 
             | Think of those which aren't directly comparable to modern
             | concerns (e.g., oil & gas, electric utilities) as raw
             | materials (mining and ag), transport and logistics, and
             | food (or feed).
        
         | RobRivera wrote:
         | Its not a market average, its an average of members curated by
         | an arbitrary set of rules.
         | 
         | Many exist.
         | 
         | This is how it has always been.
        
         | xnx wrote:
         | DJIA is kind of a joke index. SP500 is much better.
        
           | millipede wrote:
           | The Dow Jones index serves a different purpose: it's meant to
           | be easy to update without the use of a computer. It's easy to
           | update and publish the index since the math is a lot easier,
           | and doesn't involve pulling in hundreds of quotes and trying
           | to tabulate a weighted average.
           | 
           | It's not that useful now that we have computers, but in the
           | early 1900s it was a reasonably good approximation of a
           | market cap using fast math.
        
             | staticman2 wrote:
             | Index funds didn't exist until 1975 while the Dow was
             | formed in 1896. So I suppose it didn't really matter if the
             | Dow was tracking things well, it wouldn't have impacted
             | your investments.
        
               | dredmorbius wrote:
               | It was still useful to have a _general_ idea of how stock
               | markets were valued, particularly in light of the events
               | on and about 29 October 1929, a /k/a Black Tuesday.
               | Valuation of equities markets themselves has a profound
               | impact on the monetary and financial systems as a whole.
               | 
               | On which point, John K. Galbraith's _The Great Crash:
               | 1929_ (1954) remains an excellent history of those events
               | (and notes the DJIA 's value frequently), as well as a
               | general primer on equities and investments, and how they
               | may go wrong.
        
           | irjustin wrote:
           | Wonder how much DJIA had to give to get them to list.
        
           | bityard wrote:
           | Yes, it is entirely symbolic and has been for decades. The
           | only purpose it really serves is differentiating those who
           | know a little bit about stock markets and those who don't.
           | It's annoying that serious media outlets continue to publish
           | it, alongside valid indexes, implying that it has anywhere
           | near the same level of legitimacy. Also, I don't like it.
        
           | mrtransient wrote:
           | May I know why you consider it a joke? I obviously have no
           | much clue about it all
        
             | sooheon wrote:
             | If you want to estimate the stock market, would you rather:
             | 
             | 1. sum 500 of the biggest companies by size (price * n
             | shares).
             | 
             | or
             | 
             | 2. have WSJ editors select 30 companies by any criteria
             | they see fit, but you don't get to see the size of the
             | companies, only the share price.
        
               | dredmorbius wrote:
               | Note that the DJIA also _changes constantly over time_
               | (as discussed elsewhere in this thread), as do the
               | weights assigned to the individual companies constituting
               | it.
               | 
               | The way that the DJIA changes isn't the same as an index
               | of, say, the _n_ most highly capitalised equities might
               | (Fortune 5, 10, 20, S &P 500, etc.).
        
           | dkrich wrote:
           | I love that so many people keep saying this so confidently
           | yet if anyone bothered to look they'd see that the
           | correlation between the two is nearly perfect over any
           | timeframe including the past five years
        
       | nextworddev wrote:
       | This is how the dump begins. Onto the index huggers and pension
       | funds
        
         | bhouston wrote:
         | You are correct, this will affect both Intel and NVIDIA's stock
         | prices, although it may already have been baked in depending
         | how predictable this was.
         | 
         | Index funds are big business. Dropping Intel and replacing it
         | with NVIDIA will cause a rebalancing of the DJIA index fund
         | investments from Intel to NVIDIA. Yup, there is an index
         | premium.
        
         | khuey wrote:
         | Major index funds don't follow the DJIA. $DIA has 5% of $SPY's
         | assets under management.
        
           | nextworddev wrote:
           | That's half the story, there's a lot of private funds that
           | passively track as well, it just comes down to what's the net
           | flow due to rebalance of public + private indices. Could be a
           | lot, could be that much
        
           | bhouston wrote:
           | DIA has ~$35.62 billion, IYY has ~$2.5B in the DJIA. There
           | are only 30 companies in it (~$12T total value), so it
           | averages $1.1B per company.
           | 
           | But the S&P 500 index funds has somewhere around ~$2.5T
           | invested, but that is spread across 500 companies (~$40T
           | total valuation), so it averages $5B per company.
           | 
           | Thus you are correct the S&P 500 is more influential in terms
           | of index fund reallocations, but only roughly 5x more
           | influential.
        
             | sooheon wrote:
             | Put another way, IYY and DIA combined hold <0.1% of NVDA's
             | market cap.
        
               | bhouston wrote:
               | Sure but the daily volume is only $300M.
        
               | tripletao wrote:
               | I think you're looking at the volume in shares per day,
               | not dollars per day.
        
               | bhouston wrote:
               | You are correct. The daily volume is ~300,042,864 x 135.
        
             | staticman2 wrote:
             | The dow has nothing to do with index funds. The dow
             | industrial average is price weighted. The s&p 500 is market
             | weighted. No competent index would follow the dow- it
             | doesn't even make sense conceptually, it has zero relation
             | to the economics of the companies when you use price
             | weighting, and 30 companies is a stupid low number.
             | 
             | There is, as far as I can tell, zero point to the dow, it's
             | a completely useless tracker that is reported on because
             | people talk about it because it's reported on.
        
               | bhouston wrote:
               | > The dow has nothing to do with index funds
               | 
               | I am not sure what point you're making but there is ~$38B
               | invested in index funds (the ones I mention in the
               | previous post) that track the DJIA.
               | 
               | Granted it is a fraction of the index funds which track
               | the S&P 500.
        
               | dkrich wrote:
               | This may make sense in theory but in reality is wrong.
               | The DJIA has historically had a very close correlation to
               | the S&P. Plus there is an inescapable psychological
               | aspect to the Dow that is unique. When the Dow is off
               | 1500 points it hits much differently than the S&P falling
               | 200 points.
        
               | dubcanada wrote:
               | I have a feeling that is because every company in the
               | DJIA is also in S&P, and most are very heavily weighted
               | in S&P. Rather then companies within the DJIA doing as
               | good as companies in the S&P.
        
             | tripletao wrote:
             | The S&P 500 is cap-weighted, so the average value per
             | company is meaningless. Nvidia is currently 7% of the
             | index, while the smallest member is 0.01%.
             | 
             | Since Nvidia was already a part of the S&P 500 (and other
             | similar indices) prior to its big run, those index
             | investors generally profited from its rise. New flows into
             | those funds do help prop it up, though.
             | 
             | The DJIA is a weird historical relic, and there's little
             | reason for anyone to buy a fund tracking it. It's possible
             | that those who did anyways will end up holding a tiny
             | fraction of the bag due to this change, but it's not a big
             | effect.
        
         | mrtransient wrote:
         | Could you please explain how do you see the proposed dump?
        
           | nextworddev wrote:
           | Pumping a big momentum trade and selling it upon index
           | rebalance is a classic buy side trade
        
           | mynegation wrote:
           | Index funds follow indices and to follow an index asset
           | manager holds a weighted basket of respective stocks. If
           | stock is excluded from the index, asset manager sell it off
           | and that puts downward pressure on the stock price. Reverse
           | happens if stock is included into the index.
        
             | jruz wrote:
             | That's what common sense makes you think, reality is big
             | money needs someone to sell into their NVDA stock and this
             | is how they do it. Just look at what happens to the stocks
             | every time they get added or removed from the index, the
             | complete opposite of common sense.
        
           | csomar wrote:
           | Liquidity is held by funds. Funds (some of them pensions)
           | have rules where to allocate. They just follow these rules
           | and allocate. Now this change will change the allocation to
           | Nvidia. Investors can tap into this liquidity. The $$$ are
           | then transferred from the funds (some of them are pensions,
           | uh I mentioned that) to the investors.
           | 
           | AI bubble then burst. Funds are "adjusted" and someone is not
           | getting his pension.
        
         | coffeebeqn wrote:
         | Index huggers already own plenty of Nvidia (and Intel)? SP500
         | and total stock market funds have 4-7% in Nvidia at this point
        
       | insane_dreamer wrote:
       | Intel's CEO wanted to buy NVidia 20 years ago. Unfortunately for
       | Intel, the board of directors killed the proposal as "too
       | expensive" at $20B. Granted no one could see the future of AI on
       | GPUs, but think of the ROI on that investment.
        
         | ipsum2 wrote:
         | Nvidia would've acquired the culture of Intel, so it wouldn't
         | be the company it was today if that happened.
        
           | insane_dreamer wrote:
           | Not sure that would have mattered once LLMs emerged. NVidia's
           | success is mostly a matter of being the only major advanced
           | GPU player at the time when LLMs exploded onto the scene.
           | That won't be the case for long. The big players are already
           | heavily investing in high performance AI chips to wean
           | themselves off a dependance on NVidia.
        
             | kiratp wrote:
             | Nvidia's success is due to a decade+ of investment into
             | their software stack (CUDA and friends), built on a world
             | view that more software can and should be massively
             | parallel.
             | 
             | They were a key cause for LLMs being a thing in the first
             | place.
        
               | BobbyJo wrote:
               | This. I worked in HPC between 2010 and 2013, and people
               | were trying to compete with NVidia in the GPGPU space
               | even back then, seeing the way the wind was blowing.
               | Compute bandwidth, and FLOPS/watt has steadily been more
               | and more important the last 15 years, even before AI.
               | 
               | NVidia has continued to stay ahead because every
               | alternative to CUDA is half baked trash, even when the
               | silicone make sense. As a tech company, trading $$ for
               | time not spent dealing with compatibility bugs and broken
               | drivers pretty much _always_ makes business sense.
        
               | otabdeveloper4 wrote:
               | > half baked trash
               | 
               | > dealing with compatibility bugs
               | 
               | > broken drivers
               | 
               | Describes my experience trying to use CUDA perfectly.
               | 
               | We have a long way to go and we haven't even started yet.
        
               | initplus wrote:
               | Given that experience, think about what state the
               | alternatives must be in!
        
               | disgruntledphd2 wrote:
               | To be fair, Cuda has improved a lot since 2014 or so. I
               | messed up my Linux box multiple times trying to install
               | Cuda but the last time it was just apt install and maybe
               | setting ld library and it all just worked.
        
               | yieldcrv wrote:
               | It's pretty bad. just when you think you can order AMD
               | chips since there is no shortage, and use a translation
               | layer and have a cheap AI datacenter, it turns out AMD is
               | fumbling the ball at every step of the way
        
               | bottled_poe wrote:
               | It's interesting. They have had plenty of time and
               | resources available to mount solid competition. Why
               | haven't they? Is it a talent hiring problems or some more
               | fundamental problem with their engineering processes? The
               | writing has been on the wall for gpgpu for more than 10
               | years. Definitely enough time to catch up.
        
               | the__alchemist wrote:
               | Have you tried Vulkan Compute or OpenCL? I recommend
               | evaluating this relatively, vice compared to an ideal.
        
               | neurostimulant wrote:
               | Wasn't Intel's commercial compiler also dominated HPC
               | space around that time period? I remember back then
               | people would use cuda and icc for hpc stuff.
        
               | rbanffy wrote:
               | I believe their compilers still dominate in CPU-bound
               | workloads.
        
               | knappe wrote:
               | I can't speak to modern hpc, since I've been out of the
               | game for a few years but icc was absolutely the preferred
               | compiler for almost any workload and Intel procs were the
               | desired hardware to run on. AMD was joked about as the
               | only reason Intel wasn't considered a monopoly at the
               | time and that Intel would happily take wheelbarrows of
               | cash over to AMD to prop them up, just to ensure they
               | didn't even appear like a monopoly. But no one in the
               | field was buying AMD procs for their workloads.
        
               | ghaff wrote:
               | Nvidia did a lot of things right. But it sure didn't hurt
               | that the crypto bubble gave way to LLMs with almost
               | perfect timing. Luck favors the prepared and all that but
               | Nvidia also would have had trouble timing market changes
               | better.
        
               | toasterlovin wrote:
               | Yeah, exactly, it has never been clear that we would find
               | a use for parallel computation outside of niches like
               | graphics and HPC. And in fact most of the history of
               | computing has been evidence of the opposite: useful
               | computation has been predominantly serial in nature. But
               | here we are now.
        
               | FredPret wrote:
               | Nvidia did ride a perfect storm of gaming + bitcoin + AI.
               | 
               | But AMD and others could have done the same, had they
               | been better at riding that wave. There's a reason it was
               | _Nvidia_ who won out.
        
               | llm_trw wrote:
               | More than a decade.
               | 
               | I was using it as soon as it came out in 2007 and my
               | dinky desktop workstation was out performing the main
               | frame in the basement.
        
               | mullingitover wrote:
               | > a world view that more software can and should be
               | massively parallel.
               | 
               | Twenty years ago I was thinking we'd be speccing machines
               | in kilocores by now.
        
               | epcoa wrote:
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connection_Machine
        
               | otabdeveloper4 wrote:
               | 128 and 512 cores are normal now, so not that far off.
        
               | Keyframe wrote:
               | 4090 has 16384 cuda cores, so there's that!
        
               | atq2119 wrote:
               | Nvidia's marketing is misleading. Those "cuda cores" are
               | more SIMD lanes than cores. Number of SMs is a more
               | appropriate equivalent to CPU core count.
        
               | Keyframe wrote:
               | you're right
        
               | dahart wrote:
               | Are you sure that isn't what @mullingitover meant?
               | 
               | > Number of SMs is a more appropriate equivalent to CPU
               | core count.
               | 
               | What do you mean by this? Why should an SM be considered
               | equivalent to a CPU core? An SM can do 128 simultaneous
               | adds and/or multiplies in a single cycle, where a CPU
               | core can do, what, 2 or maybe 4? Obviously depends on the
               | CPU / core / hyperthreading / # math pipelines / etc.,
               | but the SM to CPU-core ratio of the number of
               | simultaneous calculation is in the double digits. It's a
               | tradeoff where the GPU has some restrictions in return
               | for being able to do many multiples more at the same
               | time.
               | 
               | If you consider an SM and a CPU equivalent, then the SM's
               | perf can exceed the CPU core by ~2 orders of magnitude --
               | is that the comparison you want? If you consider a GPU
               | thread lane and a CPU thread lane equivalent, the the GPU
               | thread lane is slower and more restricted. Neither
               | comparison is apples to apples, CPUs and GPUs are made
               | for different workloads, but arguing that an SM is
               | equivalent to a CPU core seems equally or more
               | "misleading" when you're leaving out the tradeoff.
               | 
               | I'd argue that comparing SMs to cores is misleading and
               | that it makes more sense to compare chips is by their
               | thread counts. Or, don't compare cores at all and just
               | look at the performance in, say, FLOPS.
        
               | atq2119 wrote:
               | A single Zen5 core can do 32 single precision FMAs per
               | clock.
               | 
               | That's using SIMD, but so is Nvidia for all intents and
               | purposes. Those "cuda cores" aren't truly independent:
               | when their execution diverges, masking is used pretty
               | much like you'd do in CPU SIMD.
               | 
               | A lot of the control logic is per-SM or perhaps per-SIMD
               | unit -- there are multiple of those per SM. You could
               | perhaps make a case that it's the individual SIMDs which
               | correspond to CPU cores (that makes the flops line up
               | even more closely). It depends on what the goal of the
               | comparison is.
        
               | Dylan16807 wrote:
               | > An SM can do 128 simultaneous adds and/or multiplies in
               | a single cycle, where a CPU core can do, what, 2 or maybe
               | 4?
               | 
               | https://images.nvidia.com/aem-
               | dam/Solutions/geforce/news/rtx...
               | 
               | An SM is split into four identical blocks, and I would
               | say each block is roughly equivalent to a CPU core. It
               | has a scheduler, registers, 32 ALUs or FPUs, and some
               | other stuff.
               | 
               | A CPU core with two AVX-512 units can do several integer
               | operations plus 32 single-precision operations (including
               | FMA) per cycle. Not 2 or 4. An older CPU with 2-3 AVX2
               | units could fall slightly behind, but it's pretty close.
               | 
               | That doesn't factor in the tensor units, but they're less
               | general purpose, and CPUs usually put such things outside
               | the cores.
               | 
               | I would say an SM is roughly equivalent to four CPU
               | cores.
        
               | dahart wrote:
               | Yeah I totally forgot to consider CPU SIMD. Brain fart.
               | The other comment corrected me too, you're both right.
               | When I said 2 or 4, I was thinking of the SISD math pipe
               | and not AVX instructions.
               | 
               | Yes, considering CPU SIMD, maybe comparing a CPU core to
               | a CUDA warp makes some sense in some situations. The peak
               | FLOPS rate is still so much higher on Nvidia though, that
               | the comparison hardly makes sense. So yeah like I and the
               | other commenter mentioned, it depends entirely on what
               | comparison is being made.
        
               | seanhunter wrote:
               | 100%. If you ever tried to build pytorch (or tensorflow)
               | gpu accellerated using NVidia vs AMD it was absolutely
               | chalk and cheese for the longest time.
               | 
               | Nvidia/CUDA process: Download package. Run the build. It
               | works. Run your thing- it's GPU accelerated. Go get a
               | beer/coffee/whatever while your net runs.
               | 
               | AMD process: Download package. Run the build. Debug
               | failure. Read lots of articles about which patches to
               | apply. Apply the patches. Run the build. It fails again.
               | Shit. OK ok now I know what to do. I need a special fork
               | of the package. go get that. Find it doesn't actually
               | have the same API that the latest pytorch/tf relies on.
               | OK downgrade those to an earlier version. OK now we're
               | good. Run the build again. Aw shit. That failed again.
               | More web searches. Oh ok now I know - there's some other
               | patches you need to apply to this branch. OK cool. Now it
               | compiles. Install the package. Run the thing. Huh. That's
               | weird. GPU accelleration isn't on.... sigh....
        
             | KaoruAoiShiho wrote:
             | This seems to have cause and effect backwards. LLMs emerged
             | because of Nvidia.
        
               | dagmx wrote:
               | LLMs absolutely did not emerge because of NVIDIA. you're
               | the one imho who is mistaking correlation with causality.
               | 
               | The first transformer models were developed at Google.
               | NVIDIA were the card du jour for accelerating it in the
               | years since and have contributed research too, but your
               | statement goes way too far
        
               | BobbyJo wrote:
               | I think their point is that easily accessible hardware
               | capable of supporting the research is the reason the
               | research has come as far as it has, and I would tend to
               | agree. At the very least, GPUs keeping the PCI ecosystem
               | going has played a major role in allowing the specialized
               | accelerator market to flourish.
        
               | dagmx wrote:
               | But that could apply to any of the GPU manufacturers.
               | CUDA made for an easier ecosystem but if it didn't exist
               | it would have been any of the other APIs.
               | 
               | The first transformer models didn't even use CUDA and
               | CUDA didn't have mass ecosystem inroads till years later.
               | 
               | I'm not trying to downplay NVIDIA but they specifically
               | mentioned cause and effect, and then said it was because
               | of NVIDIA.
        
               | KaoruAoiShiho wrote:
               | First transformer != LLM. Imagine a world where you had
               | to use AMD or CPUs, there would be no AlexNet, there
               | would be no LLMs. Nvidia seeded universities with gifted
               | hardware accelerators for a over a decade. Nvidia built
               | the foundations for modern ML on which transformer lies,
               | it's just one step on a long road to LLMs.
        
               | dagmx wrote:
               | AMD had GPU compute APIs at the time as well. They also
               | used to contribute GPUs (albeit in much smaller
               | quantities). They just ended up killing them in favor of
               | OpenCL which then withered on the vine.
               | 
               | NVIDIA absolutely contributed to the foundation but they
               | are not the foundation alone.
               | 
               | Alexnet was great research but they could have done the
               | same on other vendors at the time too. The hardware
               | didn't exist in a vacuum.
        
               | KaoruAoiShiho wrote:
               | Alexnet could not have been done on AMD, nope.
        
               | dagmx wrote:
               | Please, this is just revisionism. There's nothing
               | inherent to AlexNet that relied on NVIDIA hardware or
               | even software. It was just what happened to be available
               | and most straightforward at the time.
               | 
               | To say it wouldn't have been possible on AMD is ludicrous
               | and there is a pattern to your comments where you dismiss
               | any other companies efforts or capabilities, but are
               | quite happy to lay all the laurels on NVIDIA.
               | 
               | The reality is that multiple companies and individuals
               | got us to where we are, and multiple products could have
               | done the same. That's not to take away from NVIDIA's
               | success, it's well earned, but if you took them out of
               | the equation, there's nothing that would have prevented
               | the tech existing.
        
               | hnlmorg wrote:
               | The crux of the issue is this:
               | 
               | > It was just what happened to be available and most
               | straightforward at the time
               | 
               | AMD made better hardware for a while and people wanted
               | OpenCL to succeed. The reason why nvidia became dominant
               | was because their competitors simply weren't good enough
               | for general purpose parallel compute.
               | 
               | Would AI still have happened without CUDA? Almost
               | certainly. However nvidia still had a massive role in
               | shaping what it looks like today.
        
               | EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
               | Many people here are heavily invested in NVDA stock,
               | which certainly clouds the judgement.
        
               | dagmx wrote:
               | That's my take away too, even though I'm invested myself.
               | The discussion around them has transcended into
               | mythology. Imho part of it is because GPUs themselves are
               | so foreign to many people as a development target and so
               | they're not really as aware of the landscape
        
               | physicsguy wrote:
               | OpenCL itself is kinda fine, but the libraries never
               | existed because every academic from postdoc up could get
               | a free NVidia card. You literally filled a form out and
               | they sent you it.
        
               | dagmx wrote:
               | I agree the library situation for OpenCL never stood up.
               | Khronos tried at the start but then lost steam.
               | 
               | It's one of the projects I think the Khronos group
               | mishandled the most unfortunately.
        
               | DeathArrow wrote:
               | Do they have a project that achieved success?
        
               | echoangle wrote:
               | OpenGL, Vulkan, WebGL?
        
               | dagmx wrote:
               | Here's a list of projects
               | 
               | https://www.khronos.org/
               | 
               | If I were to categorize the successful ones:
               | 
               | glTF, KTX, SPIR-V, OpenGL and its variants, WebGL
               | 
               | People will say Vulkan but it has the same level of
               | adoption as OpenCL, and has the same issue that it
               | competes against vendor specific APIs (DX and Metal) that
               | are just better to use. It's still used though of course
               | as a translation target but imho that doesn't qualify it
               | as a success.
               | 
               | OpenCL was and is a failure of grand magnitude. As was
               | colada.
        
               | BobbyJo wrote:
               | > The first transformer models didn't even use CUDA and
               | CUDA didn't have mass ecosystem inroads till years later.
               | 
               | I graduated college in 2010 and I took a class taught in
               | CUDA before graduating. CUDA was a primary driver of NN
               | research at the time. Sure, other tools were available,
               | but CUDA allowed people to build and distribute actually
               | useful software which further encouraged the space.
               | 
               | Could things have happened without it? Yeah, for sure,
               | but it would have taken a good deal longer.
        
               | llm_trw wrote:
               | I was around the space before Alexnet came out. Without
               | NVidia the last 15 years of AI would not have happened.
               | 
               | Deep learning was only possible because you could do it
               | on NVidia cards with Cuda without having to use the big
               | machines in the basement.
               | 
               | Trying to convince anyone that neural networks could be
               | useful in 2009 was impossible - I got a grant declined
               | and my PhD supervisor told me to drop the useless tech
               | and focus on something better like support vector
               | machines.
        
               | dagmx wrote:
               | I was around then too and people forget that AMD also had
               | GPU compute APIs.
               | 
               | The difference is AMD killed theirs to use OpenCL and
               | NVIDIA kept CUDA around as well.
        
               | llm_trw wrote:
               | Just like how ROCm is supposed to be competitive today
               | and it isn't unless you have an army of grad students to
               | look after your data center cards.
               | 
               | I tried using AMD Stream and it lacked documentation,
               | debugging information and most of the tools needed to get
               | anything done without a large team of experts. NVidia by
               | comparison could - and was - used by single grad students
               | on their franken-stations which we build out of gaming
               | GPUs.
               | 
               | The less we talk about the disaster that the move to
               | opencl was the better.
        
               | dagmx wrote:
               | I agree ROCm was a mess and only recently is even really
               | usable.
               | 
               | That said ROCm is quite a recent thing borne out of
               | acknowledging that OpenCL 2 was a disaster.
               | 
               | OpenCL 1 had a reasonable shot and was gaining adoption
               | but 2 scuppered it.
        
               | llm_trw wrote:
               | Did you ever train anything past mnist on AMD? I try
               | every five years or so and promise myself never again
               | each and every time.
        
               | dagmx wrote:
               | Not with Rocm since I've moved my personal stack to
               | NVIDIA (for rendering) and Macs for day to day use.
               | 
               | I did write quite a bit of OpenCL prior to that on
               | Intel/AMd/NVIDIA, both for training and for general
               | rendering though, and did some work with Stream before
               | then.
        
               | llm_trw wrote:
               | Was it OpenCL1? That's the only one I hadn't tried out
               | for AMD GPUs. Everything else I have and can say with
               | absolute certainty that you spend more time fighting the
               | hardware than you did writing code.
               | 
               | Cuda by comparison JustWorks^tm.
        
               | dagmx wrote:
               | Both 1 and 2. I haven't done much with 3 as OpenCL is
               | effectively a dead api at this point.
               | 
               | 1 was definitely a lot easier to work with than 2. CUDA
               | is easier than both but I don't think I hit anything I
               | could do in CUDA that I couldn't do in OpenCL, though
               | CUDA of course had a larger ecosystem of existing
               | libraries.
        
               | llm_trw wrote:
               | Damn, I missed the best one.
               | 
               | Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
        
               | aledalgrande wrote:
               | I was not a PhD, but I studied both around that period in
               | university and can confirm that neural networks were only
               | seen as a kind of theoretical plaything. All the
               | libraries were pushing SVMs.
        
             | deelowe wrote:
             | As someone who's intimately familiar with both cultures,
             | I'm convinced Intel would have killed any innovation Nvidia
             | had going for it before it had a chance to really take off.
             | 
             | Management at the two could not be more opposite if they
             | tried.
        
             | daedrdev wrote:
             | Surely intel would have killed off CUDA
        
             | grogenaut wrote:
             | Intels 3rd wave management by MBA would have ruined nvidia
             | way back then forcing them into something dumb and blocked
             | all of the R&D they did since since that's what they also
             | did at intel.
        
             | astrange wrote:
             | Other companies are capable of making big GPUs; they aren't
             | the only TSMC customer. Intel themselves have perfectly
             | fine GPUs. Their issue is that their management never
             | allocates enough space in their chips to let them perform
             | well.
             | 
             | Nvidia's advantage is that they have by far the most
             | complete programming ecosystem for them. (Also honestly...
             | they're a meme stock.)
        
               | DeathArrow wrote:
               | Other companies don't have CUDA.
        
             | DeathArrow wrote:
             | Nvidia will make general purpose GPUs while the AI players
             | will make ASICS. I guess most data center will prefer GPUs
             | so customers can run whatever AI model they need.
        
             | TrainedMonkey wrote:
             | I think this undersells the story. NVidia's success is
             | built on innovating and scaling for 20 years. Vastly
             | oversimplifying it:
             | 
             | - CUDA conception in 2006 to build super computers for
             | scientific computing.
             | 
             | - CUDA influencing CPU designs to be dual purpose, with
             | major distinction of RAM amounts (for scientific compute
             | you need a lot more RAM compared to gaming)
             | 
             | - Crypto craze driving extreme consumer GPU demand which
             | enabled them to invest heavily into RND and scale up
             | production.
             | 
             | - AI workload explosion arriving right as the crypto demand
             | was dying down.
             | 
             | - Consistently great execution, or at least not making any
             | major blunders, during all of the above.
        
               | no_wizard wrote:
               | It's more no major blunders + no real major competition,
               | they have not consistently "executed great", it's dumb
               | luck + no extremely stupid decisions.
               | 
               | It doesn't mean they didn't make a bunch of mistakes its
               | that when they did there was no competition to to
               | realistically turn towards, and they fixed a lot of their
               | mistakes.
        
             | Shorel wrote:
             | You are completely ignoring the impacts of Covid and GPU
             | cryptocurrency mining on Nvidia profits.
             | 
             | It could have been AMD/ATI profiting from such random
             | events, as they were the ones that financed AI development.
        
               | EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
               | BTW, when GPUs were used for Bitcoin mining (up until
               | year 2013, obsoleted by spacialized chips after that),
               | AMD chips were used exclusively, because they had much
               | better integer math performance, compared to Nvidia
               | cards, which focused on floating point performance.
        
             | kylebenzle wrote:
             | And when the LLM hype dies NVDA will be the hardest to
             | fall.
        
           | albertop wrote:
           | 100% on target. The Intel culture was a big contributor to
           | Intel fall.
        
           | hinkley wrote:
           | And the danger of Nvidia buying Intel is the same.
           | 
           | See also MD/Boeing
        
             | ipsum2 wrote:
             | Nvidia buying Intel would be doing Intel a great service.
        
               | insane_dreamer wrote:
               | Does nvidia contribute anything to OSS? Its drivers are
               | closed, that much I know. Whereas intel is the top corp
               | contributor to the Linux kernel
        
             | DeathArrow wrote:
             | Nvidia buying Intel would mean some damn fast CPUs. I'd
             | like to see that.
        
               | homebrewer wrote:
               | And most likely the death of Intel being one of the
               | largest contributors to the Linux kernel.
        
           | DeathArrow wrote:
           | Can you expand on what is the Intel culture and why it would
           | hurt growth?
        
             | pixelpoet wrote:
             | Some of my favourite reading on this topic is Matt Pharr's
             | retrospective on ISPC:
             | https://pharr.org/matt/blog/2018/04/30/ispc-all
        
               | toasterlovin wrote:
               | Second this. A great read in general and, to the extent
               | that it's accurate, very instructive about dysfunction at
               | Intel.
        
           | princearthur wrote:
           | I doubt they would have actually merged operations. The NIH
           | at Intel is so strong that it would have virtually
           | annihilated it otherwise.
        
           | BeetleB wrote:
           | Indeed. A friend of a friend of a friend was in the room when
           | the decision was made. The reason for not buying: Huang won't
           | be a team player and is hard to work with.
           | 
           | So yes, they would have tried to integrate it into the rest
           | of Intel.
        
             | thijson wrote:
             | Just look at what happened to Altera under Intel.
             | Preacquisition it was similar in size to Xilinx. Now it's
             | just a shadow of its former self, latest few quarters shows
             | it in the red. The person they have in charge of it. Sandra
             | Rivera was formerly the head of HR.
             | 
             | From 2019 to 2021, Rivera was Intel's chief people officer,
             | leading the company's Human Resources organization
             | worldwide.
             | 
             | I heard a rumor that Jensen wouldn't agree to the
             | acquisition unless he became CEO of the combined entity.
        
           | pseudosavant wrote:
           | Intel of that era would have also required Nvidia to only fab
           | their chips with Intel. That would have been fine initially
           | when Intel was a process leader. But it'd have killed Nvidia
           | for the last 10 years. AMD would have enjoyed a consistent
           | process advantage over Nvidia.
        
         | bogwog wrote:
         | Imagine where we'd (not) be if that happened.
         | Acquisitions/consolidation kill innovation.
        
         | metadat wrote:
         | And if the Intel board jumped on every expensive acquisition
         | novelty that came to the table, how does that go?
         | 
         | Everyday I look at stocks and wish I'd known to buy the ones
         | that went up today.
         | 
         | Overall, pretty uninteresting and uninsightful, unless you have
         | Doc Brown's DeLorean with the Mr. Fusion upgrade (BTTF II).
         | Even then, would it actually be good if you built your own
         | reality to such an extent? I'm sure life's weird for the
         | UHNW's, unclear if it's actually better. We're all still stuck
         | on the same planet, our kids and kid's kids will all face the
         | same struggles.
         | 
         | Even still, today is a pretty interesting temporal location to
         | occupy!
        
           | mrpippy wrote:
           | Not gonna say they jumped on every one, but...McAfee,
           | Havok(!), Infineon's wireless business, Mobileye, etc
        
             | metadat wrote:
             | Yeah, McAfee..
             | 
             | https://youtube.com/watch?v=bKgf5PaBzyg
             | 
             |  _metadat slowly saunters off into the nearby foggy
             | embankment, disappearing, Homer Simpson style_
        
           | lotsofpulp wrote:
           | > Everyday I look at stocks and wish I'd known to buy the
           | ones that went up today.
           | 
           | You can't compare yourself to the board of the premiere
           | microchip manufacturing company (at the time). They should
           | have more information than you and they are paid to be making
           | more informed decisions (obviously they can be wrong too).
        
         | DeathArrow wrote:
         | Before AI Nvidia made some nice money from the crypto craze.
         | Also, during pandemics and after, but before AI, there was a
         | severe shortage of Nvidia GPUs.
        
           | trhway wrote:
           | >during pandemics and after, but before AI, there was a
           | severe shortage of Nvidia GPUs.
           | 
           | you'd think that such multi-year shortage of a product would
           | be used as an opportunity by other players to jump in and
           | make great money. Yet that major machinery of capitalism is
           | failing here.
        
             | Applejinx wrote:
             | Implies that 'that major machinery of capitalism' is an
             | assumption. If it doesn't happen even under optimal
             | conditions, you've learned something about the assumptions
             | you've been taught as axioms.
        
         | Shorel wrote:
         | Intel involvement would have killed any initiative that would
         | lead to what Nvidia is now.
         | 
         | So, the ROI would have been much, much lower.
        
         | throwaway48476 wrote:
         | AMD at one point wanted to buy Nvidia too.
        
         | asah wrote:
         | Every big techco was the target of numerous buyout offers along
         | the way. Yahoo! tried to buy Google and Facebook got any number
         | of offers.
         | 
         | It makes sense when the growing company doesn't have a path
         | forward (e.g. YouTube's bandwidth costs) or the price is truly
         | crazy (e.g. WhatsApp).
         | 
         | It's not clear to me why Instagram sold out to Facebook for
         | $1B.
        
         | wellthisisgreat wrote:
         | AI wouldn't have had a future in its current form.
         | 
         | Or maybe Intel would be partitioning off Nvidia like the memory
         | unit.
        
       | Animats wrote:
       | The "Dow Jones Industrial Index" isn't that industrial any more.
       | Six of the companies are financial. Only about half actually run
       | factories.
        
         | dehrmann wrote:
         | And MTV doesn't play music. The DJIA is curated slice of the
         | American economy with a goofy weighting.
        
           | wodenokoto wrote:
           | For what it's worth, they have MTV MEA running in my local
           | gym and it plays nothing but music all the time.
        
             | Animats wrote:
             | EMA, the European Music Awards?
             | 
             | My local gym has a tier of cable so low that they don't
             | even get CNN. For music, there's K-pop.
        
               | slater wrote:
               | Middle East & Asia, I'd guess.
        
       | m3kw9 wrote:
       | Ok so why switch?
        
       | httpz wrote:
       | Nobody should take Dow Jones Industrial Average seriously. It's
       | only relevant because it's been around for 139 years. It only
       | tracks arbitrarily selected 30 large companies and it's not even
       | weighted by market cap.
       | 
       | It was made this way because 139 years ago we didn't have
       | computers and someone had to manually calculate the average.
        
       | ulfw wrote:
       | May I suggest a merger of intel with Boeing?
       | 
       | Two back-in-the-day engineering driven future-forward companies
       | and today run into the ground by Quarterly Reports And Nothing
       | Else Matters culture and meandering around.
       | 
       | They'd be a lovely cultural fit.
        
       | tippytippytango wrote:
       | A cautionary tale for Nvidia to not become the next Intel.
        
       | guerrilla wrote:
       | I've been assuming that Intel will eventually catch up, because
       | that's the world we grew up in, but that's not going to happen,
       | is it?
        
       | DeathArrow wrote:
       | Long time ago Nvidia tried to make it's own x86 CPU but was
       | threatened with lawsuits by Intel. Now Nvidia can buy Intel for a
       | song.
        
         | h2odragon wrote:
         | Just buy the patents and stuff. You wouldn't want to infect a
         | working company with the Intel disease.
         | 
         | I wonder how bad "worked as a manager at Intel" poisons a
         | resume.
        
           | result2vino wrote:
           | Certainly less than the HN sewing circle (yourself included)
           | would think. People that actually know what they're doing
           | tend to make more informed and nuanced decisions than beating
           | on their chest and yelling "Intel bad!"
        
             | h2odragon wrote:
             | I have Nothing against anyone who does the best they can in
             | a bad situation.
             | 
             | Observing Intel, my feeling has been that "best you can"
             | has been "bail out" since just after the PPro. The company
             | has worked hard to waste a whole generation of talent and
             | possibility. It took immense effort.
             | 
             | Anyone who looks at that performance and says "I was proud
             | to be part of that" is not someone who will be happy
             | working beside me, anyway.
        
             | FredPret wrote:
             | I don't know - there are a couple of companies that are a
             | red flag on a resume.
             | 
             | Some companies get results, and some specialize in
             | Powerpoint and politics. It all comes down to the managers
             | in charge.
             | 
             | Would you hire a VP/manager that spent too much time at IBM
             | or similar? How long can you work there without getting
             | infected?
        
         | eigenspace wrote:
         | There's no way in hell Nvidia could buy Intel. There's more in
         | this world than just money.
        
           | Kwpolska wrote:
           | To boards, investors, and other parasites, money is the only
           | thing that matters.
        
             | eigenspace wrote:
             | Sure, but in reality money will only get them so far.
             | Regulators will not allow Nvidia to buy Intel.
        
           | dubcanada wrote:
           | That's a really silly thing to say, in the sake of "buying" a
           | company, nothing matters more then money lol
        
             | eigenspace wrote:
             | Maybe at small scales, but at larger scales, absolutely
             | not. Among big strategically important companies, the
             | barrier to acquisitions is not money, but regulatory
             | approval, and I think there's no way regulators around the
             | world will allow Nvidia to buy Intel.
        
               | jumping_frog wrote:
               | Is there an example of a company which could have gotten
               | a new lease of life after acquition was denied a
               | regulatory approval and then the company failed?
        
         | AbstractH24 wrote:
         | I was recently looking at Intel's performance during the dotcom
         | bubble and then burst
         | 
         | If Google is the new Microsoft, is AMD the new Intel?
        
       | jruz wrote:
       | Shit the top is in, time to sell NVDA and buy INTC.
       | 
       | Was fun ride.
        
         | Havoc wrote:
         | That's assuming intel can sort itself out. I'm not entirely
         | convinced
        
       | anonu wrote:
       | The DJIA is a dinosaur and irrelevant. Its price-weighted because
       | that was easier to calculate than a market-cap weighted fund when
       | the thing was created ~140 years ago. Which means that high
       | dollar value stocks have more weight in the index which doesn't
       | really make sense.
       | 
       | But worse, how we talk about the index, even today on radio and
       | TV, in terms of nominal points up or down is completely
       | ridiculous. Just yesterday "the Dow Jones was up 100 points". Ok
       | - no reference value, no percentage change: means nothing to me.
       | And we wonder why we are financially illiterate in this country.
        
         | bluGill wrote:
         | The dow was useful in pre computer times when a reborter could
         | calculate it every few minutes. The s&p500 Is a better
         | indicator but that took hours by hand and so was only done
         | overnight. now that we have computers and index you want can be
         | done in milliseconds and so the dow needs to die.
        
           | makeitdouble wrote:
           | In this day and age we could skip all of that and report on
           | the actual average of all the stocks in the exchange, instead
           | of only a fraction.
        
             | david-gpu wrote:
             | SP500 represents something like 85% of market
             | capitalization. Adding a few more thousand stocks would
             | make little difference, especially when you consider how
             | heavily correlated they are. Just compare SPY with VT --
             | nearly the same thing.
        
               | dmoy wrote:
               | Minor nit:
               | 
               | SPY and VTI are 80-85% the same thing
               | 
               | VT includes a ton of non-US stocks and is significantly
               | different
        
               | david-gpu wrote:
               | Thank you. I misremembered.
        
             | devoutsalsa wrote:
             | You just described a total market fund like VTI :)
        
               | e_y_ wrote:
               | As I understand it, they don't own _every_ stock. Right
               | now VTI has about 3700 stocks out of the ~4300 on US
               | publicly traded markets (excluding OTC). But it 's more
               | representative than the S&P 500 and similar.
        
         | stackghost wrote:
         | I agree that nowadays the Dow is somewhat obsolete, but:
         | 
         | The DJIA is not meant to be viewed in isolation but in the
         | context of other indexes like DJTA, the idea being that if
         | industrial companies are doing well but the railroads or
         | shipping aren't, it will be reflected in those respective
         | averages diverging, hinting at deeper economic problems.
         | 
         | Also they adjust for stock splits now.
        
           | JJMcJ wrote:
           | Most news reports also give the percentage change as well as
           | the point difference. That began about 20 years ago.
        
           | ninth_ant wrote:
           | Even with this objective, using the share prices and not the
           | market cap of the companies involved creates enormous skew.
           | 
           | For example UNH and especially GS take up the largest
           | individual components despite not being being amongst the
           | largest companies, giving their share movement
           | disproportionate weight in the "index".
           | 
           | Perhaps it made sense 140 years ago but today it belongs in
           | the rubbish.
        
         | manojlds wrote:
         | How is the second point anything to do with DJIA and this news?
        
         | EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
         | Maybe splits and reverse splits weren't a thing back then, so
         | price really meant something?
        
         | hanklazard wrote:
         | re: up XX number of points, I haven't bothered for many years,
         | but that sounds like NPR's "All Things Considered" or
         | "Marketplace". Always drove me nuts too and does nothing to
         | help people understand financial markets.
        
           | jacobjjacob wrote:
           | Everyone reports it this way. It used to bother me, but I
           | think it does provide some interesting information vs the %
           | day-to-day. Because % is relative to the previous day, number
           | of points isn't.
           | 
           | Personally I prefer the %
        
         | pjfin123 wrote:
         | Another advantage of a price-weighted stock index is that it's
         | easier to track with a real portfolio because they don't need
         | to rebalance as frequently. To replicate the performance of the
         | DJIA you just have to buy one share of each stock and hold
         | them, you only need to place trades when a company is added or
         | removed from the index.
         | 
         | With a market cap weighted index you have to make more frequent
         | trades every time a company does a buyback or issues new
         | shares.
        
           | anonu wrote:
           | > you only need to place trades when a company is added or
           | removed from the index.
           | 
           | Not true for a price-weighted index. If there is a stock-
           | split, the price will change as will the weighting. AAPL
           | split in August 2020 4 for 1. It was 11% in the DJIA before
           | the split - and close to $500 stock price. Post-split, all
           | DJIA tracking funds had to sell AAPL as it probably went down
           | to 2.5% weight. Consequently, all other stocks in the DJIA
           | were to buy. Luckily, there aren't too many dollars tracking
           | the DJIA.
           | 
           | > With a market cap weighted index you have to make more
           | frequent trades every time a company does a buyback or issues
           | new shares.
           | 
           | It depends. If the index is free-float market-cap weighting
           | then yes, there will typically be a free-float adjustment at
           | each rebalance (typically quarterly). But if there's no free-
           | float adjustment then you need not do anything. Though
           | managing a fund that tracks a free-float weighted index is
           | not really an issue - there's some operational work to do on
           | each rebalance.
        
         | pjfin123 wrote:
         | > Just yesterday "the Dow Jones was up 100 points". Ok - no
         | reference value, no percentage change: means nothing to me.
         | 
         | This always really bugged me
        
       | the_clarence wrote:
       | Why do we care about the dow jones again?
        
       | KronisLV wrote:
       | The past few years have been pretty unfortunate for Intel, even
       | though I think they could have been a pretty decent player in the
       | market.
       | 
       | Their new Core Ultra chips have pretty okay performance and good
       | energy efficiency, their P/E core design seems to make sense,
       | even their entry into the dedicated graphics segment seemed like
       | a good thing for the average consumer.
       | 
       | But the 13/14th gen issues were a pretty major hit, I do have an
       | Intel Arc card that I got for a really nice price (cheaper than
       | similar AMD/Nvidia GPUs) but it's not without its own share of
       | issues even with pretty decently developed drivers, people seem
       | to have taken the Core Ultra being a bit of a sidegrade pretty
       | badly and the pricing doesn't always seem all that competitive
       | when it comes to CPUs (even the motherboards seem more expensive
       | when compared to AMD).
       | 
       | What a bummer.
       | 
       | That said, when it comes to the consumer segment, even AMD
       | doesn't seem to be doing all that well, for example their net
       | revenue for gaming is down 69%: https://ir.amd.com/news-
       | events/press-releases/detail/1224/am...
        
       | pedalpete wrote:
       | Isn't Intel still the primary supplier of server CPUs? (as well
       | as windows?)
       | 
       | They're taking a beating, but I feel like every few years we hear
       | an "intel has fallen behind", and then they dust themselves off
       | and are at the top again.
       | 
       | Though Nvidia can charge a huge premium for GPUs, those machines
       | still need a CPU (if I'm wrong, please correct me).
       | 
       | Is anyone building ARM based servers? It looks like Intel has
       | fought back against the Arm on Windows battle, and possibly won
       | with their newest power saving Ultra 2s.
       | 
       | Do they really need to beat Nvidia?
        
         | blinded wrote:
         | Nvidia makes cpus. A ton of their server grade and network gear
         | has arm cpus. my company almost exclusively buys amd cpus. With
         | apple doing their own arm cpus, its doesn't leave a large
         | market for intel.
        
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