[HN Gopher] The Nvidia Way
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The Nvidia Way
Author : klelatti
Score : 155 points
Date : 2024-12-28 08:45 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thechipletter.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (thechipletter.substack.com)
| swimwiththebeat wrote:
| I just finished this book. I thought it was a great read,
| capturing most of the problems (with product, sales, marketing,
| competition) Nvidia faced in its life and how exactly the team
| solved them each and every time. It also goes into how the
| management, org structure, and culture have empowered its
| engineers to find creative solutions to staying alive in the
| brutal graphic chips industry and continuously discover and
| exploit new market opportunities.
|
| I learned a lot about how important not just superior technology,
| but better operations, marketing, sales, and culture are all
| critical to a successful business.
|
| The only con of this book is that it skips over some parts of
| nvidia's history like the short-lived crypto boom, failed
| acquisition of ARM, etc. It's still just a minor flaw in an
| otherwise great book though.
| als0 wrote:
| The whole ARM acquisition attempt really smelt of subtle stock
| market games, because the alleged benefits of such a deal made
| no sense. With the Arm CEO being ex Nvidia I'm sure he was in
| on it. Looking forward to someone writing up an account of what
| really happened.
| klelatti wrote:
| I think that the blocking of the deal by competition
| authorities shows the potential benefits of the deal (for
| Nvidia) in having control of Arm, in addition to making Arm-
| based SoCs, were real.
|
| Also, Rene Haas (ex Nvidia) became CEO of Arm after the deal
| fell through. Simon Segars was CEO when the deal was
| announced.
| als0 wrote:
| > I think that the blocking of the deal by competition
| authorities shows the potential benefits of the deal (for
| Nvidia) in having control of Arm, in addition to making
| Arm-based SoCs, were real.
|
| China was concerned about more US influence. The other
| regions were concerned about stifling of innovation. In
| reality, a successful acquisition would have meant that
| most customers would have started transitioning away from
| ARM and sooner to available RISC-V or Cadence/Synopsis
| solutions.
|
| > Also, Rene Haas (ex Nvidia) became CEO of Arm after the
| deal fell through. Simon Segars was CEO when the deal was
| announced.
|
| Rene Haas was EVP of the whole IP business (CPUs, GPUs,
| NPUs, etc) before becoming CEO. His influence with the CEO
| can't be understated.
|
| I posit that this was an enormous gamble to boost
| valuations of both NVIDIA and ARM and that they knew from
| the beginning that the deal would not go through. Anyone
| who understands the ARM business model could have told you
| that.
| klelatti wrote:
| > I posit that this was an enormous gamble to boost
| valuations of both NVIDIA and ARM and that they knew from
| the beginning that the deal would not go through.
|
| You posit it without saying why the valuations would go
| up given that you think they - and everyone else given
| what you say - thought the deal wouldn't complete.
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| Yeah, it was a good book. I got an extremely heavy dose of
| nostalgia from its description of the late-90s Voodoo2/Riva128
| era.
|
| It was _such_ a fast-moving era, too. Check this out:
| https://www.anandtech.com/show/178/2
|
| A card released in September 1997 is described as "an aging and
| slowly dying chipset." I suppose it parallels AI today, where a
| model released a year ago is already obsolete on the high
| end...
| tjoff wrote:
| Relevant context: In July of 1998.
| zf00002 wrote:
| I recall being on roughly a 6 month upgrade cycle for my pc
| back then. Alternating between cpu/mobo/mem and gpu.
| creshal wrote:
| One of the reasons why Nvidia managed to get ahead was that
| they managed to get a new chip out every 6 months without
| fail, so there was always a new Nvidia card to upgrade to.
| pipes wrote:
| Does it mention the investment from sega that saved Nvidia from
| going out of business. I think the Nvidia chips became part of
| some sega arcade boards, might be wrong about that.
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| That's at the beginning of the book, and it was apparently
| something of a debacle. The NV2 chip that was supposed to go
| into Sega's next-gen console never made it, but a $5M
| investment from Sega did keep Nvidia afloat until the Riva128
| launched.
| Jgrubb wrote:
| I'll go one further - operations, marketing, sales, and culture
| _are_ what makes a successful business. Superior technology is
| a bonus on top of that.
|
| Superior technology in a company that hasn't figured out how to
| operate, or market and sell may as well not even exist.
| jasdi wrote:
| You missed Finance. There is lot of financial engineering
| going on to keep orgs alive and quickly adapt to ever
| changing needs. Dealing with cross border diff in taxes,
| subsidies, tariffs, regs, forex, interest rates, real
| estate/rent, labor costs and their constant changes is no
| joke.
|
| Each of these specializations (just like tech) are evolving
| at their own rates and are all equally capable of outpacing
| each other depending on the environment.
| nxobject wrote:
| And, god forbid, meta-issues like long-term cashflow
| planning when you're making big changes to your internal
| organizations and processes, which lets you worry less
| about funding. And/but investing in complex thinking about
| operations is part of the book's thesis.
| Jgrubb wrote:
| I didn't. In my worldview, I put Finance as the majority
| stakeholder in "operating" the company even though there
| are plenty of teams and roles with somethingOps in their
| titles that might disagree.
|
| The tech part of tech companies is the easy part in my
| opinion. Step out into these other domains where you have
| to deal with _people_ and a company's skill or lack thereof
| gets really obvious really quick.
| ssivark wrote:
| You mean, like... Intel these past few years?
| Symmetry wrote:
| I'm very glad I read the book, but it did lean a little towards
| the hagiographic side. From the outside it looks like the same
| high-pressure culture that drives so much innovation at Nvidia
| also drove their conflict with Apple.
| cryptocali2018 wrote:
| +1 with your assessment of trending towards a hagiography.
| The author is not Isaacson. I wish he had spent more time
| with the people that probably don't have the best view of
| Huang's methods, and approach to running the company. Showing
| the other side in a more vivid way so the reader can make
| their own conclusion would strengthen the book and provide a
| holistic, fuller profile of Huang and Nvidia. Probably the
| price for access, and still better than nothing...
|
| Nvidia appears to be another pressure-cooker, dog-eat-dog SV
| company, that outlasted competitors thanks to shrewd bets and
| urgent execution. Clearly, a great accomplishment, but we've
| seen other companies succeed with similar culture... this
| isn't a "new way"... a relentless, obsessive, ruthless
| technical founder with good business sense (Huang like Gates
| were able to secure partnerships/licenses of needed
| technology early on.. same mold as Musk, Zuck) who
| understands the technology and business implications in
| detail is a movie we've seen before..
| klelatti wrote:
| In addition to Tae Kim's interview with Asianometry's Jon Y [1]
| mentioned in the post, readers might also enjoy his more recent
| interview on The Riff podcast [2]. Both are terrific.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vjGIZOSjLE
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5qub-IS2gY
| jimmySixDOF wrote:
| Also a deep dive 3 part series coverage by the Aquired podcast
| team references the book (if I remember correctly) :
|
| https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/nvidia-the-gpu-company-1993...
| MaxGripe wrote:
| I haven't read this book, but doesn't the title sound a bit like
| he's taking credit for the company's success? NVIDIA was a good
| company from the very beginning. I don't know where their CEO was
| back then, maybe he was still wetting his pants.
| klelatti wrote:
| Jensen Huang was their first CEO!
| MaxGripe wrote:
| Haha that really changes things a bit. I'm sorry. I've been
| using their cards since the Riva TNT and I didn't know the
| CEO had never changed
| klelatti wrote:
| I guess it just shows that Jensen has had a (perhaps
| admirably) low profile until recently.
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| Oh, he's always been flamboyant.
|
| It's just that when the company was just one gpu maker in
| a crowed, tiny and not very profitable market, no-one
| paid much attention.
|
| Now they are making the shovels and pickaxes for the
| current gold rush, and correspondingly are competing for
| the spot of the largest company in the world, a lot more
| people are paying attention to his antics.
| klelatti wrote:
| Fair comment. I'm in the middle of reading the Isaacson
| Musk bio so maybe the contrast between the two made me
| think of Jensen as shy and retiring.
| nabla9 wrote:
| Nvidia was founded by Jensen Huang
| Chris Malachowsky Curtis Priem
|
| Jensen Huang has bee the CEO the whole time.
|
| Malachowsky is still there as a Fellow, member of executive
| staff and a senior technology executive for the company.
|
| Priem left the company in 2006 and sold all his shares.
| enos_feedler wrote:
| Thanks. Whenever I feel badly about leaving in 2012 and
| dumping shares I'll think about Curtis
| nabla9 wrote:
| "If Curtis Priem, Nvidia's first CTO, had held onto all his
| stock, he'd be the 16th richest person in America. Instead,
| he sold out years ago and gave most of his fortune to his
| alma mater Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute."
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/phoebeliu/2023/11/26/this-
| nvidi...
| whiplash451 wrote:
| Jensen is a founder and has been at the helm from day 1
| whiplash451 wrote:
| While the book is certainly a great read, I can't help but think
| that many people will try to replicate NVIDIA's culture (a la
| founder mode) when all they will do is replicate the
| effects/correlations and not the root causes.
|
| NVDA's success goes probably extremely deep into Jensen's
| character, the leadership team he built and the industrial
| context of the time. It is unclear to me how much of it is really
| useful _in the foresight_.
| bell-cot wrote:
| > It is unclear to me how much of it is really useful _in the
| foresight_.
|
| While the specifics are of limited use, they do point to very
| useful generalities. Leader character. Leadership team. Deep
| understanding of the technology and industry. _Long_ -term
| technological leadership. And avoiding Wall Street's quick-buck
| predators - and their twisted mindsets - as much as possible.
| klelatti wrote:
| That's a good list. I'd also add a willingness to take risks,
| which was particularly evident in the early years with RIVA
| 128 but also arguably CUDA was a risk and one that didn't pay
| off until relatively recently.
| whiplash451 wrote:
| Sure. My point is that, averaged out over all the great
| success stories and their corresponding books, the greatest
| common divisor fits in a blog post:
|
| - Make big bets - Build core, differentiating technology -
| Lead by example - Science the sh*t out of operations and
| finance
| wslh wrote:
| > While the book is certainly a great read, I can't help but
| think that many people will try to replicate NVIDIA's culture
| (a la founder mode) when all they will do is replicate the
| effects/correlations and not the root causes.
|
| That doesn't imply that you cannot get meaning from the story.
|
| This is the naivete of many founders but it extends beyond
| startups and it is something embedded in human beings. There is
| no logical reason that you can copy the material and human
| context where NVIDIA, Apple, etc were born.
| whiplash451 wrote:
| > There is no logical reason that you can copy the material
| and human context
|
| I assume you mean _can 't_
|
| Replicating Google/NVDA/etc today is useless.
|
| Building a _future_ Google /NVDA is extremely hard and draws
| little inspiration from the _current_ Google /NVDA.
|
| "Every moment in business happens only once" (P. Thiel, From
| Zero to One)
| m_ke wrote:
| I've never seen a company benefit from layers of MBAs who are
| only there to hide their screw ups from the leadership while
| doing whatever they can to get promoted.
|
| Strong organizations are usually bottom up, with a lot of
| ownership and direct contact between people doing the work and
| ones steering the ship.
| bwfan123 wrote:
| Founder-led companies still have a shred of such a culture
| left.
|
| Once founder ceo leave, it is an inevitable slide into decay.
| m_ke wrote:
| I've seen founder led companies also get derailed by this,
| usually after raising a large round and getting forced by
| VCs to put their buddies in management positions.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| 100%. The vast majority of it is meaningless. People tried to
| copy google back in the day, and apple, etc. None of it makes a
| meaningful difference. The only thing Google, Apple, Amazon,
| Nvidia etc have in common - a really great product/service in a
| large, growing market that lends itself to a competitive
| advantage.
| nxobject wrote:
| Yes - people forget that during the Jobs era, he was very
| transparent that Apple's secret sauce was almost obessively
| focusing on thoughtfully executed tentpole products, but
| otherwise having nearly conventional org structure and
| culture (modulo Jobs letting managers internally poach people
| for secret new projects.)
|
| The fact that Apple now depends a lot on services for
| profitability has changed their priorities and ethos quite a
| bit, and I think the late-2010s depths of shitty hardware and
| software QA demonstrated that.
| rootsudo wrote:
| Is this the same Tae Kim that wrote how to learn Japanese?
|
| https://guidetojapanese.org/learn/
| gyomu wrote:
| No. One is a technology writer for Barron's based in New York:
|
| https://www.linkedin.com/in/firstadopter
|
| https://x.com/firstadopter
|
| The other is a software engineer based in Japan:
|
| https://x.com/kimchi314
| dagmx wrote:
| Also not to be confused by another Tae Kim, who is the VP of
| Omniverse Engineering at NVIDIA.
|
| https://www.linkedin.com/in/taeyongkim
| JonChesterfield wrote:
| Can anyone from team green comment on the accuracy of this
| account? I'm interested in how nvidia has evolved and mistrusting
| of the conflict of interest between accuracy and readability.
| jerrygenser wrote:
| The article says Nvidia stock price was $4 in 2019... However I
| recall it being higher. I wonder if this number is after multiple
| stock splits (1:4 and 1:10 since then) looking back?
| wslh wrote:
| That is accurate, you can check it in any stock chart like [1].
|
| [1] https://finance.yahoo.com/chart/NVDA
| uxp100 wrote:
| Yes, it's only $4 retrospectively due to splits. At the time
| the price was listed higher.
| xnx wrote:
| Hour long asianometry interview with the author that I enjoyed:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3vjGIZOSjLE
|
| Intel and AMD's recent missteps combined with that interview make
| me think that Nvidia will be in the lead for a long time.
| netfortius wrote:
| This book is a fairly decent complement to the Chip War (by Chris
| Miller).
| senko wrote:
| Is there a book covering TSMC in a similar way?
|
| (I know about Chip War but hesitant to spend time with it as I'm
| really not interested in politics of it all).
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| Semi-unrelated: Best book on Xerox/PARC is _Dealers of
| Lightning_ [0].
|
| [0] amazon.com/Dealers-Lightning-Xerox-PARC-
| Computer/dp/0887309895/
| infocollector wrote:
| A different perspective from the outside: Nvidia's journey
| features three pivotal milestones that shaped its success:
|
| - First, the 2006 acquisition of ATI by AMD solidified Nvidia's
| position as a dominant player in the industry.
|
| - Second, Geoffrey Hinton's groundbreaking work on deep learning
| over 25 years laid the foundation for AI advancements that
| aligned perfectly with Nvidia's GPU capabilities.
|
| - Third, Nvidia's recognition of its leadership in AI has
| propelled it to the forefront of the technology revolution.
| softwaredoug wrote:
| As a consultant in the search space I always heard people ask
| "how can we be like Google". It always felt wrongheaded of
| course. Essentially assuming cargo cultish practices of
| successful companies will lead to success.
|
| So I think these stories are interesting but I take them with
| massive grains of salt. There's randomness and luck. Theres the
| mix of personalities, and processes that fit this specific
| culture. There's just timing. Success can be just as
| idiosyncratic as it is about drive or specific practices. And
| it's hard to tease out WHICH practices actually contributed to
| success, and what might be holding this company back.
|
| So I read these more for inspiration and entertainment. Not as a
| "X worked for Nvidia, so I should 100% do that" perspective.
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