[Bbang Gubneun Tajagi] Can the Nvidia Empire Last Forever?

Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, is delivering a keynote speech at an event held on June 2 at the National Taiwan University Sports Center in Taipei, ahead of the opening of Computex 2024, Asia's largest IT exhibition. NVIDIA, founded by Jensen Huang, has recently gained attention as a leading company in the era of artificial intelligence (AI), and he is enjoying popularity in his homeland Taiwan that surpasses that of celebrities. Taipei ? Photo by AFP Yonhap News

In the beginning, it was called a 3D accelerator (acceleration card). It was around that time that I first became aware of NVIDIA's existence. Since Square Enix (then just Square before the merger) converted and released Final Fantasy 7, originally for PlayStation, to the PC, which demanded 3D graphics performance, 3D accelerators became an essential component among PC gamers.

The market leader at the time was the Voodoo series released by 3DFX, a company that no longer exists. Voodoo dominated the market using their proprietary technology called the Glide module. I remember the first day I went to Yongsan Electronics Market to buy a graphics card; most merchants there kept repeating, "For games, it's Voodoo." However, I chose the RIVA TNT2 Ultra. This RIVA series was a product made by NVIDIA. Since I was buying it anyway, I wanted the highest-spec model. The first game I ran after installing the RIVA TNT2 Ultra was John Carmack's Quake 3: Arena.

At the time, there were alternatives besides Voodoo. ATI's RAGE (which later merged with AMD), which eventually produced the Radeon series, and Matrox's G series, known for excellent dual-monitor support, were also available. Shortly after, NVIDIA's new graphics card model, the GeForce, appeared, and from then until now, NVIDIA has been the market leader. And its name changed from 3D accelerator or graphics card to GPU. Now, it has even evolved beyond GPU to be called an AI semiconductor.

The book AI Semiconductor Revolution, co-authored by Kwon Sun-woo, Lee Dong-soo, Kwon Se-jung, and Yoo Ji-won, begins with the history of semiconductors. It lists the timeline from the world's first known computer ENIAC, through vacuum tube systems, transistors, and so on. Readers can learn about the history of semiconductors, especially GPUs, just by following the flow they guide. The book contains relatively less explanation about CPUs or RAM because NVIDIA, the protagonist of this book, is the main focus.

NVIDIA, the dominant player in the GPU market, has been strengthening its dominance in the semiconductor market since the emergence of AI models like ChatGPT. It controls 90% of the global AI semiconductor market, and this trend is expected to continue for the foreseeable future. Its speed of in-house technology development surpasses other companies, and it also controls the CUDA software development ecosystem. Just as Apple dominates the smartphone market with its self-developed A and M series semiconductors and the iOS operating system, NVIDIA has built a powerful ecosystem not only with GPUs themselves but also with technologies connecting GPUs to other components and software. The authors explain, "One thing that can be said for sure is that the current NVIDIA-led AI semiconductor market, especially high-performance AI semiconductors for training, will be difficult for anyone to catch up with for the time being."

Will the NVIDIA empire last forever? The book offers two hints. One is the power consumption issue, which the authors directly mention. NVIDIA's GPUs consume enormous amounts of power. If this trend continues, AI data centers worldwide will become electricity monsters consuming power on a national scale. This will undoubtedly be an obstacle to progress.

And the other. There has never been an eternal empire in the IT world. The absolute CPU empire, Intel, lost its stature due to AMD's pursuit and the emergence of low-power mobile APs after becoming complacent. Microsoft, once called the evil empire, still maintains dominance in PCs, but its market has shrunk due to the growth of the smartphone market. NVIDIA's status could also be toppled someday by other technologies. As someone who enjoys technological changes from multiple perspectives, I look forward not only to NVIDIA's advancement but also to their eventual downfall. History has always progressed that way.