A bunch of industry analyst got to spend 90 minutes with the CEO and co-founder of NVIDIA today to discuss his GTC announcements, and the future of the computing landscape. This was not an unusual occurrence. Jensen always makes himself available, and no analyst covering this space would dare miss the enlightening and entertaining Jensen. I’ve been enjoying these sessions every year for quite a while now, and thought I should share some of the thoughts and philosophy of the man who has literally reshaped the computing industry. Jensen is well known for establishing a culture that measures results versus the absolute best that can be: the speed of light, not competitors. And that is just the tip of the iceberg.
Jensen Huang presenting at the virtual GTC this year, discussing Omniverse. NVIDIA
Here you go! (all paraphrased)
- Power consumption does not matter to anyone. Power Efficiency matters to everyone. The DGX H100 is five times more power efficient than its predecessor.
- There are two laws of laziness: 1) Don’t do anything you don’t have to do, and 2) All problems will resolve themselves given enough time.
- Focus on problems that cannot be solved today at all.
- Best Effort is not good enough in many areas. Latency must be measured in absolute terms and must be delivered guaranteed.
- (In the future..) Website will not require me to point and click and drag and search. And I’ll just ask it a question… that’s the whole point of the metaverse. The whole point of the metaverse is that in the future, instead of search, it will be conversational.
- Moonshots? How about robots that will design robots that will operate robots that will design new robots.
- We have our conviction as a company. We have the ability to make decisions like this that are important to the future of society and future of computer science and the future of science. And we can go and undertake this great challenge. This computer that I’m talking about, Earth Two will be the first supercomputer in the world that runs 24/7 mimicking the earth. And it will run forever.
- My two puppies don’t do linear algebra to learn how to catch a toy.
- The super computer (AI) of the future will enable a complete reinvention of physics, chemistry, fluid dynamics, and every aspect that is today modeled based on first order principles. This will enable multi-physics approaches taht will help us understand the world around us at a far deeper level.
- At NVIDIA, we are focussed on four massive initiatives. (This is why I’m not in Hawaii)… 1) CPUs that can do that which today’s CPUs cannot do, 2) Networking that reinvents the global computing infrastructure, 3) Monetizing NVIDIA’s software (DRIVE, Omniverse, and Enterprise AI), and 4) Expanding the Omniverse to become the internet of the future using digital-twin based collaboration.
- Never start with a chiplet design; go for the biggest chip you can imagine and build it. Chiplets can come later.
- Finally, I asked why Jensen’s avatar (TJ, for Tiny Jensen) has a scar on his face. Was it so we could tell the two apart? Jensen laughed and told how he was accidentally slashed by a kitchen knife as a boy in a restaurant in Taiwan. So the scar is for real.
Jensen Huang listening to another question being posed by an industry analyst. The Author
These sessions with Jensen are just great for us, and for the company. I would urge all tech companies to be this open for dialog and new ideas!