From Gaming to AI: How NVIDIA Became the Backbone of the AI Revolution
From scrubbing dishes to reshaping the future of computing
Hey there 👋
Just as I was writing this piece, news broke out that NVIDIA was the first company in history to hit a $5 trillion market cap. Yup, that’s trillion with a T. With 000,000,000,000 next to a freakin 5.
In the midst of this Artificial Intelligence race, NVIDIA is at the center - creator of the technology and ecosystem that the whole AI world desperately depends upon.
Although, NVIDIA is at the top of the AI game, it still manages to be the leading brand in its roots - PC Graphics. NVIDIA PC graphics cards are as in-demand as their enterprise AI chips. And today I want to unpack what is behind this company in totality….so far.
So, NVIDIA, the company that is as cool as the story of its three co-founders hanging out at a fast-food restaurant living on coffee, talking of solving computer graphics.
NVIDIA is the company that changed gaming as we see it today and it is now quietly powering the world or AI right before our very eyes.
This article is a bit different from the normal ones you read here at SK NEXUS. This is going to be more of a deep-dive into the story of NVIDIA divided into chapters.
There would be 3 main sections of this article and you’re free to jump to the ones you’re more interested in. The sections are:
Chapter 1 - This covers the early history of NVIDIA and how they made their way out of near bankruptcy to a leader in gaming.
Chapter 2 - We’ll talk about the cool technology that made the world depend on NVIDIA.
Chapter 3 - It’s about NVIDIA’s rise in its current form where it is the undisputed king of AI infrastructure that is powering the current AI race. or bubble.
Chapter 0 - Some Key Terms
You thought there are only going to be 3 chapters, huh?
I created this mystery chapter just to introduce some of the key terms that I’m going to repeat again and again in this article going forward.
It’s better to have most readers on the same page so no-one feels left out reading the rest of the article. I would explain the concepts just enough so you can go through this article.
You may choose to skip through this chapter if you’re already familiar with most of the stuff being discussed. However skimming through it won’t hurt.
CPU
It stands for Central Processing Unit and it is the main processor in a computer. It runs tasks in a series by finishing one and then continuing with the other.
CPUs perform general purpose compute which means that they can do all sorts of computations that you need to perform in a computer but not at the fastest speed in all cases.
GPU
It stands for Graphics Processing Unit. It is the chip that handles the graphics inside a computer. It could run a lot of tasks in parallel.
GPUs are for special applications. You can think of them as CPUs that could only perform some tasks but at a really fast speed.
Modern computers have some sort of integrated GPU.
Graphics Card
This term refers to such a GPU that you could add into your computer to expand its graphics functionality.
Graphics cards have the GPU chip inside them, along with some additional components like memory, fans and power modules.
Note: For the nerds out there, we know that GPU is not the same thing as Graphics Card. But in current day and age, the lines have blurred between them.
Neural Network
Neural networks are algorithms that mimic the function of human brain through machine learning.
Neural Networks are the foundation for today’s Artificial Intelligence with applications that go all the way from self-driving, weather prediction, real time speech translation, image generation.
AI services like ChatGPT also rely on neural networks.
Chapter 1 – Humble Beginnings and Gaming Breakthrough
1.1 Founding the company
In the 1990s there were roughly 3 dozen companies working on building graphics chips for the PC, that included giants like IBM and behemoths like Intel.
But today a small startup founded in 1993 reigns above everyone else as the de-facto leader in the making graphics chips for PCs and that is NVIDIA.
NVIDIA was founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem. There is a funny story about the company’s origins.
Fun Fact: The name NVIDIA is a mixture of two words: invidia, the Latin word for envy, and the acronym NV (short for next vision).
Jensen Huang who is NVIDIA’s CEO says that his first job was of a dishwasher at Denny’s. This is what he said at an interview in Stanford University:
“My first job before CEO was a dishwasher....
And I did that very well.”
Jensen recalls that the company was founded at Denny’s (a popular fast-food place in the US). The three co-founders used to visit the restaurant for coffee.
Jensen was working at LSI Logic and during one of the meetings with his fellow co-founders, they decided on founding a company that would work on creating 3D graphics chips for PCs.
The three co-founders agreed to leave their stable jobs and found NVIDIA. The idea of solving computer graphics was tempting as PC gaming was starting to pick pace.
Developers like ‘id Software’ were at the heart of the gaming revolution with revolutionary games like Doom and Quake.
Quake, which was also released by ‘id Software’ started to show how technically impressive PC gaming could be and games like these started to push boundaries for traditional PCs.
This was a realization moment for people like Jensen Huang who saw a huge opportunity not just in video games but also in the rise of computer graphics.
As more and more programs started using the Graphical User Interface (GUI), the need for better graphics started rising, coupled with games which are the most graphically intense applications.
1.2 First major products & gaming breakout
NVIDIA’s first product was the NV1 multimedia chip and it was impressive on the technical front but it was a financial failure.
It took such a big toll on the small company that half of the company had to be laid off.
During this time NVIDIA lost a partnership with the gaming company SEGA to produce chips for their next console. This added to the financial woes.
Still, SEGA was kind enough to invest $5M to NVIDIA which gave it the breathing room to continue on its next chip.
NVIDIA’s next chip that got released in 1997 was the RIVA 128 and it was a success. It supported 2D and 3D graphics and it sold over a million units.
By the time the RIVA 128 was released in August 1997, Nvidia had only enough money left for a month of payroll.
Fun Fact Because of the constant fear of lack of funds the NVIDIA’s unofficial motto was “Our company is thirty days from going out of business”
The company continued with its next chip (RIVA TNT) and it was a success too.
These successes gave the company the breathing room to continue and in 1999, NVIDIA listed as a public company at New York Stock Exchange.
The World’s First (Consumer) GPU
NVIDIA didn’t invent the term GPU which stands for Graphics Processing Unit. It means a chip that is designed specifically for graphics-related applications.
The term had been in use since the 1980s but NVIDIA was the first company to focus on popularizing the term GPU among the consumers.
Before NVIDIA, GPUs were sold mostly to enterprises or big companies like console manufacturers, and normal consumers at large did not know about those.
NVIDIA’s GeForce 256 was a hit because it was the first dedicated graphics card aimed for consumers. It was a drop-in card like any other using the PCI slot in a motherboard.
The GeForce 256 was marketed as the ‘World’s First GPU’ and it was an important product for not just NVIDIA but PC gaming in-general.
This was the time when PC gaming started becoming serious in terms of graphical fidelity and performance.
1.3 Building the brand and ecosystem
Right after their IPO, NVIDIA started building their brand and reputation as the first choice for gamers.
This included strategic partnerships using their reputation and technology. Right after their IPO (in wee 1999), NVIDIA got Microsoft’s $200M contract to build GPU for the XBOX.
NVIDIA focused on partnering with OEMs and other game studios for exclusive titles and hardware deals focused on PC gamers.
After partnering with Microsoft on XBOX, NVIDIA partnered with Sony for helping them develop the RSX chip for the PS3.
NVIDIA also partnered with NASA to develop a Mars simulation for NASA. This experience allowed them to increase experience even outside video games.
Meanwhile, NVIDIA started doing something that no-one else was doing at the time.
NVIDIA was among the first companies to take ownership of writing their own graphics drivers which is the software that allows the GPU to function properly in a computer.
Before that, third-party OEMs would write drivers but NVIDIA early-on took it control and started writing their own graphics drivers which provided them vertical integration.
Vertical Integration is great but not in everything and NVIDIA was precisely aware of that.
Being a small company it didn’t go about manufacturing its own chips. It used companies like TSMC to manufacture the physical chips while NVIDIA focused on its chip design and the software stack (graphics drivers).
Contracting TSMC early-on for their graphics chips was an extraordinary decision for NVIDIA that is still paying them dividends.
This way NVIDIA stuck to what it does best, while allowing others like TSMC to partner in areas where they excel.
Chapter 2 – The Platform & Compute Expansion
The 2010s are when NVIDIA was already the leader in building graphics card. Their products were the top choice for not just gamers but big clientele like Sony and Microsoft - everyone wanted to partner with NVIDIA
As early as 2006, NVIDIA started breaking ground for expanding beyond just video games. And the coming decade gave it that very opportunity.
2.1 CUDA
In 2006, NVIDIA came up with CUDA and it is the foundation that makes NVIDIA uniquely different from the others.
CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture) started out as a programming language that could allow developers to write programs that would run on the GPU.
Traditionally we write programs for CPUs and we use GPUs as just accelerators for applications that are graphically intensive like Video Games, Graphics Rendering, etc.
With time, CUDA evolved and got so mature that it is now a complete tech stack for writing GPU-specific applications.
Since CUDA is proprietary to NVIDIA GPUs, the company is the biggest beneficiary of its fruits.
On a surface level, what CUDA basically allowed us was the ability to use GPUs for not just graphics processing, but for many other tasks especially those that leverage parallel computing.
NVIDIA could see that CUDA would become a significant thing and that’s why the company was investing more than a billion dollars into developing it back in the early 2000s.
Today you basically need CUDA for many of the tasks like Image Generation, running LLMs, performing machine learning tasks like Image Recognition.
And in tasks where you don’t absolutely need CUDA you still get a significant advantage in performance when compared to any other platform.
That is just because NVIDIA’s CUDA is the most mature platform. Developers continue to develop and optimize their applications for CUDA.
2.2 Enterprise Expansion
NVIDIA was done conquering the consumer gaming segment but it didn’t rest and started venturing into data center GPUs.