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Nvidia is now more valuable than Amazon and Google

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Re: Nvidia is now more valuable than Amazon and Google

#141

Post by eru »

latchkey wrote: post #67
virtue3 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has happened before and it will probably go the same way. Software and compilers will make up the difference, or hardware will become so cheap and ubiquitous it wont super matter. In 3-5 years what will a 10% performance difference matter to you? Then calculate how much that 10% performance difference is going to cost in real dollars to run on nvidia hw and then the fun math should start.

Performance for GPUs isn't just speed, but also power efficiency. The complexity of GPUs doesn't lend itself to just being solved with better tooling. They are also not going to get cheaper... especially the high end ones with tons of HBM3 memory. Given that data centers only have so much power and AI really needs to be in the same data center as the data, if you can squeeze out a bit more power efficiency so you can…

You are right to worry about power efficiency. Though do keep in mind that power is also fungible with money, especially in a data centre.

I suspect a lot of AI inference (thought probably not the majority) will happen on mobile devices in the future. There power is also at a premium, and less fungible with money.

Re: Nvidia is now more valuable than Amazon and Google

#142

Post by throwup238 »

latchkey wrote: post #109
throwup238 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah we’ll have power positive fusion any day now.

Azure, Oracle, Meta, Tesla, Hot Aisle... all buying up MI300x. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/06/meta-and-microsoft-to-buy-am... https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-scores-two-big-wins-or... https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intell...

“Meta and Microsoft say…”

“Oracle is set to use…”

“Elon Musk implies…”

Not one of them have actually bought anything. AMD is just muddying the waters by grouping HPC sales with AI. It’s nonsense.

Edit: I see you’ve got a startup on MI300x hardware. Now it makes sense, I guess - you need to believe. Good luck!

Re: Nvidia is now more valuable than Amazon and Google

#143

Post by FredPret »

system2 wrote: post #100
FredPret wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's about earnings (freshly made money) and equity (existing money) and growth potential (future money). One way or another, they need to have money in order to distribute it to me, the investor (through dividends or buybacks). At a valuation of 90x earnings and only $0.02 in equity per dollar of market cap, I have to pay an insane premium to acquire: - an anemic stockpile of equity ($50b in assets - $22b in liabili…

Unrelated question: Do you have any stocks you are following and expecting to go high soon?

I'm always careful to calibrate my expectations to "one day far in the future this might work" versus expecting highs soon.

I recently exited positions in US Steel and Encore Wire which were selling for single-digit PE ratios and with >$1 equity per $1 market cap at the time. My plan was to hold them forever, but the price just shot up so much and there are other things to buy.

I like really boring businesses like banks, utilities, airlines that can trudge along for decades if they have to before I get my return. When you catch them in a bad news cycle, you can pick up a solid business for less than it's worth.

Re: Nvidia is now more valuable than Amazon and Google

#144

Post by solardev »

autoexec wrote: post #111
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why wouldn't they just make more of them? The excuse is supposed to be fab capacity, but the 3070 has better performance than the 4060 etc. and is built on the older process which should no longer be in short supply.

Is it an issue of supply? I figure they think non-gamers will be willing and able to pay far more for their hardware than most gamers could ever afford. If they sold comparable products to gamers at a low price the non-gamers would just end up buying them up and even if there was enough supply to satisfy the needs of everyone Nvidia would still be out a fortune. It'd be better for them to sell low priced gaming cards…

They used to do this with the Quattro workstation cards. What happened to those?

Re: Nvidia is now more valuable than Amazon and Google

#145

Post by quickslowdown »

FredPret wrote: post #23
behnamoh wrote: post #16

Somehow I wish it weren't true because I hate monopolies in any markets. Nvidia has been enjoying their absurd premium on consumer and production GPUs and intentionally removed the NVLink capability in the GeForce 4090 series (3090 had them) to avoid cannibalizing their A100 and H100 business. With NVLink, people could chain multiple GPUs and increase the overall VRAM without much reduction in bandwidth. But without…

I understand the sentiment. But the only reason you're mad at Nvidia is because they made something desirable (a GPU that does NN training) but didn't do it in the way you prefer (NVLink, Linux compatibility etc). It's not their fault AMD and others have been asleep at the wheel and handed them the whole market for free. Any company with a monopoly on the hot new thing would try to capitalize on it. When the other GP…

AMD being asleep at the wheel, or choked out by the Intel + Nvidia cartel?

Re: Nvidia is now more valuable than Amazon and Google

#146

Post by rezonant »

eru wrote: post #115
blackoil wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

INAL. Antitrust is not against monopoly, but monopoly "abuse". MS is free to make an OS which everyone wants and free to be a monopoly. When they tried to leverage it to gain market share in the distinct market of browser and media players it became a problem. So till ASML starts abusing the position they should be good legally.

Watch out, different jurisdictions have different 'anti-trust' laws. And, especially in common law jurisdictions, interpretations of a law can also change over time.

Who's this warning for? Do we have any budding monopolists in the HN crowd who need the warning?

Re: Nvidia is now more valuable than Amazon and Google

#147

Post by giantg2 »

PostOnce wrote: post #78
__float wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel makes desktop cards too

and they have more memory bandwidth (per dollar) and more VRAM per dollar the trajectory looks good if they can just resist giving up early without seeing instant success

"just resist giving up early without seeing instant success"

Sounds like I've been doing life wrong.

Re: Nvidia is now more valuable than Amazon and Google

#148

Post by spenczar5 »

virtue3 wrote: post #58
latchkey wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true for making things just work, however to really squeeze performance out of a GPU, you need to go lower level and that is tied to the architecture.

This has happened before and it will probably go the same way. Software and compilers will make up the difference, or hardware will become so cheap and ubiquitous it wont super matter. In 3-5 years what will a 10% performance difference matter to you? Then calculate how much that 10% performance difference is going to cost in real dollars to run on nvidia hw and then the fun math should start.

We are so, so, so far away from compilers that could automatically help you, say, rewrite an operation to achieve high warp occupancy. These are not trivial performance optimizations - sometimes the algorithm itself fundamentally changes when you target the CUDA runtime, because of complexities in the scheduler and memory subsystems.

I think there is no way that you will see compilers that advanced within 3 years, sadly.

Re: Nvidia is now more valuable than Amazon and Google

#149

Post by ij09j901023123 »

FredPret wrote: post #23
behnamoh wrote: post #16

Somehow I wish it weren't true because I hate monopolies in any markets. Nvidia has been enjoying their absurd premium on consumer and production GPUs and intentionally removed the NVLink capability in the GeForce 4090 series (3090 had them) to avoid cannibalizing their A100 and H100 business. With NVLink, people could chain multiple GPUs and increase the overall VRAM without much reduction in bandwidth. But without…

I understand the sentiment. But the only reason you're mad at Nvidia is because they made something desirable (a GPU that does NN training) but didn't do it in the way you prefer (NVLink, Linux compatibility etc). It's not their fault AMD and others have been asleep at the wheel and handed them the whole market for free. Any company with a monopoly on the hot new thing would try to capitalize on it. When the other GP…

The only people that buy AMD GPUs are gamers; AMD have long since stopped targeting the enterprise side of their GPU market. NVIDIA makes the majority of their profits by selling A1000+ cards to businesses that require the power for computation (video rendering, LLM processing, etc). AMD neglected and disregarded productivity, and now they are paying the consequences.

Re: Nvidia is now more valuable than Amazon and Google

#150

Post by aurareturn »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #75
lukeschlather wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Nvidia is worried about cannibalizing their A100 and H100 business, I think they're trying to keep the cards something resembling affordable for gamers.

Then why wouldn't they just make more of them? The excuse is supposed to be fab capacity, but the 3070 has better performance than the 4060 etc. and is built on the older process which should no longer be in short supply.

  Then why wouldn't they just make more of them? The excuse is supposed to be fab capacity, but the 3070 has better performance than the 4060 etc. and is built on the older process which should no longer be in short supply.
There is actually very little margins in the midrange consumer discrete GPU market. The market for discrete GPUs have been shrinking since the mid 2000s.[0] Most GPUs are sold as integrated such as SoCs and in consoles nowadays.

In a shrinking market, the midrange and low-end products will cease to be profitable. Hence, Nvidia's 60/70 offerings are lackluster because they don't make much money from them. They want you to buy the 80s and 90s cards.

Furthermore, node advancements have stopped scaling $/transistor. So the transistors aren't getting cheaper, just smaller.

Lastly, Nvidia wants to allocate every last wafer they pre-purchased from TSMC to their server GPUs.

[0]https://d15shllkswkct0.cloudfront.net/wp-content/blogs.dir/1...

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