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Nvidia is the central bank of AI

economist.com

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Re: Nvidia is the central bank of AI

#62

If Nvidia is a bank, it's an Islamic Bank. They don't take interest (usury), they share profits and risk. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_banking_and_finance Imagine a scenario where the AI bubble bursts and AI companies and neoclouds go bankrupt en masse, and then a huge rebound occurs when AI has a delayed takeoff. Nvidia ends up with a massive amount of compute on its hands from its backstop deals, and it al…

> They don't take interest (usury)

Nvidia booked $496 million in interest income in Q2 alone [1].

[1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1045810/000104581026... page 15

Re: Nvidia is the central bank of AI

#64
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A platform: aka the foundation under the bank. The material cement that allows chips to exist above it. And the platform is made of time: ours.

If TSMC is a platform, then why doesn't it have an App Store?

They do, you only get access to it if you're comissioning chips.

Re: Nvidia is the central bank of AI

#65

I wonder when they will give up on the gaming market because that could take down several publishers and developers. I really don't think it's an if question but a when because it almost feels like an afterthought at this point (they removed the standalone gaming revenue report from the financial reports this summer). Also I don't think AMD and Intel is capable "to step in" to replace them.

It's still a 15B market for Nvidia, it's not nothing. But I'm curious how they're going to turn Rubin into a gaming GPU. I think at this point consumer GPU upgrades are going to be AI-related upgrades that happen to also help raster capabilities. Blackwell was already kind of a dud on performance uplift from Ada beyond the new LLM features.

That 15B also includes people buying 5090s for local LLMs.

And it’s maybe 5-10% of their revenue at lower profit margins.

Consumer cards just don’t matter very much to nVidia anymore.

In 2020 it was half of their revenue.

Re: Nvidia is the central bank of AI

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A retraction from the gaming market wouldn't necessarily mean they'd still even produce the current crop of products. I could (and I would argue would) involve a complete shuttering of the GeForce brand, halting current production. On the assumption that Intel and AMD would follow, that wouldn't be an end of upgrades, but an end to the market.

Gaming is a larger market than Hollywood. Maybe it becomes a distraction for Nvidia, but someone will step in. That might actually be a good thing and why Nvidia wont do that: it creates an under served market in which newcomers can cut their teeth.

I think we would see an increased push towards cloud gaming. That's probably what Nvidia would want.

Re: Nvidia is the central bank of AI

#67

I wonder when they will give up on the gaming market because that could take down several publishers and developers. I really don't think it's an if question but a when because it almost feels like an afterthought at this point (they removed the standalone gaming revenue report from the financial reports this summer). Also I don't think AMD and Intel is capable "to step in" to replace them.

Maybe this is silly of me, but maybe gaming would enjoy an era of hardware upgrades being rather unviable so the focus turns to optimization and aesthetic.

It’s not silly. games use far more hardware than they really need. It also pushes out release dates of aggressive console schedules like ps6 because even if it’s a massive upgrade and you have IP locked into your console, no one is going to pay $4000 to play a game like wolverine.

Re: Nvidia is the central bank of AI

#68

I wonder when they will give up on the gaming market because that could take down several publishers and developers. I really don't think it's an if question but a when because it almost feels like an afterthought at this point (they removed the standalone gaming revenue report from the financial reports this summer). Also I don't think AMD and Intel is capable "to step in" to replace them.

Maybe this is silly of me, but maybe gaming would enjoy an era of hardware upgrades being rather unviable so the focus turns to optimization and aesthetic.

It will be interesting times but I don't think anyone will enjoy a plateau because it's expensive. Even replacing existing hardware is expensive now. Hardly enjoyabe.

Re: Nvidia is the central bank of AI

#69
I've always found it interesting when corporations start acting like public institutions. When traditionally philosophical, social contract ideas apply to things like corporate governance. Or like here, where private structures get powerful and important enough to resemble government structures.

The ideas we deal with when we discuss society and organization aren't exclusive to government, they relate to human nature in general. I wonder if in the future we will have more discussion of power and how to organize it in corporations, similar to what we discuss today about government.

Re: Nvidia is the central bank of AI

#70

> worth around $5.4trn Note that the Fed has a $6.7tn balance sheet [1]. (This is a silly comparison. But still fun.) The real comparison: Nvidia's $500+ billion of investments and commitments [2] is substantially more than any easing the Fed has done in the same time [3]. Monetarily, Nvidia is creating a lot of money in our economy. The good news: I have seen no evidence Nvidia has borrowed against its stock or othe…

It would also follow that by increasing the money supply significantly they’re also contributing to inflation a great deal correct? (Given the rest of the economy is not growing at near the same rate as the AI industry)

well, M2 money supply is increasing with or without AI industry
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