Doug O’Laughlin is the author of Fabricated Knowledge and has been writing about the interaction between semiconductors and the AI revolution for years. In this interview, we focus on Nvidia — how it rose to prominence, its importance to the large language model revolution, and the corporate and policy implications of its trillion-dollar valuation. Do note we recorded this episode before the latest reporting around possible enhanced chip controls and cloud compute restrictions.
In the conversation below, we cover:
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Nvidia’s origin in the graphics card industry, and CEO Jensen Huang’s creation of a GPU ecosystem, which set up Nvidia to become a dominant player;
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How the rise of transformer models in AI benefited from Nvidia’s compute and software ecosystem, allowing for larger, more scalable models;
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The absence (for now) of foreign and domestic competitors for Nvidia, especially in China;
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What US export controls on Chinese hardware mean for US-China AI competition; and
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The limits…
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