Tweet by zephyr_z9

September 11, 2025

> be me, NVIDIA in 2006 > making GPUs so gamers can play World of Warcraft in HD > Jensen Huang has a vision > "what if we made them do... math?" > entire boardroom thinks he's finally lost it > create CUDA > a software prison so elegant, academics will volunteer to be inmates > gamers are confused. "Will this make Crysis run faster?" > Jensen: "...no :)" > fast forward to 2012 > AI researchers, hopped up on adderall and free pizza, discover they need a shitload of matrix multiplication to make cat pictures > their Intel Xeons are crying, smoking, and filing for divorce > they discover CUDA > "holy shit this math thing you made is perfect" > the entire field of AI becomes a subsidiary of a company known for making Fortnite run better > we see this and our eyes turn into dollar signs > decide the prison needs better amenities > invent Tensor Cores > "what if part of the chip did ONLY the AI math, but did it at ludicrous speed?" > it's like adding a nitro booster to a Honda Civic specifically for going to the grocery store > AMD's competing card is over there trying to do the same math with a abacus and hope > because researchers are so lazy they can't be trusted to write a for-loop > just give them a big red "MAKE AI" button that runs our code > create cuDNN > bake it directly into TensorFlow and PyTorch > ecosystem lock-in is complete. We own the land, the factory, and the souls of the workers. > a bunch of hippies from a thing called "OpenAI" call > they want to build AGI or something > they need compute > roll up to their office, which is probably a converted garage, with the world's first DGX-1 > it's like the monolith from Space Odyssey > I tell them it has 8 GPUs connected by NVLink, so they can gossip like schoolgirls at light speed > they ask what it does > "It does AI, idiots. Just plug it in." > they sign the papers. > But we're not done. The prison needs a better yard. > See them trying to connect our beautiful DGX boxes with CAT-5 cables > embarrassing. > Acquire Mellanox for their InfiniBand tech > Now the nervous system connecting the GPUs is also ours > NVSwitch makes an entire rack of GPUs hold hands so tight they become one colossal mega-brain > Meanwhile, in a dimly lit basement in Santa Clara... AMD > They drop a new GPU. "The AMD Instinct MI300X! We have more theoretical FLOPs!" > "Better Benchmark performance." > One brave researcher tries to use it. > spends 6 weeks trying to install ROCm, their knock-off https://t.co/c336ngfjCA version of CUDA > gets 400 errors, a kernel panic, and divorce papers from his wife > he finally gets a model to run at half the promised speed > The benchmark was for a matrix size of 1x1 > He throws the card in the trash and buys an NVIDIA H100 on the company card. The cost is irrelevant. > Sanity is priceless. > Jensen takes the stage. The leather jacket has its own gravitational pull. Unleashes the GB200 NVL72 > 72 GPUs and 36 Grace CPUs in a single NVLink domain with 130 TB/s of bandwidth > the GPUs share thoughts before they even have them. > 2025 > AMD comes out with their "rack scale" solution, the MI355X 128-GPU rack > It's just 16 groups of 8 GPUs duct-taped together with Ethernet > A scale out clown car > We announce Rubin CPX GPU enabling cheaper prefill during inference > saving $$$$ > it's the ultimate vendor lock-in > every other chip designer sees this and has to throw their architecture in the trash and go back to the drawing board > All hail the leather-clad prophet.

Author
zephyr_z9
Date
September 11, 2025
Open on X