Hardware Nvidia's David Kirk on CUDA, CPUs and GPUs

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2008/04/30/david-kirk-interview/1

It's almost three years since we last interviewed David Kirk, Nvidia's Chief Scientist. And with everything going on in the industry right now, it was a great time to catch up with him to find out where he sees the industry going and how Nvidia will be part of that.



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Nice interview Tim, good bit of morning reading as always and its great to be kept up with just where the industry is looking at going.

 

He's pretty harsh about AMD/ATI, but it's hard to argue with that assessment, for AMD/ATI to stay in the game they need to come out with a competitive CPU _and_ a competitive GPU, whilst not loosing any more money etc. I just can't see them managing all of that...

 

I hope they do manage to hang in there. Would hate an NVIDIA/Intel monopoly. Excellent interview. Who codes in C++ any more, LOL!!!!

 

great interview. many thanks

hope nVidia can hang in there.

btw, i still program in C!

 

Interesting interview, definitely worth a read.

Incidentally shadow12, a lot of scientists, myself being one of them, program in c++ and we are the ones who desperately need more (massively parallel ) computing power and are definitely a target market for CUDA. Well we also still program in FORTRAN77 as well although its being phased out now and in High Energy Physics (my field) most new code is c++. Given that we just invested a huge amount in a switch from a 40 year old language, we'll be using c++ for some time now.

 

You raised some key points about the competition, to which he replied with the usual coporate hyperbole of "we dont think the competition can do it." It's this dangerous over confidence that has seen microsoft leak market share to apple, yahoo leak market share to google and Sony leak market share to microsoft and Nintendo. Having lots of confidence in your own products might sound great in an interview, but his "Definatly maybe" comment shows signs that IF Intel does the feat of creating a solid graphics solution, or AMD somehow manages to turn itself around, Nvidia hasn't really planned for the future, and could find itself in a Geforce 5 series position all over again.

I think David should be a little more humble regarding the competition. It was only 4 years ago that Nvidia and Intel were getting hammered by the AMD64 and ATI 9xxx series graphics cards, and such architectural breakthroughs and performance margins arent impossible for the competition to recreate.

 

You speak a lot of truth - he came across as sometimes arrogant. Obviously he knows a lot of things (about what's going on at Nvidia) that I don't know... but underestimating Intel and AMD will likely not be good. I don't think Nvidia is underestimating the competition internally though--especially after GeForceFX. To me, it smelt more like a bit of smacktalk in some respects than anything else.

I think it's interesting though, as I don't think the industry has been as open as it is now - nobody knows who will be the biggest of them all in 5-10 years. Intel and Nvidia are venturing into (relatively) new territory with the push to massive parallelism with lots of programmability, while AMD is struggling on all fronts but has experience in the territories that are set to converge.

 

No you guys you got me wrong I was laughing at this:

“C++ is a great buzzword but many, many programmers don’t write C++... and for that matter, many programmers don’t even write C,”

I still write in C++, a lot of people I know (in science) still write in C/C++ (Embedded and many other variants of). If you want something done quick you write it in C/C++.

As far as massively parallel computing goes I know what you are talking about I have used Condor a few times and we just got a small 20 node cluster.

Yea CUDA looks really interesting. I wonder how long it would take to create an SVM app for CUDA.

 

Kirk was referring to 'scripters' rather than 'programmers' - people that just script things to make them faster. I should probably make that clearer.

 

Ah I see now it makes sense.

 

Great interview, Tim. Thanks.

 

I never really realized of how much an Nvidia fan site this is...

 

what? this isnt a nvidia fan site. the interview's only bias was from David Kirk. im just excited to see where AMD/ATI, intel, and nvidia will take computing in these next 5 years. i just hope, like shadow said, that there isnt a intel/nvidia monopoly.

 

It is? What (in particular) makes you say that?
Also, great interview Tim

 

Nvidia: Buy Via & go into CPUs too!

(Either that or buy AMD and sell off ATI)

Interesting interview

 

That couldn't be farther from the truth - and you only have to look through our recent reviews to see that we've been quite critical of Nvidia's products when they miss the mark. David works for Nvidia and he oversees the design of their GPUs so he's going to have an Nvidia-slanted opinion on the way the world goes round.

I'm working on some other interviews with Intel and AMD execs that I'm sure you'll be interested in - I'm keen to provide a perspective of the next ten years in this industry from all the major angles.

 

oh yes please. can you ask Intel about their goal and views in ARMs with their Atom processor?

 

Good first post - interesting that you signed up just to post a defence of the site. Welcome to the forums.