Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by batista 5115 days ago
This is correct in abstract, but not in real terms. I don't think Linus sayings have any significant effect on NVidia's bottom line (if they have any effect at all).

It's not like more than 0.01% potential buyers will read this Linus quote and choose a competing product. Especially if NVidia's product is the best for their use case in the first place.
2 comments
danmaz74 5115 days ago
A bad hit to your image among opinion leaders in your field might not hurt your sales right away, but it can hurt them in the long run if this creates a negative image for your brand.
link
exDM69 5115 days ago
Linux is quite popular with scientific computing people doing GPGPU math.
link
batista 5115 days ago
All 10 of them?

Less fun edition: I'm sure it is. As it is with Linux based 3D render farms. Do both of those represent a large portion of Nvidia's income or an insignificant one?

I presume it's the latter: there are billions of desktops/laptops but only several thousands of scientific computing / 3D rendering installations. The fact that Nvidia doesn't seem to go out of its way to help people using Linux seems to corroborate that.

link
lailoken 5115 days ago
Clearly you have not worked in enough fields to see where this may be used. I've worked at high frequency traders where we used some of this technology. And how about a large portion of android phones?
link
batista 5115 days ago
>Clearly you have not worked in enough fields to see where this may be used. I've worked at high frequency traders where we used some of this technology.

And clearly if I had to have worked to some niche fields to know about that use, it's not that widespread.

I seriously doubt Nvidia's bottom line is affected by such professional uses of GPUs.

>And how about a large portion of android phones?

What about them? You think companies like Samsung or Motorola are gonna switch just because Linus said something negative? Or that Android customers are gonna demand a different GPU?

Not to mention that Nvidia is, if not "the only game in town", one of the "counted on the fingers of one hand with some digits cut-off in a tragic saw accident" games in town.

link