[Cumpiler69]

>but there is some wisdom to that post.

That's just speculation. There's no guarantee that would have happened. Nobody has a crystal ball to guarantee that as the outcome.

It's like saying if someone would have killed Hitler as a baby, that would have prevented WW2.

[A4ET8a8uTh0]

I think you may be either misinterpreting my post or misunderstanding the sequence of events.

What do you think has happened so far?

Your mental model of the world may help me understanding the point you are trying to make.

[Cumpiler69]

I'm saying nobody can guarantee the claim of the GP I've replied to, that if Intel would have produced mediocre GPUs with 64+ GB of RAM that would have magically help them rise to the top of ML HW sales and save them.

That's just speculations from people online. I don't see any wisdom in that like you do, all I see is just a guessing game from people who think they know an industry when they don't (armchair experts to put it politely).

What made Nvidia dominant was not weak GPUs with a lot of RAM. The puzzle of their success had way more pieces that made the whole package appealing over many years, and a great timing of the market also helped. Intel making underperforming GPUs with a lot of RAM would not guarantee the same outcome at a later time in the market with an already entrenched Nvidia and a completely different landscape.

[Nevermark]

Your comments that nobody knows anything for sure are generically applicable to any discussion of anything.

But since they obviously apply just as well to Intel itself, it is a poor reason to dismiss other’s ideas.

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> What made Nvidia dominant was not weak GPUs with a lot of RAM.

Intel doesn’t have the luxury of repeating NVidia’s path in GPUs. NVidia didn’t have to compete with an already existing NVidia-like incumbent.

That requires no speculation.

—

Competing with an incumbent via an underserved low end, then moving up market, is called disruption.

It is a very effective strategy since (1) underserved markets may be small but are are immediately profitable, and (2) subsequent upward growth is very hard for the incumbent to defend against. The incumbent would have to lower their margins, and hammer their own market value.

And it would fit with Intel’s need to grow their foundry business from the low end up too.

They should take every low-end underserved market they can find. Those are good cards to play for ambitious startups and comebacks.

And the insane demand for both GPUs and chip making is increasing the number of such markets.

[A4ET8a8uTh0]

<< That's just speculations from people online. I don't see any wisdom in that like you do, all I see is just a guessing game from people who think they know an industry when they don't (armchair experts to put it politely).

True, it is just speculation. 'Any' seems to be a strong qualifier. One of the reasons I troll landscape of HN is that some of the thoughts and recommendations expressed here ended up being useful in my life. One still has to apply reason and common sense, but I would not dream of saying it has no ( any ) wisdom.

<< What made Nvidia dominant was not weak GPUs with a lot of RAM.

I assume you mean: 'not in isolation'. If so, that statement is true. AMD cards at the very least had parity with nvidia, so it clearly wasn't just a question of ram.

<< The puzzle of their success had way more pieces that made the whole package appealing over many years, and a great timing of the market also helped.

I will be honest. I am biased against nvidia so take the next paragraph for the hate speech that it is.

Nvidia got lucky. CUDA was a big bet that paid off first on crypto and now on ai. Now, we can argue how much of that bet was luck meets preparation, because the bet itself was admittedly a well educated guess.

To your point, without those two waves, nvidia would still likely be battling amd in incremental improvements so the great market timing accounts for majority of its success. I will go as far as to say that we would likely not see a rush to buy 'a100s' and 'AI accellerators' with exception of very niche applications.

<< Intel making underperforming GPUs with a lot of RAM would not guarantee the same outcome at a later time in the market with an already entrenched Nvidia and a completely different landscape.

Underperforming may be the key word here and it is a very broad brush. In what sense are they underperforming and which segment are they intended for? As for ram, it would be kinda silly in current environment to put a new card out with 8gb; I think we can agree on that at least.

<< I'm saying nobody can guarantee the claim of the GP I've replied to,

True, but it is true for just about every aspect of life so as statements go, so it is virtually meaningless as an argument. Best one can do is argue possibilities based on what we do know about the world and the models it tends to follow.