NVIDIA, Global Chip Shortages and What This Company is Doing to Solve the Problem

Published: Saturday, May 8, 2021

Hosts: Dennis Garcia and Darren McCain
Time: 27:22

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Originally recorded April 2021

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Show Notes

By now everyone has felt the effects of the global chip shortage. Motherboards are difficult to obtain, video cards are non-existent and processors are all but a distant memory. We can thank “the situation” for helping that along but the crux of the problem was created by a company who was just too good at what they did.

NVIDIA has been at the forefront of gaming since its inception and has been behind many of the things that make being a hardware enthusiast great. Overclockers and Gamers love SLI and the ability to drastically increase gaming performance by simply adding a second card to their system. The nForce line of motherboards re-introduced us to unlocked multiplier CPU overclocking and high-performance dual channel memory and unlike SLI both of those things are alive today.

Well, Nvidia has been busy to once again diversify their portfolio by taking on the datacenter with the launch of Grace. Grace is the culmination of several key NVIDIA technologies including AI enabled RTX, low powered ARM processors and high-speed NVLink which when brought together is the perfect makings of a power efficient super computer

Or maybe the start of Skynet (your choice on that one)

Ironically, Grace is almost a direct clone of what crypto miners have been building in their basements. Low powered CPUs drive a multitude of GPUs to solve crypto problems for (as they see it) free money.

It will be interesting to see what Grace ultimately becomes and if the driver level hardware segmentation will lower demand for gaming ready cards of if scalpers will continue with their thriving business model drive by AI powered bots to buy AI enabled hardware.

Episode 123 featured music:
Little People - Start Shootin' (http://www.littlepeoplemusic.com/)