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NVidia is a hardware company. I guess that would put it closer to the PC in your question than AI. But neither is a proper description, PC is the whole thing you go to buy somewhere, and NVIDIA doesn't sell PCs, they sell PC pieces. They don't develop AI either as far as I know. The hardware they design and build might be more aimed to one direction or other, but no matter the usage, what they do is create hardware.
AI, graphics cards... That's just the marketing to sell what they build.
They're not what I think of as a "Key Company" for anything.
That would require them to be irreplaceable in some aspect, on any reasonable timeline. But if they disappeared tomorrow, AMD would be able to step in and cover every use people had for Nvidia products.
(Accept maybe the Nvidia Shield. But Nvidia seems to have largely quit that anyway)
The closest thing they have to irreplaceable is CUDA. But AMD has been making leaps and bounds improving their GPU software. It would take the market maybe 6mo, or a year. But it would adjust without much trouble.
But AMD has been making leaps and bounds improving their GPU software
They are still largely shitting the bed here. Their ROCm installer won't run on Ubuntu 25.04 last time I checked, and the 9070xt won't work on OSs that ROCm DOES support because the kernel and graphics stack is too old.
ROCm has been "almost ready" to be a drop-in replacement for CUDA for almost a decade. I feel like it literally would take nvidia ceasing to exist to give them the critical mass to push it over the finish line
Nvidia ceasing to exist is exactly what I'm talking about here.
When people have no choice they'd make ROCm work. It'll take some extra effort, but it would get the job done just fine.
After their gouging and performance issues with 40-series and 50-series cards I can tell you one thing for certain: they’re not a serious graphics card manufacturer for gaming anymore.
That depends on what you mean. Their main market is AI, but their reputation is still built largely on gaming. The two sides of their business are linked like the two sides of a coin and can’t be separated. It’s why they are so fiercely protective of their gaming reputation that they threaten and bribe journalists for favorable treatment and use software-specific driver tricks to artificially bump their benchmark numbers.
From the outside, I don’t consider them “key” for anything. There are other businesses and technologies that could easily replace them.
as a PC gaming company or as an AI one?
As a videocard manufacturing company.
As a company in line with Tesla, Nestle etc.:
"Needs a little burning"
Plug the power into a 4090 RTX improperly, and you may get that burning for free!
Or plug it in properly and not have a current measuring clamp to check.
More AI 100%. AI is world trend that needs to be everywhere and currently NVIDIA is world leader in hardware for that (sadly) so they can milk that so hard it's not even imaginable 🥹