Comment by dismalaf

What?!

Nvidia is valuably precisely because the software, which is also why AMD is not so valuable. CUDA matters a lot (though that might become less true soon). And Nvidia's CUDA/software forward thinking most certainly predated AGI FOMO and that is the CAUSE of them doing so well with this "AI boom".

It's also not wildly overvalued, purely on a forward PE basis.*

I do wonder about the LLM focus, specifically whether we're designing hardware too much for LLM at the cost of other ML/scientific computing workflows, especially the focus on low precision ops.

But.. 1) I don't know how a company like Nvidia could feasibly not focus on designing for LLM in the midst of this craziness and not be sued by shareholders for negligence or something 2) they're able to roll out new architectures with great improvements, especially in memory, on a 2 year cycle! I obviously don't know the counterfactual, but I think without the LLM craze, the hypothetical generation of GPU/compute chips would be behind where they are now.

I think it's possible AMD is undervalued. I've been hoping forever they'd somehow catch up on software. They do very well in server business, and if Intel continues fucking up as much as they have been, AMD will own CPU/servers. I also think what deepseek has done may convince people it's worth it programming closer to the hardware, somewhat weakening Nvidias software moat.

*Of course, it's possible I'm not discounting enough for the geopolitical risk.

Yet my AMD APU was never properly supported for hardware video decoding, and could only do up to OpenGL 3.3, while the Windows 10 driver could go up to OpenGL 4.1.