Comments by "Scott Franco" (@scottfranco1962) on "How Nvidia Won AI" video.

Nvidia is a real success story. The only blemish is (as illustrated by Linus Torvald's famous giving the middle finger to them) is their completely proprietary stance on development. Imagine if Microsoft had arranged so that only their C/C# compilers could be used to develop programs for Windows. CUDA is a closed shop, as are the graphics drivers for Nvidia's cards.
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@janlanik2660 I think you misread what I said. Microsoft (or any OS maker, Apple included) could have easily made it so that only their compilers could be used on their systems, no GCC, no independent developers. That is what Nvidia has done.
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@janlanik2660 I see that is a recent addition (opencl on nvidia). However, that was not really what I was talking about. I don't think nvidia yet has opened their architecture so that anyone can write a driver or compiler for their machine, which is what Linus was talking about. If I am incorrect about that, I would be happy to be so.
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@psd993 ATI is known for opening their arch. Imagine if CPU makers had a closed architecture, and only allowed certain compiler makers to work with their products.
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@HsingG32 Proprietary hardware is a pet peeve of mine. You are locking out independent developers, and there is no reason for it. If you open the specs to your hardware you will just increase the market for your hardware, and nobody (who didn't already have the capability) is going to be able to copy your hardware just by the spec.
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Yes, I keep running into SGI vets in the industry. SGI died as a company, but lives on as a tech incubator like Fairchild from the early days. We occupied some of SGI's real estate in their final days, along Shoreline blvd. Eventually SGI occupied one of their own buildings closest to the bay. SGIs footprint from their heydays was large and now forms the basis of Google's headquarters. The final days of SGI remind me of an army making their last stand with their backs to the sea. From the roots of old trees grow the new ones. Google's campus is now like SGI on steroids. They not only bought up the old SGI buildings, but seem to be on a tear to buy up every last parcel of real estate on the shoreline, surrounding the amphitheatre like a giant octopus. You can still see the remnants of SGI in the giant sculptures they commissioned there. Its worth a drive around the shoreline area if you ever get to Mountain View.
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@housemana You have not listed any FACTS about what I have or haven't done wrong, this is just a general attack response. Pretty rude at that. So get lost.
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@paranoidpanzerpenguin5262 mmmmm Sun, now Oracle, open sourced their SPARC cpus. For the second, you are muddying the issue. AMD/ATI released full details on their cards and their drivers, which was very important to the early days of Linux. Things have not changed much since then. AMD is suing someone for copying their chips? Stop the presses! Comon man.
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@Stef3m 1. Its the difference between no source and source. 2. I am just telling you what the Linux kernel group reported. 3. I suspect you are arguing to press an agenda here, thus this is my last answer in this thread.
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