How could Roland not know about Nvidia?

This is one of the best military enterprises in the world!

The 690 tactical nuclear graphics card they produced can destroy an aircraft carrier battle group with one shot!

Well, I can't go on......

╮(╯▽╰)╭

As a gamer, Roland has a deep memory of Nvidia, because looking around the future PC chip industry, the only things that can flash in his mind are toothpaste factories, Nvidia and massage parlors.

Since the invention of the transistor in five or five years, the semiconductor industry has won a vigorous development, and the eight fairchildren that appeared in five or seven years are the hotbed for incubating Silicon Valley enterprises, and in six or nine years, Sanders, who served as the sales director of Fairchild Semiconductor, led seven people to break away from the original company and set up Supermicro Semiconductor, that is, a massage shop, and before that, Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore, the two founders of Fairchild Semiconductor, also broke away from the company and established a toothpaste factory.

In the beginning, the two sides helped each other, after the advent of the AM2900 series in the massage shop, they became the second source of LSI for the toothpaste factory, and later, they became the copy ninja Wuwukai, with the support of the toothpaste factory, in 76 years, successfully reversed the famous Intel 8080 processor at that time.

It's like asking what we should do if the enemy's plane is too bullish.

Take a closer look, eh! We'll make it.

Because of the competition with IBM, the toothpaste factory did not immediately deal with the massage shop, but in 82 years, the massage shop was better than the blue in terms of processors, and launched the Am286, and the price was much lower than the toothpaste factory, the toothpaste factory also tore up the contract.

So far, the original good brother has become a competitor.

At that time, Lao Huang, the founder of NVIDIA, was in a massage parlor and witnessed this history.

In eighty-three years, Lao Huang, who saw that the massage shop could win the toothpaste factory, submitted his resume and joined the company, but before he could show his strength, the massage shop was taken to court by the toothpaste factory in eighty-five years, pressed to the ground and rubbed, Lao Huang, who once dreamed of fighting the sword to go to the end of the world, was defeated by reality, and found that he couldn't do anything, so he resigned and went to LSI, and then worked until ninety-three years.

In ninety-three years, graphics cards and sound cards had not yet been separated, and at that time, the graphics chip market was even more blank, and the customers were all companies, the two most famous were Industrial Light & Magic and Pixar.

In this environment, Lao Huang, who saw the blank market, resolutely chose to resign, just like Jeff Bezos, who found that no one had done it in the e-commerce industry, and called the Silicon Valley analysts to ask them what they thought, and those guys told him, 'The entire northwest of Shanxi has become a pot of porridge!'" There are almost thirty companies out there now, and you'd better not do that. ’

Boss Huang was very moved, and then established NVIDIA.

May you go away for half your life and come back as a teenager.

Boss Huang's father is an engineer, he has the idea of following his father's business, he studied electronic engineering, and when he graduated, it was the time when Silicon Valley was booming, and with an example like Wang An, it was actually normal to do it himself.

But at that time, the market was really chaotic, although 3Dfx became the first industry monopolist in the history of graphics cards, but the traditional king SIS was eyeing the side, not to mention Trident, who took the lead in the charge, and the pressure on NVIDIA was actually very great.

At the beginning, Nvidia aimed at game consoles, and the first product it came out of, the market response was mediocre, and then it fell into a financial crisis, if it wasn't for Sega to give the order, they would have died a long time ago, but unfortunately, the cooperation with Sega also failed.

At this time, Microsoft launched the Direct X interface, and at that time, all the image chip manufacturers on the market were busy setting their own standards, only Boss Huang, who had no money, no power and no one, decisively gave up the game console, threw himself into the PC, and hugged Microsoft's thighs.

As a result, Nvidia made a fortune.

The RIVA 128 was launched in '97 and was very well received by the market.

And the reason is simple......

Because Microsoft has a monopoly on the entire market!

Holding this thigh, it is equivalent to taking the first step in research and development ahead of everyone.

With Windows already on board, how many people will choose a new operating system because of a graphics card? Those who think they can set standards and force Microsoft to accept themselves really have a brainstorm......

Is it more people playing games or using computers?

Can't figure out such a simple thing?

What's more, Bill Gates isn't the easy-going kind either.

Steve Jobs knows this very well.

It is precisely because of this understanding that after hearing about NVIDIA, Roland smiled and said:

"Nvidia, I know, their market share is growing very fast."

"But even then, they don't seem to be a threat to 3Dfx's position, huh? Doesn't the Voodoo series also support the Direct X interface? In this case, as long as they exert their strength, they can bring back the market share that Nvidia has stolen. ”

As soon as Roland's words came out, the three old men who were still laughing at him for being cheated by Bill Gates were even happier.

"Look, this guy is pretending, right?"

Charlie Munger shook his head, "You still said that you are looking at people's investment, and now that you are exposed, right?" ”

"Steven teaches well, young people don't be too proud."

David Gottsman smiled and nodded, "Steven has suffered on this, and you, pretending to be like ......"

'What is this!' ’

Roland's head is full of black lines.

And the old men just simply 'exposed' Roland's lies, and then continued to talk about business.

"3Dfx is no longer good, they are talking to STB, the board supplier, and those guys think that they can kill Nvidia by buying Nvidia's largest board supplier, but they are still too young."

"They want to control the entire industry chain, but Dimeng, Innovation, Litai, Gigabyte, MSI, Asus and other manufacturers are all going to eat, and hardware monopoly is not something I want to see, because it will bring a lot of cost increases to Microsoft's game consoles, so 3Dfx will eventually die, and they will die on the ambition of not being able to but want to monopolize the market."

Since Warren Buffett talked about Nvidia, Bill Gates has nothing to hide, and his two-sentence life-and-death behavior made Roland secretly complain in his heart - 'You monopolize the market yourself, but you don't allow others to monopolize?' ’

Isn't this just that only the governor is allowed to set fires, and the people are not allowed to light lamps! ’

However, Roland also admitted that the old man did have the ability to determine life and death.

Nvidia is now Microsoft's little brother, 3Dfx is now a disobedient careerist, and if you want to help your little brother kill the opponent, the easiest way is to shake people! Wouldn't it be enough to just let the toothpaste factory not provide support for 3Dfx?

No one else can do that.

But Bill Gates can.

"More than that, right?" Roland didn't refute the old man's words, but added, "I heard that NVIDIA is working on the Graphics Processing Unit?" Does this stuff make the graphics card less CPU-dependent? ”

'Huh? ’

Hearing this, Bill Gates, who was still elegant and easy-going when Warren Buffett broke what he had done, frowned, and looked at Roland with surprise, "Where did you hear the news?" ”

"Blizzard makes games, and of course we can find that the current graphics cards are too dependent on the computing power of the CPU."

Roland didn't answer positively, but said with a smile: "EA launched "Genesis" last year, which gave us the concept of MMORPG, but those people in our company said that the current graphics card only contains simple memory and frame buffers, they actually only play a role in the storage and transfer of graphics, and all operations must be controlled by the CPU, if this problem cannot be solved, then the game of complex scenes and three-dimensional scenes cannot be developed, so ......"

"The concept of the Graphics Processing Unit was not proposed, but we knew that there would be people who would do it."

"Right?"

Roland's words calmed the three old men who were still smiling.

Although they don't understand what a GPU is, they don't know what an MMORPG is.

But they could see that Bill Gates was serious about the young man's words.

'There's something in my head. ’

'Professionally not right, but by no means stupid. ’

There's a reason why he's going to be big, maybe dropping out of school is just like William and thinking that Harvard has nothing to teach him. ’

The three old men have known each other for many years, and after making eye contact for a while, they reached a consensus.

If they thought that there was nothing to talk about with people like Roland, then now, everyone can sit down and get to know each other seriously, although the topic may not be right, but it doesn't matter, there is a specialization in the art industry......

A lot of what Bill Gates understands, they don't understand!

And what they understand, Bill Gates doesn't understand either!

But that doesn't stop them from being friends, because they feel like they're dealing with smart people, and they can learn from them about things they don't know that they might use later, rather than wasting time with fools.

Of course, Roland didn't know what the three old men were thinking, he only knew that Bill Gates was about to poke himself to death with his eyes.

Staring at Roland for a while, the kind-eyed old man laughed, but his words were not polite, "This is confidential. ”

"What is there, there will be again; What has been done, it will be done again. Under the sun, there is nothing new. ”

The words of the Bible Ecclesiastes were pulled out by Roland.

When he used this as a shield, the four old men were all relieved.

The so-called secrecy is just that you don't stand tall enough.

Roland may not be obvious, but his net worth is real.

"Now that you know so much, I don't seem to have much to say."

"And after you know so much, you didn't invest in Nvidia because you didn't want to make hardware?"

Bill Gates looked at Roland with playful eyes, and for a moment, he was full of curiosity about what the kid had in his head - 'In the last ten years, filming has taken up most of his time, but even so, he can still agree with Steve?' Turning your life into a brand? Still making Steven comfortable in the gaming realm? ’

It's too hard. ’

And Roland, on the other hand, didn't care about the other party's opinion.

The reason has been given, whether you believe it or not, anyway, I believe it myself.

As for Nvidia this car?

To be honest, Roland didn't really want to go.

Because in his memory, Boss Huang put Microsoft together after hugging Microsoft's thigh through a difficult period.

It was precisely knowing this that Roland didn't think about joining Boss Huang.

He is now Bill Gates's Britney, the old man wants Yahoo, then give him Yahoo, the old man wants content, then vigorously develop the content, his goal is to fill the old man's favorability, and he doesn't want to touch his mold in other fields.

What's more, Boss Huang and Yang Zhiyuan are both members of the '100-person club', and Roland secretly put Yahoo behind his back, which will eventually be discovered, although the scale of the '100-person club' is doubling several times, and it can't beat the 'elderly group' around them, but after the East Window incident, this group of people will definitely guard against Roland.

As Lu Xun said: 'When you choose a teammate, you also choose an opponent.' ’

However, since we talked about NVIDIA, it is impossible for Roland to let go of this source of information easily!

As the so-called thief does not go empty, ahh

This includes ATi.

“ATi？ ATi does a lot of everything, but the content is very ......" Bill Gates thought for a while and said: "They don't just make graphics cards, they also make video capture cards and TV tuning cards, they don't just do design, they also do their own factories." ”

"On the surface, it looks like they have a very broad development path because all the businesses are involved, and there are many potential profit growth points, but in reality, their funds do not support this expansion."

"So you mean, you don't think much of them, do you?" Roland asked.

Bill Gates has reservations about this issue, "If they have enough cash flow, then I will be optimistic about them, and if they can win a long-term and full large order, I will also be optimistic about them." ”

Gotcha!

Roland is waiting for this sentence from Bill Gates!

Many people may not have heard of ATi, because this company was bought by a massage parlor in '06.

But since its birth in 85, it has been an important display chip company in the world, on a par with NVIDIA.

Well, this name is actually praised by Microsoft.

Because he hugged Microsoft's thigh and shouted Dad.

As mentioned earlier, Nvidia successfully turned over with the Direct X interface, and then in 99, they launched the world's first GPU, which not only greatly promoted the development of the PC game market, but also revolutionized parallel computing, announcing the complete end of 3DFX domination, but even so, they still have opponents, and the opponent is ATi.

In fact, ATi couldn't beat Nvidia at that time, but Lao Huang was a little floated after catching the opponent all the way to the grass.

Microsoft asked this little brother who was supported by itself to make XBox's graphics chips, SoundStorm sound chips and motherboard solutions, and after the little brother saw the 200 million orders, he was very sensible and ate the business given by his thighs, and then ......

Prices start from the ground.

After the delivery of the first shipment, the cost of the second shipment increased by 1.4 times compared to the first batch.

And in the process of negotiation, Lao Huang relied on his identity as the industry overlord to raise the price every time.

As a result, the unbearable Microsoft and its court, not only that, but they also lost the XBox business to ATi, excluded Nvidia from the list of DirectX 9 specifications, and by the way, united with the toothpaste factory, cut a bunch of orders with Nvidia, and switched to support ATi, in just a few months, Nvidia's stock price fell from twenty-two to two!

The market value has shrunk by 90%!

Seeing that he was about to be delisted, Lao Huang hurriedly found Microsoft, took the initiative to admit it, and retook the order.

Microsoft didn't want to kill this little brother with core technology, so while reaching a settlement with Nvidia, it asked the toothpaste factory to open a patent cross-licensing agreement with him, and since then, Nvidia has developed 'honestly'.

Of course, the so-called development is actually looking for content manufacturers to bring goods.

Graphics cards specifically built for World of Warcraft allowed them to regain the market that was eaten by ATi.

And ATi, which got an order from Microsoft, also gradually gained a foothold with the support of funds, and was finally acquired by a massage shop, making it the only company in the market that can make both CPUs and GPUs.

Although in both industries, massage parlors are the second, but it doesn't matter, obedient food will be eaten!

Because of this, massage parlors have become the first choice for XBox and PS in the end, and not only that, but they also use the x86 architecture, which is convenient for game manufacturers to develop games, because in essence, PC and console are actually the same platform.

The low cost of cross-platform is something that Sony and Microsoft must consider, otherwise, game manufacturers will rebel.

Before Roland's crossing, massage parlors and toothpaste factories had already won and lost each other in terms of performance.

It's just that in terms of GPU, it's still catching up with Nvidia.

In this way, as Roland, who has Blizzard, has a huge hard thigh, and is trying to kill Sony, of course what he wants is not Nvidia!

The massage parlor with ATi is his first choice, because this is a complete industrial chain!

Let the massage parlor make CPU+GPU+bridge for Microsoft!

Let Blizzard provide Microsoft with premium content!

When Microsoft slaughtered all sides in the console field, all they really controlled was a system and an outer shell!

Roland can't make a system, but he believes that if he can get Bill Gates, Steve Jobs will be more than happy to make a system!

If you change the system and change the shell, XBox, it is not XBox......

Of course, Roland didn't want to go against Microsoft, but he also knew that he was going to go against Microsoft after all.

Because Apple is going to make mobile phones after all! Steve Jobs won't give up on his own operating system either! Not only that, Apple actually wants to enter the smart home industry of the Internet of Everything, just like Microsoft!

And he is the majority shareholder of Apple!

Roland will never be able to take more than 10 percent or even nearly 20 percent of Microsoft's shares, but he can take Apple, he can take Amazon, and he can take a bunch of companies that will compete with Microsoft in the future!

Where does development come from without competition?

The current hip-hop is just that there is no conflict of interest for the time being.

Just like Lu Xun said, 'You can't have the heart to harm people, and you can't have the heart to prevent people.' ’

Even if you don't want to fight, you have to be prepared.

Because content companies without core technology are too easy to be manipulated.

It's like a producer who doesn't have a distribution channel.

In front of the big guy, you can only be a grandson!

Of course, Roland is not afraid that he will not be able to eat ATi and massage parlors.

Because at least for now, in the eyes of this group of old men, he is a very, very obedient child.

Yahoo says throw it away?

This behavior would have led the old men to think that Roland would communicate better than Boss Huang.

And supporting him is more beneficial to the company.

Not only that, if Microsoft is furious, scolds Nvidia, and its market value is less than 500 million, he has cash in hand, and he actually has the opportunity to swallow Nvidia......

And what about the so-called opportunity......

Of course, first brush up Bill Gates' favorability!

As long as Microsoft doesn't let go, as long as they think Roland is a very obedient little brother, then Nvidia has only two ways to cut the flesh and let Roland enter the supervision or go bankrupt!

As for the antitrust bill?

Let's fill the market first, and I'm thinking about it!

Thinking of this, Roland smiled and said, "When I hear you say this, I am relieved." I was still thinking about which company to invest in, but since you said that the ATi industry is complete, but there is a lack of development funds, then I should invest in this company. ”

'Huh? ’

This kind of words surprised all four people at the scene.

"Didn't you and William agree? I think Nvidia is amazing, so why don't you vote for it? ”

Warren Buffett has a hard time understanding Roland's idea of not investing in a leading company.

"That's right! William told you that they would work with Nvidia! ”

Charlie Munger also found it strange.

David Gottsman and Bill Gates also frowned.

This kind of behavior of knowing inside information, but not playing cards according to the routine, makes them a little confused.

"Hey, didn't I sell Yahoo to Carl? This kind of behavior may cause me and Huang to have some minor conflicts, so it's not that I don't want to vote for Nvidia, but that if I do, it may be counterproductive. ”

"It's not good for William, it's not good for me."

As soon as Roland explained this, the four old men understood.

Not only that, but they also cast a regretful look at Roland.

This is actually the disadvantage of using nuclear weapons.

It is indeed the simplest act to push a company in the form of nuclear weapons and forcibly take it in, but at the same time, if you do not have capital like Microsoft and General Motors, it is easy to be hated.

This kind of grudge may gradually disappear with the passage of time, but during this period, it is indeed difficult to carry out other businesses in the same field.

"Look, I'm going to say William is too bad, right?" Warren Buffett spreads his hands.

"Then you really can't help it." Charlie Munger pushed the glasses on the bridge of his nose, "If you want not to reveal your identity, then you can only eat less than five percent of the shares, but this kind of small company has less than five percent of the shares, then there is no point......"

David Gottsman shook his head, "You invest in ATi or Nvidia, the purpose should be to build the right graphics card for your game, right?" If that's the case, in fact, any one will do, because you are more familiar with this than we are by relying on content to bring goods. ”

Bill Gates, the 'culprit' who caused Roland to be unable to invest in Nvidia, sighed, threw a helpless smile at Roland, and did not comment on this result.

Since Roland can't get a foot in Nvidia anymore, then everyone won't be entangled in this topic.

In the middle of a few words, they moved on to other things.

It wasn't until more than seven o'clock that Warren Buffett's nanny and lover Astrid Monk came over to call them for dinner, and the group stopped the topic of not knowing which country they had deviated to, and after everyone finished dinner, Roland went to the villa next to him under the guidance of the maid and arranged to move in.

Maybe it's because he talks a lot about things during the day, but it's more like a little mental pressure after opening two projects in a row, so after taking a hot bath, when Roland and Kate were talking on the phone porridge on the bed, endless sleepiness made him fall asleep first.

Listening to the sound of uniform breathing from the mobile phone, Kate, who was far away in Los Angeles, shook her head helplessly and took the initiative to hang up the phone, although she could dial to wake Roland up, but ......

There's no need......

"I don't know what he did during the day?"

"It's really not worry-free......"

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