Jensen Huang

A computing company has a computing architecture.

A computing architecture has to be compatible across all of the chips that we build.

Can you take me through that decision?

Can you explain that decision?

That was the first... I would say that that was the first...

The first strategic decision that is as close to an existential threat.

Yeah, it turned out to be a good decision.

Here's the way it went.

We invented this thing called CUDA, and it expanded the aperture of applications that we can accelerate with our accelerator.

The question is, how do we attract developers to CUDA?

Because a computing platform is all about developers.

And developers...

don't come to a computing platform just because, you know, it could perform something interesting.

They come to a computing platform because the install base is large.

Because a developer like anybody else wants to develop software that reaches a lot of people.

So the install base is in fact the single most important part of an architecture.

The architecture could attract enormous amounts of criticism.

For example,

No architecture has ever attracted more criticism than the x86 as a less than elegant architecture.

But yet, it is the defining architecture of today.