Welcome to the inaugural episode of Moss Garden. In this episode, you'll hear four guests deeply exploring an extraordinary technology company—NVIDIA. We'll discuss NVIDIA’s path to prominence, dissect its business model, and delve into founder Jensen Huang’s visionary strategic mindset. Even if you're new to the industry, you'll find this journey both accessible and enjoyable.
Speaker: Wang Weihua | Host: Chunqiu | Narrators: Afei, Tian Miao | Technical Support: Xiaohei | Special Technical Support: Null
Chapter One: Youthful Beginnings and Three Major Breakthroughs
00:01:43 Jensen Huang's Early Life
00:04:03 Jensen Huang's Experience at a School for Troubled Youth in the U.S.
00:08:25 Young Jensen Huang’s Talent in Table Tennis
00:19:02 Meeting Lori During College
00:21:25 Before Founding NVIDIA
00:28:21 A Brief Story from Jensen Huang’s Speech
Chapter Two: Challenging Beginnings - Graphics Cards as Mere Commodities
00:30:27 The IT Industry Landscape in 1992
00:31:39 Would You Have Chosen PC-based 3D Graphics Cards in 1992?
00:39:36 Early Challenges Facing NVIDIA
00:50:17 The Failed NV1 and the Abandoned NV2
01:17:52 Second Existential Crisis
Chapter Three: Building the Great Wall - GPU and CUDA
01:28:52 Launching the GeForce 256, Defining a New Product Category
01:36:33 GPUs Emerge from the Shadow of CPUs
01:43:52 Introduction of CUDA: Building an Ecosystem and Customer Lock-in
01:47:55 The 2008 Stock Market Crash
01:54:16 The GPU Era: How Jensen Huang Constructed Barriers
Chapter Four: Artificial Intelligence and Data Centers
01:57:22 Key Figure in AI: Ilya and His Contributions
02:01:20 Fundamentals of AI: Language Models, Machine Learning, Deep Learning
02:10:04 Fei-Fei Li’s Contributions to AI
02:16:19 The Emergence of AlexNet
02:27:31 Applying GPUs to Deep Learning
02:50:00 Acquisition of Mellanox
Chapter Five: Walls and Wall-Breakers
03:19:35 NVIDIA’s "Walls": CUDA Ecosystem, Data Center Dominance, and Supply Chain Advantages
03:21:11 Customer Lock-in and Network Effects of the CUDA Ecosystem
03:23:42 Customer Stickiness and Technological Advantages in Data Centers
03:24:55 Supply Chain Strengths: Collaboration with TSMC, Foxconn, and Others
03:37:58 NVIDIA’s "Wall-Breakers" - How Could NVIDIA Be Defeated?
Chapter Six: Multidimensional Thinking Models
03:50:00 Second-Order Thinking: The Tools for Design Are More Crucial than the Design Itself
03:51:47 Honesty in Knowledge
03:55:00 Persuasion through Interests
03:55:30 Reverse Thinking
03:56:07 First Principles
03:56:37 Jensen Huang’s Personal Qualities
Easter Eggs
03:58:26 From Engineering Mindset to Business Mindset
04:02:28 Scientist’s Intuition and Belief
04:07:23 Geoffrey Hinton’s Story
04:19:56 Second-Level and Third-Level Research
References
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[2] LECUN Y, BOTTOU L, BENGIO Y, 等. Gradient-based learning applied to document recognition[J/OL].Proceedings of the IEEE, 1998, 86(11): 2278-2324. DOI:10.1109/5.726791.
[3] OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY. CommencementCeremony 2009 - Jen-Hsun Huang[Z/OL]. (2009-08-27)[2025-05-04]. www.youtube.com.
[4] KRIZHEVSKY A, SUTSKEVER I, HINTON G E.Imagenet classification with deep convolutional neural networks[J/OL]. Advancesin neural information processing systems, 2012, 25[2025-05-04]. proceedings.neurips.cc.
[5] LeCun, Yann. The Road to Science [M/OL]. Translated by Li Hao and Ma Yue. CITIC Publishing Group, 2021[2025-05-04]. book.douban.com.
[6] ACQUIRED. Nvidia: The GPU Company(1993-2006)[Z/OL]. (2022-03-28)[2025-05-04]. www.youtube.com.
[7] STRATECHERY. An Interview with NvidiaCEO Jensen Huang about Manufacturing Intelligence[EB/OL].(2022-03-28)[2025-05-04]. stratechery.com.
[8] ACQUIRED. Nvidia: The Machine LearningCompany (2006-2022)[Z/OL]. (2022-04-20)[2025-05-04]. www.youtube.com.
[9] STRATECHERY. An Interview With NvidiaCEO Jensen Huang About Building the Omniverse Cloud[EB/OL].(2022-09-22)[2025-05-04]. stratechery.com.
[10] STRATECHERY. An Interview with NvidiaCEO Jensen Huang About AI’s iPhone Moment[EB/OL]. (2023-03-23)[2025-05-04]. stratechery.com.
[11] ACQUIRED. Nvidia Part III: The Dawn ofthe AI Era (2022-2023) (Audio)[Z/OL]. (2023-09-07)[2025-05-04]. www.youtube.com.
[12] Fei-Fei Li. The World I See. Translated by Zhao Can. CITIC Publishing Group, 2024[2025-05-04]. book.douban.com.
Note: Due to length limitations, this is not a complete list of references.
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