Thursday, September 22nd 2022
Jensen Huang Tells the Media That Moore's Law is Dead
NVIDIA's CEO has gone out on a limb during a video call with the media, where he claimed that Moore's Law is Dead, in response to the high asking price for its latest graphics cards. For those not familiar with Moore's law, it's an observation by Intel's Gordon Moore that says that transistors double in density inside dense integrated circuits every two years, while at the same time, the cost of computers are halved. The follow-on to this observation is that there's also a doubling of the performance every two years, if maintaining the same cost. This part doesn't quite hold true any more, due to all major foundries having increased the cost when using their cutting edge nodes. We're also reaching a point where it's getting increasingly difficult to shrink process nodes in semiconductor fabs. However, Jensen Huang's statement has nothing to do with the actual node shrinks, which makes his statement a bit flawed.
Jensen's focus seems to be on the latter half of Moore's law, the part related to semiconductors getting cheaper, which in turn makes computers cheaper. However, this hasn't been true for some time now and Jensen's argument in this case is that NVIDIA's costs of making semiconductors have gone up. Jensen is quoted as saying "A 12-inch wafer is a lot more expensive today than it was yesterday, and it's not a little bit more expensive, it is a ton more expensive," "Moore's Law is dead … It's completely over, and so the idea that a chip is going to go down in cost over time, unfortunately, is a story of the past." What he actually meant is that we shouldn't expect semiconductors to be as cheap as they've been in the past, although part of the issue NVIDIA is having is that their products have to be produced on cutting edge notes, which cost significantly more than more mature nodes. It'll be interesting to see if AMD can deliver graphics chips and cards with a more competitive price point than NVIDIA, as that would refute some of Jensen's claims.
Sources:
Barron's, MarketWatch
Jensen's focus seems to be on the latter half of Moore's law, the part related to semiconductors getting cheaper, which in turn makes computers cheaper. However, this hasn't been true for some time now and Jensen's argument in this case is that NVIDIA's costs of making semiconductors have gone up. Jensen is quoted as saying "A 12-inch wafer is a lot more expensive today than it was yesterday, and it's not a little bit more expensive, it is a ton more expensive," "Moore's Law is dead … It's completely over, and so the idea that a chip is going to go down in cost over time, unfortunately, is a story of the past." What he actually meant is that we shouldn't expect semiconductors to be as cheap as they've been in the past, although part of the issue NVIDIA is having is that their products have to be produced on cutting edge notes, which cost significantly more than more mature nodes. It'll be interesting to see if AMD can deliver graphics chips and cards with a more competitive price point than NVIDIA, as that would refute some of Jensen's claims.
94 Comments on Jensen Huang Tells the Media That Moore's Law is Dead
[URL='https://www.techpowerup.com/299159/jensen-huang-tells-the-media-that-moores-law-is-dead']Jensen Huang Tells the Media[/URL]
Gordon Moore: am i a joke to you?
RTX 4090: $1,599
RTX 4080 16 GB: $1,199
RTX 4080 12 GB: $899
RTX 4080 8 GB: $849
RTX 4080 4 GB: $799.
The ultra low-end RTX 4070 2 GB GDDR5 will come out later at an MSRP of $699.
www.nvidia.com/en-gb/geforce/graphics-cards/40-series/rtx-4080/
And on Nvidia website 4090 page there's a video showing cyberpunk running 22fps with rt on and dlss off
We have 76 billion transistors running 450 watts at 1600$ (2000$) giving us 22 frames. Ok case closed, Moore's law is dead as dodo.
That is definitely a convenient pick up and play experience. GeForce Now is really not bad. The latency is sometimes comparable to playing locally on a console. I really think we will get there one day. And with the perspective of paying thousands of dollars for GPU upgrades, I could be convinced.
Or get 3080ti with your budget.
Even if it costs more money, I'd pay it to maintain my own hardware (remember there's always ebay with used gear which I have taken advantage of many times and will continue to do as I will not pay Jensen's ridiculous prices - I haven't bought a 'new' NVidia video card since early 2017). Heck, I built my own onsite Plex server to stream media so that I'm not in any way dependent on streaming services in the event they decide to remove or modify content that I don't authorize.
Sometimes maintaining your freedom is a little more work, but it's absolutely worth it being able to give streaming services the middle finger when they do something that pisses you off. If you're here on TPU, chances are you're smart enough to build your own rigs and the like. I have faith in you. :)
Anyway, NVIDIA will continue doing the hell they want cuz consumers (us) keep paying them for that.