Who is Jensen Huang, the head of Nvidia who changed the world, and what does he think
Who is Jensen Huang, founder of Nvidia, the largest semiconductor company in the world, and what does he think. Conversation by Marco Orioles with Alessandro Aresu, analyst, scientific advisor to Limes and author of a forthcoming book dedicated to Nvidia
Jensen Huang? A bit of a showman, a bit of a subversive, certainly a visionary.
No one knows more than Jensen Huang what the future holds for us, what the AI systems launched by his company, the now very famous NVIDIA, will outline, which is not only the leader but the synonym of this disruptive innovation . But who is the pioneer and owner of a record-breaking company on which the spotlight and the not always serene gazes of governments around the world are focused and what does he think? Start Magazine spoke about it with Alessandro Aresu, scientific advisor of Limes , author of a soon-to-be-published book dedicated to the NVIDIA case and its CEO and of which he gives us some preview.
WHO IS JENSEN HUANG
Jensen Huang, explains Aresu, founded NVIDIA in 1993 and has led it continuously since then as CEO, president and member of the board.
But before that, Huang put his two degrees from Oregon State University and Stanford to work working for both LSI Logic and Advanced Microdevices
His future brilliant career experienced a turning point with the founding of a company like NVIDIA initially specialized in computer graphics, fundamental for a video game industry that he helped to explode.
The decisive step came with the invention in 1999 of the GPU that would revolutionize computing by defining modern computer graphics.
And it is precisely the deep learning of GPUs that gave rise to the AI revolution, with the GPUs themselves representing the brain of highly advanced contemporary computers.
For these and other successes Huang has been awarded the most important recognitions, such as inclusion in Time's 2021 list of the 100 most influential people in the world, an achievement that came four years after he was nominated by Fortune magazine as a businessman of the year and two years before placing first in the ranking of the 100 best CEOs in the world drawn up by the Harvard Business Review.
Ma Huang also boasts three honorary doctorates awarded to him by the University of Oregon and two universities in Taiwan, the high honors awarded to him by the Semiconductor Industry Association as well as the Robert N. Noyce Award, the IEEE Founder's Medal and the Dr. Morris Chang Exemplary Leadership Award.
JENSEN HUANG SEEN FROM ARESU
The book on NVIDIA that Aresu is completing represents the natural continuation of a journey that began with his previous work entitled The dominion of the 21st century in which he told us, among other things, the new technological cold war that today divides the two rival empires of innovation, i.e. USA and China.
“Already while I was writing that book,” he says, “I had decided that my next book would focus on Jensen Huang and NVIDIA.” An obligatory choice, given that "we are talking about a company that has existed since 1993, is always led by the same person, has been listed on the stock exchange since 1999 and has been articulating its investment theses and its vision of the world for a long time".
A book that is therefore not a surprise, and which will not surprise above all both "the gamers who have known NVIDIA for thirty years", and "the scientists and operators of the supercomputing ecosystem who have known NVIDIA for almost twenty years and interact with its products and services".
THE LESSON FROM NVIDIA
But what is the lesson taught to the world by this company, which is not new but whose importance we now all understand? Aresu invites us to take off "the glasses of current events" which make us look in an "accelerated and frenetic way (at) the innovations of our time".
The current fibrillation of AI, in other words, “tends to make us forget that companies, people and products have a history”. A story, the analyst specifies, made up of "a series of elements built and prepared over time, from the relationship with a very complex supply chain, to acquisitions, to the vast community of developers".
EVERYTHING OR ALMOST ABOUT JENSEN HUANG
It is precisely this that makes NVIDIA and above all its founder a very particular case. A man who, Aresu underlines, combines the identity of "showman" with that of "technically trained electronic engineer and always curious from a technical point of view".
This mixture makes Huang “one of the incarnations of the American dream in our time.” A stars and stripes story of a "very young immigrant who through study and determination reaches a central role in the economy and technology of the main world power".
A biography therefore not only not to be overlooked but to be understood thoroughly and in detail since, Aresu remarks, "it is an integral part of the way in which Huang constantly talks about himself and recounts the success of NVIDIA".
Therefore, that GPU Technology Conference that Huang has organized continuously since 2009 to announce NVIDIA's new products, partners and services and which, our interviewee highlights, "is always introduced by a long speech from the founder himself" should not be considered a mania for protagonism.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/nvidia-jensen-huang/ on Sat, 23 Mar 2024 07:20:22 +0000.