8. Conclusion

I rarely hate people; I simply pity them. NVIDIA is no exception.

Looking back at NVIDIA’s history, it’s sad to see what their once-successful corporate culture has done to them. Same thing could have been told about ATI a few years ago. However, the ArtX, acquisition is believed to have fundamentally changed ATI’s culture and strategy.

Unfortunately NVIDIA hasn’t gotten a similar silver bullet. 3DFX and MediaQ acquisitions provided NVIDIA with no David Orton, the famous COO of ATI and ArtX founder. 3DFX and MediaQ provided just intellectual property, a few miscellaneous personnel and engineers—among which barely half of the core Rampage team accepted to join NVIDIA. Apparently many went to ATI and Quantum3D. No beneficial paradigm shift accompanied NVIDIA’s acquisitions.

With neither technical nor philosophical breakthroughs likely, few options remain for NVIDIA to get a grip back on reality. The most obvious one is internal management reorganization, including but not limited to layoffs. Yet I hardly believe the board of directors will realize the magnitude of NVIDIA’s trickle down ineptitude and hubris. Even if they did, it could risk reproducing the miserable position Apple was put in after Steve Jobs’ termination.

Therefore it is thus crucial that NVIDIA’s directors get a grip on reality and light a fire under NVIDIA’s current upper management. Someone needs to drive NVIDIA into corporate success that the current management strategy and corporate culture has proven too incompetent to reach. Better management understanding of current problems and potential futures issues are critical parts of necessary changes. Knowledge without acknowledgement, spewing misinformation, has been shown to help no one except the competition.

NVIDIA’s corporate culture and community image must drastically evolve. In addition to revision of strategy, increased community relations are necessary, as well as more personal research about the company’s doings by management and employees in general. Other changes—such as letting employees take part in the customer community in forums without fear of reprisal—are also required. The current policies in that respect are way too severe, especially when compared to the competition’s successful community participation, at Beyond3D for example.

Some might argue that this shouldn’t affect future product quality, and that if—for example—the NV40 managed to significantly beat the competition, strategy and misinformation problems would simply fade away. I disagree; bad management decisions easily ruin projects, and internal misinformation often results in these.

Should NVIDIA refuse to change their ways, smaller players such as PowerVR will gladly take over their market share. (The PowerVR upcoming high-end Series 5 chip seems extremely interesting to me, and I’m really looking forward to it.) Small companies are agile, not limited by their size. In startup and small companies, innovation remains an integral part of the culture, perhaps the most important part. Smaller companies know long-term survival depends on technological breakthroughs, not on distributing misinformation or referring to last years’ innovations. ATI realized this when they put Dave Orton in charge. NVIDIA needs to realize this and put someone equally competent, with an equally new outlook.

Will NVIDIA implement these most necessary changes? Men like Jen Hsun are capable of solving such critical problems, but they have to take them seriously. I don’t know if they will, and I fear the worst. Jen Hsun, you’re free to go ahead and prove me wrong, though. If anything, I'd love to see NVIDIA getting back on track.

Uttar