黄仁勋台大演讲英文版
我上大学的时候配的那一台新蓝电脑，还是丈母娘资助的。没有配备独立显卡，是主板集成显卡，游戏最高支持到暗黑破坏神，星际争霸，红色警戒。学校里有很多电脑发烧友，我也经常浏览太平洋电脑网，知道在显卡市场，有两大巨头：NVIDIA 和 ATI，但不知道 NVIDIA 老板是黄仁勋。当时 NVIDIA 的口碑略胜一筹，GForce 系列显卡卖的很好。
毕业以后，很少接触电脑硬件了，重心在软件上。大概 2016年，吴可佳到 NVIDIA 工作，那是已经听说 NVIDIA 在 CPU 之外，开了一片新的天地，GPU，于图形计算，AI 方面，相对 Intel AMD 等 CPU，有巨大的优势。
AI 如今高速发展，在 Wintel 时代独步天下三十多年的 Intel，已经不可能再与 NVIDIA 竞争，后者市值差不多是前者的 8倍，9600亿美元。
黄仁勋的这次演讲，从结构上，借鉴了乔布斯在斯坦福大学的演讲手法，讲三个故事，分别告诉人们，坦诚面对错误，XXX，学会放弃，但坦白的讲，只有第一个故事讲的好，第二个故事我甚至没有记住。
注：第二个故事是承受痛苦和苦难。
Full Transcript: NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang’s Commencement Address at National Taiwan University
Ladies and gentlemen, esteemed faculty members, distinguished guests, proud parents, and above all, the 2023 graduating class of the National Taiwan University. Today is a very special day for you, and a dream come true for your parents.
You should be moving out soon. It is surely a day of pride and joy.So, your parents have made sacrifices to see you on this day. My parents are here, and so is my brother. Let’s show all of our parents and our grandparents, many of them are here, our appreciation.
I came to NTU for the first time over a decade ago. Dr. Chen invited me to visit his computational physics lab. As I recall, his son, based in Silicon Valley, had learned of NVIDIA’s CUDA invention and recommended his father utilize it for his quantum physics simulations.
When I arrived, he opened the door to show me what he had made. NVIDIA GeForce gaming cards filled the room, plugged into open PC motherboards, and sitting on metal shelves in the aisles were oscillating platform fans.
Dr. Chen had built a homemade supercomputer, the Taiwanese Way, out of gaming graphics cards. He started here, an early example of NVIDIA’s journey.
He was so proud, and he said to me, Mr. Huang, because of your work, I can do my life’s work. Those words touch me to this day, and perfectly capture our company’s purpose, to help the Einstein and Da Vinci of our time do their life’s work.
I am so happy to be back at NTU, and to be your commencement address. The world was simpler when I graduated from Oregon State University. TVs were not flat yet. There was no cable television, and MTV.
And the words mobile and phone didn’t go together. The year was 1984. The IBM PC-AT and Apple Macintosh launched the PC revolution.
And started the chip and software industry that we know today. You enter a far more complex world, with geopolitical, social, and environmental changes and challenges.
Surrounded by technology, we are now perpetually connected, and immersed in a digital world that parallels our real world. Cars are starting to drive by themselves.
AI will create new jobs that didn’t exist before
Forty years after the computer industry created the home PC, we invented artificial intelligence. Like software that automatically drives a car, or studies x-ray images, AI software has opened the door for computers to automate tasks for the world’s largest, multi-trillion dollars of industries.
Healthcare, financial services, transportation, and manufacturing. AI has opened immense opportunities.
Agile companies will take advantage of AI, and boost their position. Companies less so, will perish. Entrepreneurs, many of them here today, will start new companies.
And like in every computing era before, create new industries. AI will create new jobs that didn’t exist before. Like data engineering, prompt engineering, AI factory operations, and AI safety engineers.
These are jobs that never existed before. Automated tasks will obsolete some jobs. And for sure, AI will change every job. Supercharging the performance of programmers, designers, artists, marketers, and manufacturing planners.
Just as every generation before you embraced technologies to succeed, every company, and you, must learn to take advantage of AI. And do amazing things with an AI co-pilot by your side.
While some worry that AI may take their jobs, someone who expert with AI will. We are at the beginning of a major technology era, like PC, internet, mobile, and cloud. But AI is far more fundamental because every computing layer has been reinvented, from how we write software to how it’s processed.
AI has reinvented computing from the ground up. In every way, this is a rebirth of the computer industry. And a golden opportunity for the companies of Taiwan.
You are the foundation and bedrock of the computer industry. Within the next decade, our industry will replace over a trillion dollars of the world’s traditional computers with new, accelerated AI computers.
The first story of NVIDIA: Confronting mistakes and asking for help
My journey started 40 years before yours. 1984 was a perfect year to graduate. I predict that 2023 will be as well.
What can I tell you as you begin your journey? Today is the most successful day of your life so far. You’re graduating from the National Taiwan University. I was also successful until I started NVIDIA.
At NVIDIA, I experienced failures. Great big ones. All humiliating and embarrassing. Many nearly doomed us.
Let me tell you three NVIDIA stories that define us today.
We founded NVIDIA to create accelerated computing. Our first application was 3D graphics for PC gaming.
We invented an unconventional 3D approach called forward texture mapping and curves. Our approach was substantially lower cost. We won a contract with SEGA to build their game console, which attracted games for our platform and funded our company.
After one year of development, we realized our architecture was the wrong strategy. It was technically poor. And Microsoft was about to announce Windows 95 Direct 3D based on inverse texture mapping and triangles.
Many companies were already working on 3D chips to support this standard. If we completed SEGA’s game console, we would have built inferior technology, be incompatible with Windows, and be too far behind to catch up.
But we would be out of money if we didn’t finish the contract. Either way, we would be out of business. I contacted the CEO of SEGA and explained that our invention was the wrong approach.
That SEGA should find another partner. And that we could not complete the contract and the console. We had to stop. But I needed Sega to pay us in whole. Or NVIDIA would be out of business.
I was embarrassed to ask. Irimajiri-san, the CEO of SEGA, to his credit and my amazement, agreed.
His understanding and generosity gave us six months to live. With that, we built RIVA 128. Just as we were running out of money. RIVA 128 shocked the young 3D market, put us on the map, and saved the company.
The strong demand for our chip led me back to Taiwan after leaving at the age of four to meet Morris Chang at TSMC and started a partnership that has lasted 25 years. Confronting our mistake and with humility asking for help, save NVIDIA.
These traits are the hardest for the brightest and most successful like yourself.
The second story of NVIDIA: Endure pain and suffering needed to realize your dreams
In 2007, we announced CUDA GPU Accelerated Computing. Our aspiration was for CUDA to become a programming model that boosts applications from scientific computing and physics simulations to image processing. Creating a new computing model is incredibly hard and rarely done in history.
The CPU computing model has been the standard for 60 years since the IBM System 360. CUDA needed developers to write applications and demonstrate the benefits of the GPU.
Developers needed a large installed base. A large CUDA installed base needed customers buying new applications. To solve the chicken or the egg problem, we used GeForce, our gaming GPU, which already had a large market of gamers, to build the installed base.
But the added cost of CUDA was very high. NVIDIA’s profits took a huge hit for many years. Our market cap hovered just above $1 billion.
We suffered many years of poor performance. Our shareholders were skeptical of CUDA. And preferred we focused on improving profitability. But we persevered.
We believed a time for accelerated computing would come. We created a conference called GTC and promoted CUDA tirelessly worldwide. Then the applications came.
Seismic processing, CT reconstruction, molecular dynamics, particle physics, fluid dynamics, and image processing. One science domain after another, they came.
We worked with each developer to write their algorithms and achieved incredible speedups. Then, in 2012, AI researchers discovered CUDA.
The famous AlexNet trained on GeForce GTX 580 started the Big Bang of AI. Fortunately, we realized the potential of deep learning as a whole new software approach. And turned every aspect of our company to advance this new field.
We risked everything to pursue deep learning. A decade later, the AI revolution started. And NVIDIA is the engine of AI developers worldwide.
We invented CUDA and pioneered accelerated computing and AI. But the journey forged our corporate character to endure the pain and suffering that is always needed to realize a vision.
The third story of NVIDIA: Strategic retreat
One more story. In 2010, Google aimed to develop Android into a mobile computer with excellent graphics.
The phone industry had chip companies with modem expertise. NVIDIA’s computing and graphics expertise made us an ideal partner to help build Android. So we entered the mobile chip market.
We were instantly successful. And our business and stock price surged. The competition quickly swarmed. Modem chip makers were learning how to build computing chips. And we were learning how to build modems.
The phone market is huge. We could fight for share. Instead, we made a hard decision and sacrificed the market.
NVIDIA’s mission is to build computers to solve problems that ordinary computers cannot. We should dedicate ourselves to realizing our vision and to making a unique contribution.
Our strategic retreat paid off. By leaving the phone market, we opened our minds to invent a new one. We imagined creating a new type of computer for robotic computers.With neural network processor, safety architectures that run AI algorithms.
At the time, this was a zero billion dollar market. To retreat from a giant phone market to create a zero billion dollar robotics market. We now have billions of dollars of automotive and robotics business and started a new industry. Retreat does not come easily to the brightest and most successful people like yourself.
Yet, strategic retreat, sacrifice, deciding what to give up, is that a core, the very core of success?
Class of 2023, you’re about to go into a world witnessing great change. And just as I was with the PC and chip revolution, you’re at the beginning, at the starting line of AI. Every industry will be revolutionized. Reborn.
Ready for new ideas. Your ideas. In 40 years, we created the PC, internet, mobile, cloud, and now the AI era.
What will you create? Whatever it is, run after it like we did. Run. Don’t walk. Remember, either you’re running for food, or you are running from being food.
I hope that part can be translated into Chinese so that everyone can understand.
Either you’re running for food, or you are running from becoming food.
And oftentimes, you can’t tell which. Either way, run. And for your journey, take along some of my learnings. That you will have the humility to confront failure, admit a mistake, and ask for help.
You will endure pain and suffering needed to realize your dreams. And you will make sacrifices to dedicate yourself to a life of purpose and doing your life’s work.
Class of 2023, I extend my heartfelt congratulations to each one of you. Jiayou!