OpenNvidia Could Become the AI Generation's WinTel
upstart writes:
Duo could dominate in the same way Microsoft and Intel ruled PCs for decades:
Opinion: The OpenAI and Nvidia $100 billion partnership sure sounds impressive. $100 billion isn't chicken feed, even as more and more tech companies cross the trillion-dollar mark. But what does it really mean?
As two of my Register colleagues noted, "The announcement has enough wiggle room to drive an AI-powered self-driving semi through." True, but it may be the start of something huge that will define the AI movement for the foreseeable future.
Let's step into the Wayback Machine with Mr. Peabody and Sherman to the early 1980s, when PCs from companies most of you have never heard of, such as Osborne, Kaypro, and Sinclair Research, landed on desktops.
IBM decided to get into the personal computer business, and the company needed chips. So Big Blue teamed with a relatively obscure CPU company called Intel.
That took care of the hardware, but IBM needed an operating system urgently. Initially, like everyone else, except for those guys named Steve with some company called Apple, IBM wanted to use CP/M from Digital Research. That didn't work out. So, IBM called Microsoft, and Bill Gates and crew acquired Quick and Dirty Operating System (QDOS ) from Seattle Computer Products, and slapped the names MS-DOS and IBM PC-DOS on it. Microsoft also, and this is the critical bit, kept the right to sell MS-DOS to other companies.
Intel, of course, had always retained the right to sell its chips to anyone. It quickly became clear that IBM was onto something. So other new companies, Compaq specifically, sprang up to develop their own PC clones, starting with the Compaq Portable in 1983. It, and all the many other clones from companies like Dell, HP, and Packard Bell, were, of course, powered by Intel chips and ran Microsoft operating systems.
The two companies started working hand-in-glove with each other. By the late '80s, their pairing, WinTel, would rule the PC world. Decades later, while not nearly as dominant as they once were, chances are the computer in front of you is WinTel.
What does that have to do with OpenNvidia? Everything. This deal promises to create the world's largest AI infrastructure project to date. It gives OpenAI access to millions of Nvidia GPUs and the capital needed for a massive wave of next-generation data centers.
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