Graphics cards and RAM are becoming increasingly expensive, but the Microsoft CEO indirectly says: Gamers are partly responsible for how good graphics cards have become and are now being used for AI.
Thanks to the rapid developments in artificial intelligence, prices in the hardware sector are currently rising sharply: storage like SSDs and RAM, as well as graphics cards are becoming scarce and the still available models increasingly expensive.
Many companies, including AMD and Nvidia, are increasingly focusing on data centers and AI hardware. This is where the big money is currently made, not with gamers who want to upgrade their gaming PCs.
But Satya Nadella, the current CEO of Microsoft, explained in a conversation that companies like Nvidia would never have grown this big without gaming. And in a way, we ourselves are to blame for companies like Nvidia benefiting from the AI hype today (via windowscentral.com).
Nadella emphasizes how important gaming is for the tech sector
What does Satya Nadella say? Nadella emphasizes the impact of gaming on Microsoft and the entire technology sector, highlighting how gaming has served as an accelerator for various areas like cloud, Windows, or GPU-based server technology. In this context, he stated:
The influence of this excellence on the rest of the company is obvious. I joke with Jensen Huang that [NVIDIA] would not exist without gaming. Think about it: Without DirectX, in my opinion, there would have been neither the entire GPU revolution nor the acceleration.
What does he mean by that? DirectX is an important interface used by many games. And Nadella emphasizes that without this component, the entire GPU development would never have happened.
Because Nvidia developed increasingly powerful graphics cards to process such content faster. And gamers bought these graphics cards and Nvidia made its money from them. Consequently, the graphics cards that many gamers buy became faster and better.
And these very products are now used by data centers and AI companies. This development ultimately laid the foundation for the race for AI infrastructure that we are currently experiencing. Gamers were a reason that companies like Nvidia could grow so strongly and develop new products that are now used in data centers, but financially play hardly any role anymore.
Microsoft itself has also purchased thousands of graphics cards for its own infrastructure. But now there is a shortage of power and infrastructure. A problem that Microsoft shares with many other providers. You can read more about it on MeinMMO: Microsoft has purchased so many graphics cards for AI that it now faces a major problem
