Jensen has found himself a new best buddy as decided to hire the former chairman of Stanford University's computer science department as Nvidia's new Chief Scientist and VP of research. The new kin on the graphics block is Mr. Bill Dally.
This Stanford chap will end years of David Kirks reign as Dr.
David, loved by the press, was the key guy in making the strategy and talking to
the press about Nvidia’s technology. David once convinced us that pipelines and
ROPs are important stuff and later that programmable shaders are way to go and
eventually they told us to forget about that and that shaders are now cores,
that can calculate just about anything. He is a rather convincing guy that we met
many, many times.
David will now become a Fellow, which is a key position for
any engineer, but he was never promoted to a Vice President that will probably
keep him and his wallet sad. The new boffin Mr, Bill Dally has won Jensen’s
heart with its “pioneering work in stream processors at Stanford greatly
influenced the work we are doing at Nvidia today.” Jensen was kind enough not
to put Cuda in this sentence.
Nvidia’s spokesperson has told us that with his new role, David
will do more education and less of a chip design but he remains an important
part of Nvidia. Jensen is obviously very dedicated to the Cuda religion, as he sees
an enormous market opportunity in it and Apple seems to be listening, which is of great
help.