The Exchanges

Q Uh, fabrication is a short form for FAB, right?

A Wafer fabrication. Yes. So wafer is, you know, your, your, you start with the silicon base, right? Uh, we call it like a pizza, right? It's either as eight inch or 12 inch pizza, right? And then you build structures on top of it. You basically build a lot of transistors on top of it connected with metal layers, right? Uh, and the more you, uh, you know, like a, uh, like a Nvidia chip goes through, you know, huge amount of processing, right? Um, they, they keep building, building on top of it, you know, 203 hundred steps that you have to go through, one wafer will have to go through before they come out. Um, and, uh, and that's why, you know, it's very expensive as well, right? Uh, both because the equipment that you need for, for Nvidia kind of a chip is, is very, very expensive.

AI assessment note: “Wafer fabrication. Yes.”

Q Yeah. And now, like, you know, because we are towards the, the end of the podcast would like to, to highlight what the work that you are doing at IVP and what's your vision right now? What are you launching?

A Yeah. So, so IVP, right. You know, we want to be, uh, I mean, we are fabulous company, uh, chip company, right. Uh, what I call, you know, uh, we need to create demand in India, right. To fill up all that capacity that is coming up. And I feel that, you know, we need to, um, create Indian, you know, products, right. So IVP is a power focused on the power segment. Um, and, uh, we already have a catalog of, you know, 300 over products. Now, you know, we're selling, we already have revenue, uh, for a company that is only one year old, right? You know, we, we already have some revenues and so on. Um, so, you know, we hope that we'll be one of the, you know, large chip companies in the three to four years, um, because our market is here, right? So we're very, very focused on Indian market. We want to make our customers, you know, performance better as compared to other products. So we working closely with them. Uh, this is very new for our customers as well, because they're so used to just getting, you know, something from China or something, and then just build a box around it and put a brand and sell.

AI assessment note: “IVP is a power focused on the power segment. Um, and, uh, we already have a catalog”

Q Let's get back to the history of NVIDIA. Like Jensen Huang, right. Who's the founder of it. It, it was an unknown company till 2016, 17, uh, making, uh, gaming hardware. Let's say if you buy a laptop, There will be a small chip of the gaming laptop powered by NVIDIA. What, what suddenly changed? Why it became one of the most valuable companies in the world?

A See, you know, this is what you call luck. Okay. Uh, he, he actually, NVIDIA was a graphics You know, you know, like you said, right, for gaming and a large amount of computing, it was a graphics chip company, right? Intel also had a graphics chip company, but they were more focused on the microprocessor and so on, right? AMD is also, you know, had graphics, but they, again, you know, they were more on the, on the processing versus, you know, the graphics. So graphics is a pure computing, you know, uh, thing. So you had a microprocessor and then you had just pure computing for, for this kind of applications. AI came in, right, which requires a lot of computing. So AI basically saved NVIDIA, right? In fact, you know, Jensen would say that, right? You know, he was in the right place, right time, right? If AI was not there, you know, NVIDIA would not have been able to survive in the long term, right? But I think this is where, you know, the AI saved, uh, Nvidia, uh, and, you know, and then they had a head start because there was no company which had that kind of graphics chips. And he'd also had, you know, fire, you know, uh, I don't know whether it's intuition or, you know, he was very smart that he had the software to do that, which was the CUDA.

AI assessment note: “AI came in, right, which requires a lot of computing.”

Q DARPA laying the foundation in 15 and sixties. And despite leading in design, US became dependent on Asia for their most advanced chip making. So why did US, you know, despite having a head start and leading in design allow itself to lose dominance in fabrication and packaging? Was it just cost like outsourcing manufacturing to Asia or a failure in foresight because now they're trying to get it back?

A Yeah, I think, uh, certainly, you know, uh, costs drove a lot of this, right? They started with packaging being outsourced and all that, and then slowly, you know, other areas, uh, you know, the fab, uh, wafer fabs being outsourced and so on, right? And what they didn't realize is that, especially on, you know, wafer fab at the time, that is a significant amount of interaction that happens between design and the fab, right? So, you know, a feedback loop that exists, you push the design and which means that, you know, you're pushing the process, right? So the process is what happens in the fab. So these two people have to work together, right? In order to create better and better products. Now, once you lose that, you know, the making of it, right? And you, you focus only on the design, design, design, design, right? So what happened was, you know, now they realize that this technology, you know, on the making of it needs to work, you know, together with this. So I think they felt that a, you know, uh, the dependency is becoming more and more. And our innovation is not happening as, as much as, as we should. So now there is a, you know, scramble for, you know, uh, and in this last, I would say, 3040 years, right? We've lost, I mean, when I say we, meaning, you know, US, US has lost, um, the expertise, the capabilities of, uh, process, right? And, uh, there's so much of, you know…

AI assessment note: “certainly, you know, costs drove a lot of this, right?”

Q And one thing that, you know, that I want to discuss more about China is now there's a, there was a chips act that, you know, president Trump in the U S wants to kill the chips act. So can you throw more light on what was the chips act?

A Well, I think the chip psych was part of the strategy where, you know, they felt that the dependence, right, uh, on manufacturing has gone out of control and they want to basically bring it back and all that. So the chip psych was supposed to facilitate them, right? Give, you know, companies like Intel or other companies, uh, you know, uh, support in order to bring some of this to, uh, You know, India. I mean, to the US. Um, but you know, again, politics, right? You know, because Biden did it, you know, Trump will say, oh, you know, let me take a look at it, right? Um, it never happened in the U S before like this, but now, you know, it's like, because my predecessor did something, you know, I want to do, I want to take a look at it and I want to do it differently and so on. But I think ultimately, right. You know, a lot of these companies, if they have to do it in the U S completely, they will need this, you know, in India, we call it, uh, viability gap funding.

AI assessment note: “chips act was part of the strategy where... they want to basically bring it back”

Q Why do you say that? The cars are manufactured in India.

A So, no, they are, right? So, so the problem is the IT and software industry has pushed a lot of these bright people to, you know, be, you know, sit at a desk and, you know, create code, right? And they're very good at it. But I think there are, there needs to be a change in our education system where even in from high school onwards, right? People should be trained to enjoy working with their hands, right? Semiconductor requires that. Right. You know, if you work in a fab, right, you actually have to work with, you know, chemistry, you have to work with mechanical, you know, all kind of things. Right. Uh, and we are not, you know, so if you look at Europeans, for example, right, there's a lot more hands-on activity they do. Right. They repair their own bikes. They repair their own thing. Right. They can fix their own car if they need to. Right. Our guys, you know, even changing engine oil, they'll have a problem. Right. They don't know where the nut and bolt. Right. So I think, you know, that needs to happen in our, uh, education system and take a lot of pride in, you know, building products. So I think that will happen. And, uh, just the culturally, right. Um, you know, there's a lot more precision required. Right. Uh, but you know, definitely I feel that, you know, we can do it. There is no question. I am absolutely positive.

AI assessment note: “the problem is the IT and software industry has pushed a lot of these bright people”