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Honors Theses, University of Nebraska-Lincoln                                                                                Honors Program

Spring 5-2018

NVIDIA Corporation: A Strategic Audit
Daric Teske
University of Nebraska-Lincoln

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NVIDIA CORPORATION:
         A STRATEGIC AUDIT

    An Undergraduate Honors Thesis
    Submitted in Partial fulfillment of
University Honors Program Requirements
     University of Nebraska-Lincoln

                   by
              Daric Teske
           Computer Science
      College of Arts and Sciences

             April 5, 2018

           Faculty Mentors:
   Samuel Nelson, PhD, Management
Abstract
       NVIDIA is company that has been involved with the production of computer hardware

known as a graphics processor units (GPUs) since the turn of the century. Over the past decade,

NVIDIA has begun to explore other applications of its proprietary technology, including the

fields of artificial intelligence (AI) and accelerated computing. Looking from a business

perspective, this strategic audit analyzes the history of the company and its current state, as

well as industry outlooks to provide a strategic recommendation. Annual reports, market

reports, and press releases were all utilized to provide the best perspective of the industry

possible. Though NVIDIA has been performing extremely well recently, a reorganization was

proposed. This reorganization moves resources such as people and products around so that the

business can operate more efficiently and make the research and development process more

streamlined than it was previously.

       Key Words: NVIDIA, strategic, audit, business, strategy
demanding better performance. NVIDIA
Background                                      offers the GeForce GTX line for PC gaming,
                                                SHIELD devices for gaming and streaming,
History
                                                GeForce NOW for cloud-based gaming, and
Founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang, Chris
                                                often partners with console producers to
Malachowsky, and Curtis Priem, NVIDIA
                                                develop a custom graphics solution.
entered into a highly competitive market
with as many as 70 different competitors. In    Professional visualization is another
1995, NVIDIA released NV1, the company’s        industry that is growing rapidly. Industries
first product, and has grown steadily since     like    architectural     design,     medical
then. With a newly invented graphical           instrumentation,         and       aerospace
processing unit, or GPU, in 1999 NVIDIA         development       require     designs    and
went public at $12 per share, and was added     simulations that are nearly identical to our
to the S&P 500 in 2001. Releasing the           physical world. Digital content creators rely
Compute Unified Device Architecture, or         heavily on graphical processing through
CUDA in 2007, NVIDIA enabled calculations       video-editing and post production, special
other than graphics to be run on the GPU,       effects, and broadcast-television graphics.
massively increasing the potential uses for     NVIDIA offers the Quadro for this market, a
their chipsets. NVIDIA chips could now be       card designed to be used in these high-
used effectively in supercomputers,             performance workstations.
autonomous vehicles, and mobile devices
                                                The datacenter market encompasses
too (NVIDIA History, 2018). With the rise of
                                                NVIDIA’s offerings for the AI and
cryptocurrency, autonomous vehicles, and
                                                supercomputer needs. CUDA enables the
virtual reality in recent years, more and
                                                calculations that are required to be
more computational power is needed. GPUs
                                                offloaded to the GPU, and can process many
have become the main source for this
                                                of them at once, significantly speeding up
computational power, and NVIDIA is
                                                the process. As development for these
uniquely positioned to take advantage.
                                                technologies     ramps     up,   computers
Markets                                         accelerated with NVIDIA GPUs are proving to
Today, NVIDIA divides their business into       be more and more useful. For NVIDIA, this
four distinct markets — gaming, professional    market consists of their energy efficient
visualization, datacenter, and automotive —     GPUs, the CUDA programming language,
offering a unique set of products branded       specific machine learning libraries, and
specifically for the challenges faced in each   software products that allow applications to
market.                                         run over multiple GPUs, as well as
                                                organization-based     and     cloud-based
The computer gaming industry is the largest     supercomputing clusters.
entertainment industry, and many factors
propel growth. Virtual and augmented            Automobiles are relying on technology more
reality, eSports, and online competitive        heavily today than ever before, especially as
gameplay are a few reasons gamers are ever      strides towards fully-autonomous vehicles
are being made. Autonomous vehicles will             energy-efficient embedded AI computing
rely heavily on sensor data being interpreted        platform.
in real-time to make the best possible driving
decision every second. To this end, NVIDIA           Major Issues
offers several solutions under the DRIVE             The current strategy for NVIDIA hinges on a
brand, ranging from infotainment solutions           few key focuses: advancing the GPU
and advanced driver assistance systems to            computing      platform,     extending      its
complete autonomous vehicle systems.                 technology and platform leadership in AI and
NVIDIA also has the ability to provide over-         visual computing, advancing the leading
the-air updates, adding new features and             autonomous       vehicle    platform,     and
capabilities to these vehicles (NVIDIA               leveraging the intellectual property it
Corporation, 2018).                                  already owns. NVIDIA does not manufacture
                                                     anything directly, instead designs are sent to
Product Lines                                        suppliers specializing in the technologies
Though NVIDIA offers a wide array of end-            needed to create these devices, and the
products, they are all based on a single             products are then tested for quality control.
underlying architecture, allowing the
                                                  There are common issues that affect all tech
company to customize the offerings to their
                                                  companies, like protecting intellectual
specific application without as significant of
                                                  property, maintaining strong system security
an investment. NVIDIA divides their products
                                                  and data protection, and retaining key
into two business segments: the GPU and
                                                  employees. As a multinational corporation,
the Tegra processor (NVIDIA Corporation,
                                                  NVIDIA is also subject to the issues that arise
2018).
                                                  when operating internationally, such as
The GPU segment includes the GeForce and          different tax liabilities and government
GeForce NOW brands for desktop and cloud          policies. However, there are a few major
gaming, the Quadro brand for design               issues that NVIDIA specifically needs to focus
professionals, the Tesla                                          on. Adapting to the needs of
                             “[Everything is] based on a single
brand for AI and deep                                             the market and identifying
                             underlying architecture, allowing
learning, the GRID brand for                                      new products, services, and
                                 [NVIDIA] to customize the
datacenters, and the DGX                                          technologies is crucial for
                                        offerings…”
brand for AI scientists and                                       NVIDIA to stay ahead in the
researchers.                                                      market. If it fails to do this, it
                                                  will stagnate, and become obsolete. NVIDIA
The Tegra Processor segment includes the
                                                  also faces high levels of competition and
DRIVE       brand      for    automotive
                                                  must deliver superior products consistently
supercomputers, the SHIELD brand for
                                                  to remain an industry leader. A part of the
mobile-cloud entertainment and gaming,
                                                  reason NVIDIA has become so successful is
the Tegra processor brand that enables
                                                  consistency, so if the quality drops in either
branded platforms like DRIVE and SHIELD,
                                                  the design or the third-party manufacturing,
and the Jetson brand that provides an
                                                  there will be considerable damage to the
brand, eroding the consumers’ trust in            NVIDIA does not own any manufacturing
NVIDIA products. Another major issue is           facilities; instead, it engages in long term
being able to meet consumer demand for            contracts with several of the industry’s top
the product. If NVIDIA is unable to do that,      suppliers for all parts of the manufacturing
consumers will likely turn to competitors for     process. As a result, it can leverage the
similar products (NVIDIA Corporation, 2018).      suppliers’ expertise to create the highest
                                                  quality       products     possible.      With
Situation Analysis                                manufacturing        technology    constantly
NVIDIA’s actual business operations are           improving, NVIDIA doesn’t have to expend
uncomplicated: it designs new chips and           time and capital constantly investing in the
systems for the various target areas, ships       latest technology and can instead focus on
the designs to manufacturers, and then tests      providing designs that take advantage of
the results, iterating on the design and          said technology. On occasion, NVIDIA will
incorporating the latest manufacturing            work very closely with a specific
technology to produce the best possible           manufacturer to release custom editions of
chipsets each year. This contributes heavily      its products as well, but the work is still not
to NVIDIA’s brand and reputation, as it           done by NVIDIA (NVIDIA Corporation, 2018).
consistently churns out high-performance,         External Analysis
reliable chips year after year. NVIDIA is also
                                                  NVIDIA mainly competes in two different
very intentional with branding, often
                                                  segments, GPUs and embedded solutions,
keeping their logo visible whenever possible.
                                                  which aligns with its product segments. In
The resulting value created for the customer
                                                  the GPU segment, competitors include AMD,
is that the brand is recognizable, reliable and
                                                  ARM Holdings, and Intel. These competitors
performant. Even if competitors release
                                                  produce discrete and integrated GPUs and
chips that out-perform NVIDIA’s, consumers
                                                  accelerated computing solutions. In the
are likely to still choose NVIDIA due to its
                                                  Tegra segment, competitors include AMD,
high-quality reputation. By engaging in
                                                  Broadcom, Intel, Qualcomm, Samsung, and
partnerships with various companies,
                                                  Texas Instruments. These competitors
NVIDIA also can design custom chips for
                                                  produce devices that are embedded into
unique applications, delivering a superior
                                                  automobiles, autonomous vehicles, smart
experience to the end user, and further
                                                  televisions, and gaming devices (NVIDIA
increasing its reputation.
                                                  Corporation, 2018).
NVIDIA spends a bulk of its time in research
                                                  NVIDIA competes on two main fronts:
and development activities, as well as
                                                  quality and service. Because of lofty
marketing its new innovations. The company
                                                  standards and thorough testing at every step
also focuses on providing superior service to
                                                  of the process, NVIDIA products are trusted
the end users. This is most visible through
                                                  to have high degrees of performance and
the frequent releases of “game-ready”
                                                  reliability. Drivers are frequently updated,
drivers, where popular video games are
optimized to run on NVIDIA’s GeForce GPUs.
industry rather than the cryptocurrency
       Q4 2017 Total GPU Market Share
                                                             market. Due to high demand and the long
                                                             production cycle for video cards, there is
                                                             currently a GPU shortage, causing mid- to
                     AMD
                     14%                                     high-tier cards to sell significantly above the
                                                             original price point. This accounted for
           NVIDIA                                            inflated revenue for both NVIDIA and AMD
            18%                                              over the past quarters. However, if the
                                     Intel
                                                             downward trend of cryptocurrency stocks
                                     68%                     over Q1 2018 continues, the demand should
                                                             return to more reasonable levels
                                                             (Cryptomining Inflated, 2017).
                                                             Because of its global nature, NVIDIA must be
Figure 1: Intel's large market share is attributed to
integrated graphics, where graphics technology is included
                                                             wary of various international policies,
on the CPUs. Integrated graphics have low performance        especially those concerning protection of
and can only accomplish basic computing tasks.               intellectual property. Different countries
and a suite of software products exist to                    offer different protections, with the United
better manage NVIDIA’s offerings.                            States having some of the strictest policies,
                                                             and most easily enforceable. In countries
The GPU industry contains three major                        overseas, where the chips usually produced,
competitors: NVIDIA, Intel, and AMD. Intel                   the policies are not as stringent, so NVIDIA
held a 67.4% market share in Q4 2017, due                    must constantly evaluate the necessary
to dominance in the CPU market and the                       measures to take to protect their designs
default inclusion of integrated graphics.                    (NVIDIA Corporation, 2018).
NVIDIA held 18.4% of the market, and AMD
held the remaining 14.2%. When considering                   Privacy is a major social issue within the
only discrete desktop GPUs, NVIDIA holds a                   technology industry. Major breaches of
66.3% market share to AMD’s 33.7%. Market                    social trust, where companies are not
share is down over the last quarter for                      protective enough of their user’s data, are
NVIDIA, due to seasonality of the industry                   likely to become more common, as people
and the pressures of cryptocurrency mining                   continue to put more of their lives online.
demand (GPU Market, 2018).                                   Luckily chip makers like NVIDIA, AMD, and
                                                             Intel are mostly protected from these issues
Mining cryptocurrency is a computationally                   because their focus lies in the low-level
expensive process, so miners use GPUs to                     hardware      they    produce.    However,
accelerate those calculations. AMD’s                         supplemental software has fallen under
hardware has a performance advantage of                      scrutiny due to concerns about the type of
NVIDIA’s, and as a result AMD was able to                    data being gathered. NVIDIA has promised
take market share away (Mujtaba, 2018).                      that any personally identifiable data will
Both companies have announced that they                      never be shared, only allowing partners to
intend to focus on the consumer gaming                       see aggregated and anonymized statistics
like gameplay and hardware configuration
(Frequently Asked, 2018).                                  Q4 2017 Discrete Desktop GPU
                                                                   Market Share
Artificial intelligence is a rapidly growing
technology and popular research topic. This
broad area can cover anything from                               AMD
autonomous vehicles to enhanced modelling                        34%
and decision making. The most practical
aspect of AI is currently neural networks, a
machine learning algorithm that is trained to                                           NVIDIA
recognize patterns between an input and an                                               66%

output and can then begin to predict outputs
of any input. The parallel-processing-nature
of GPUs allow for thousands of these
                                                   Figure 2: Discrete graphics are used for graphics when
calculations to be run simultaneously,             higher performance is necessary, such as video games or
greatly increasing the viability of AI-related     image processing, and this is where NVIDIA excels.
algorithms. NVIDIA made this a possibility
                                                   the cost of switching for consumers is little
with the original development of CUDA in
                                                   to none. Discrete GPUs have been
2007, which unlocked the potential for GPUs
                                                   developed with standard interfaces, so
to be used for purposes other than graphics.
                                                   switching is as easy as purchasing a different
More recently, NVIDIA has focused on
                                                   one. Quality has been a big focus for NVIDIA,
offering customized products for a variety of
                                                   and as a result it has the reputation of
AI applications, and is the only one out of its
                                                   producing more reliable chips. When
competition to do so.
                                                   considering GPUs of similar capabilities,
For the GPU industry, there is relatively little   consumers often choose NVIDIA even
threat of new entrants into the market. The        though the price is typically higher because
capital investments required to design and         of the reliability. Overall, it appears good to
produce GPUs has created a huge barrier to         be in this industry if the competition with
entry. The threat of substitution is higher,       rivals remains manageable.
but still low because people are going to
need GPUs for performance reasons. Given           Internal
the high number of suppliers in the industry,      In FY 2018, NVIDIA reported $3.8 billion in
they have relatively little bargaining power.      total liabilities and $7.5 billion in total
Suppliers must continually upgrade to the          stockholder equity, giving a debt-to-equity
latest technology to be able to compete for        ratio of 50.7%. This is down over the
contracts. Buyers also have relatively little      previous year’s ratio of 70.3% and can
bargaining power because there are only a          mainly be attributed to a $1.7 billion
few options available, and this is a necessary     increase in retained earnings over the past
                                                   year without any other significant changes.
component for computing. The competitive
                                                   This is still indicative of a financially stable
rivalry is still high between the few
                                                   business, though FY 2018 benefited heavily
companies in the industry, mostly because
NVIDIA Annual Revenue by Segment
              12
   Billions

              10

               8

               6

               4

               2

               0
                    2014                   2015                  2016                   2017                  2018

                                                     GPU     Tegra      Other

Figure 3: Revenue has increased over the past 5 years for NVIDIA, with GPUs making up a large portion of that revenue.

from a revenue stream that has proven to be                          to attract that crowd and see increased sales
extremely volatile: cryptocurrency. Revenue                          as a result.
in the GPU segment has increased from $4.2
                                                                     Assets
billion in FY 2016 and $5.8 billion in FY 2017
                                                                     NVIDIA often takes advantage of leasing
to $8.1 billion in FY 2018, due to strong sales
                                                                     whenever possible. The only properties it
of high-end graphics and overall strong
                                                                     owns are its headquarter complex in Santa
demand from the market. It is estimated
                                                                     Clara, California, and a research and
that revenue from GeForce GPU products
                                                                     development facility in Hyderabad, India. It
increased by over 90% due to
                                                                     leases various research and development,
cryptocurrency mining. Revenue in the Tegra
                                                                     sales, and administrative offices around the
market has increased from $559 million in FY
                                                                     United States, Europe, and Asia, and
2016 and $824 million in FY 2017 to $1.5
billion in FY 2018, indicating that devices and                      datacenters around the world. Patents are a
embedded platforms tailored for specific                             significant intangible asset for NVIDIA, with
applications have been successful and                                expiration dates ranging from April 2018 to
demand is increasing for these customized                            January 2037. These patents range from
solutions. Operating results have fluctuated                         basic GPU technology to the customized,
in the past for NVIDIA, and seasonality plays                        application-specific devices. Reputation is
a significant role in this. Sales tend to pick up                    also a significant intangible asset for NVIDIA,
in the second half of the fiscal year, and this                      protecting it by enforcing rigorous quality
trend can be seen across the computer                                testing. NVIDIA must litigate to protect its
entertainment industry. Many video game                              intellectual property but is subject to similar
producers and hardware manufacturers                                 suits from competitors and the possibility of
target release dates near the holiday season                         unfavorable outcomes. NVIDIA employs
over 10,000 people, with about 70%             covers a good portion of the card’s expected
engaged in research and development, and       lifetime. Intentional branding has also
about 30% engaged in sales, marketing,         served NVIDIA well, and it seems to be
operations, and administrative positions       something that it does better than the other
(NVIDIA Corporation, 2018). This high          major players. Even though every single one
number of employees means the company          of NVIDIA’s products are based on the same
can target many different areas that would     underlying architecture, each device has
benefit from GPU technology, but means the     been optimized for a specific function, and
company might be slower to adapt to a          an appropriate brand has been assigned.
changing marketplace, and that any             GeForce for gamers, Quadro for content
restructuring efforts could prove to be        creation, Tesla for scientists, and DRIVE for
costly.                                        autonomous vehicles are all based on a
                                               single platform, customized to provide the
Competitive Advantage
                                               best experience for the intended use. As a
To be successful in this industry, all
                                               result, reports like a GeForce product
competitors       must       demonstrate
                                               functions horribly in a self-driving car or a
competencies to adapt quickly to the latest
                                               Quadro product can’t run the newest AAA
manufacturing methods and to continually
                                               video game rarely surface. Instead, the
improve performance. Moore’s law
                                               products perform excellently at the
estimates that performance of computers
                                               expected task, further increasing NVIDIA’s
doubles about every two years, due to
                                               reputation. Herein lies NVIDIA’s competitive
improvements in fabrication methods and
                                               advantage: with superior branding,
energy efficiency (Britannica, 2017).
                                               reputation, and support, consumers are
Competitors     must     make       regular
                                               willing to pay more for a product by NVIDIA
performance increases to keep the
                                               than a similar product from a competitor.
hardware they produce following this trend.
                                               As a company, NVIDIA still has room to grow.
NVIDIA also excels in a few distinctive
                                               It has been very successful in the discrete
competencies. Support of its products is a
                                               GPU market and has started to branch out
main one. Driver updates are frequently
                                               into other areas. This seems to be a good fit
released, making sure all devices can take
                                               for where the organization is at, and founder
advantage of the latest software
                                               Jensen Huang still seems to be the correct
optimizations. Long-term warranties, lasting
                                               person to lead this company. Huang is best
between 1 and 3 years based on the device,
                                               described as a visionary-type CEO, focused
are also a great example of support. The 3-
                                               on new and exciting innovations that will
year warranty applies to all the discrete
                                               allow NVIDIA to continue to grow. As a
GPUs     and     covers   hardware      and
                                               company, it is still expanding into new
manufacturing defects (Frequently Asked,
                                               markets and exploring new products, so
2018). Common advice is to upgrade GPUs
                                               overall this seems like a good fit.
when a new card can double or triple the
performance of an old card. With that
happening every 2-3 years, this warranty
Strategy Recommendation                          significant investment required to develop
                                                 specialized hardware like this, it’s possible
Goals                                            the market could be non-existent by the
NVIDIA should have two major goals moving        time a product would be released.
forward. The first one is to maintain its        Additionally,     NVIDIA     has     released
discrete GPU leadership (Chauhan, 2017).         statements publicly declaring it would
For this to happen, NVIDIA will have to          support the gaming industry over
consistently provide performance increases       cryptocurrency, so this action would likely be
in line with competitors. Two metrics to         seen as a hypocritical one and could tarnish
track progress on this goal are market share     NVIDIA’s reputation.
and benchmarks. NVIDIA has held a majority
market share for over a decade, so it is         Another alternative would be to expand into
important to maintain. Benchmarking is a         CPU development with the purpose of
process that tests a GPU in various situations   building more efficient CPUs for accelerated
and reports a score that can be used in direct   computing       purposes.       NVIDIA      has
comparisons with other GPUs, so metrics          experimented in this area with the
should be used to make sure performance          development of the Tegra processor for
improvements continue to match pace with         inclusion on the small and energy-efficient
competitors. Acceptable benchmarking             embedded platforms, but the development
scores and market shares will ultimately         could be expanded to more intensive
depend on the specific recommendation.           applications like data centers where physical
The other major goal for NVIDIA will be to       size is not as much of a limiting factor. Given
grow the AI and accelerated computing            that NVIDIA’s main competitors AMD and
markets. Over 80% of NVIDIA’s revenue            Intel are already heavily invested in CPU
comes from the GPU business segment, and         development, it is unlikely that NVIDIA
it can be assumed that a majority of this        would be able to compete with the
revenue stems from discrete GPU sales            economies of scale that exist. Since CPU and
(NVIDIA Corporation, 2018). By diversifying      GPU design are fundamentally different, it is
NVIDIA’s revenue streams, it won’t be as         also unlikely that NVIDIA would be able to
heavily affected in the future by rapidly        use any intellectual property to give it an
changing and highly violate markets such as      advantage.
the cryptocurrency mining market.                In 2007, CUDA was first released, opening
                                                 the first potential for accelerated computing
Alternatives
                                                 on a GPU. Ten years later, serious advances
Creating hardware for the specific purpose
                                                 have been made, but there are more
of cryptocurrency mining would be one way
                                                 applications that could benefit from GPU
to grow and maintain market share in the
                                                 technology outside of AI and computer
GPU market. This would allow NVIDIA to
                                                 vision. NVIDIA could work on exploring other
recapture market share from AMD, who has
                                                 applications, outside the current areas. This
released such devices. However, with the
                                                 type of experimental research is difficult to
recent downturn of the market and the
                                                 justify to shareholders, though. Since the
company already has 70% of employees                  grow, it will be important for NVIDIA to
engaged in research and development                   accept technological advances that might be
activities, it is unlikely that an increase in        only be beneficial to one area. NVIDIA should
resources would yield significantly different         restructure the company and resources to
results.                                              be better aligned with these markets.
                                                      Operations should be reorganized into two
Recommendation                                        separate segments, and the product lines
 NVIDIA has been performing well recently,            redistributed accordingly. Furthermore,
however some improvements could still be              research and development on the Tegra
made, especially in positioning for the               processor should taper-off, as GPU and CPU
future. Back in a 2002 interview with Wired           design are significantly different, and it is not
Magazine, Jensen Huang stated, “Anywhere              the best use of NVIDIA’s resources, when
there's a pixel, that's where we want to be.”         partnerships with CPU manufacturers can
With recent announcements of customized               easily be reached.
gaming monitors, it seems that this vision is
still holding true, however there is so much            This proposed restructure would allow
potential from other markets to explore.                NVIDIA to co-locate people and resources
NVIDIA needs to redefine the focus as an                dedicated to solving very similar problems
enterprise to be narrower. The goal should              and developing products and applications
be to advance the fields of gaming, artificial          with very clear overlapping concerns in close
intelligence, and accelerated computing                 proximity to each other. Likely, this
using its unique technology,                                      organization is already used to
without becoming distracted by          “Anywhere with a          some degree, but making it more
development of peripherals. In          pixel, that’s where       intentional could enable increased
relation to other organizations,         we want to be.”          productivity, since more co-
NVIDIA must continue to seek out              - Jensen Huang,
                                                                  workers would be working in the
partnerships, within the gaming                  Wired 2002       same domain and have a better
and autonomous vehicle industries                                 understanding of the challenges
especially. Remaining relevant in these                 faced. There also may come a time when the
industries allows NVIDIA to reinforce the               underlying architecture will need to split,
brand name it has created for itself.                   and if that time comes, allocating resources
                                                        like this will enable a more efficient
NVIDIA appears to have two main areas it is             transition. By making these two segments
focusing on: graphics and accelerated                   more independent, performance can be
computing. To date, it has been able to                 tracked easier and adjustments can be made
utilize a unified underlying architecture and           easier to achieve a more even distribution of
apply it to two very different use cases,               revenue than the estimated 85-15 split
however this might not always be possible.              currently seen between the GPU and Tegra
Changes in architecture for one application             segments of today.
may not be beneficial for the other
application. As these markets continue to
Implementation                                    back towards graphics. Losing the edge
Restructuring and reallocation of resources       NVIDIA has maintained over the past 15+
can sometimes be costly. However, since           years in both market share and performance
NVIDIA’s main resources are people, it is a       would severely impact the profitability of the
little easier. A plan should be put in place to   company. As research turns more industrial
move people around so that they can be in         in the AI and accelerated computing fields,
close proximity to those working on similar       there will be potential applications for
areas. The timeline could vary depending on       NVIDIA to capitalize on. However, if one year
the extensiveness of the reorganization of        goes by without seeing sustained growth
the work spaces. Moving desks or buildings        quarter over quarter, the company should
in the same complex could be accomplished         re-evaluate the profitability of those
in hours or days. A typical remodeling            markets. These will serve as the trigger
project could take up to 3-4 months to            points to reallocate resources back towards
complete, if the working spaces themselves        the more traditional structure the company
need to be adjusted. Relocation into other        had, focusing more heavily on the gaming
states or countries would probably not be         and design markets where profits have been
necessary given modern levels of                  the strongest historically.
telecommunication connectivity, but could
prove to be beneficial, and would likely take     Conclusion
6 months to a year before transitions could       NVIDIA is performing well as a company,
be completed.                                     enjoying increased revenue and high
                                                  demand       for       their     products.     A
Since this recommendation looks at
                                                  recommendation to shift the business
adjusting the relative allocation of resources
                                                  segments and accompanying resources was
within NVIDIA, some contingency plans
                                                  made to increase efficiency and streamline
should be developed to address possible
                                                  operations. This recommendation will also
negative impacts. One possible impact with
                                                  allow the company to be more transparent
the increased focus on AI, accelerated
                                                  in its resource allocation, further increasing
computing, and other similar areas is that
                                                  stockholder confidence. For the most part,
the gaming and design markets could suffer.
                                                  no changes to NVIDIA’s operations were
As mentioned previously, market share and
                                                  recommended           due       to     excellent
benchmarking should be used to determine
                                                  performance. Overall, NVIDIA is well-
when changes to this plan are necessary. If
                                                  positioned to remain a leader of the
market share drops below 55% in discrete
                                                  graphics,     artificial    intelligence,   and
GPU sales or if competitors’ benchmark
                                                  accelerated computing industries.
scores exceed NVIDIA’s consistently at a
similar price, resources should be focused
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