Strategy at Nvidia: Cohesive Action

The benefit of a faster cycle is that the product will be best in class more often.

The first step in executing the guiding policy of a faster cycle time  was the establishment of three separate development teams.  Each would work  to an eighteen-month start-to-market cycle.  With overlapping schedules, the three teams would deliver a new product every six months.  Accordingly, the second set of policies were meant to substantially reduce the delays and uncertainty in the development process. 

A serious source of possible delays was a design error.  To address this source of possible delays, Nvidia invested heavily in simulation and emulation techniques and organized its chip design process around these methods.   Nvidia also took control of the creation and management of drivers for its chips, developing a unified driver architecture.  This approach would greatly simplify things for users because they would not have to be concerned with matching drivers to chips.   To speed up driver development, the company made a significant investment in emulation facilities.  These were complex hardware "mock-ups" of new chips that allowed driver development to begin four to six months before the first true chips appeared.  Implementing the new strategy, Nvidia invested its remaining cash in emulation equipment and in engineering a new chip.   The benefit of a faster cycle is that the product will be best in class more often.  Compared to a competitor working on an eighteen-month cycle, Nvidia's six-month cycle would mean that its chip would be the better product about 83 percent of the time.

   

ACTION POINT: Act and invest in support of the guiding policy.