Nvidia Korea seeks closer partnerships with local companies
Leading graphic chipmaker envisions virtual reality and machine learning technologies
By Yoon Sung-won
David Lee
David Lee, Nvidia’s general manager in Korea, said Monday that cooperation with local partners remains essential regardless of his firm’s ongoing legal dispute with Samsung Electronics in the United States.
Lee emphasized that the global semiconductor company wants to take part in the growth of Korea’s IT industry as a global leader in the graphic processing unit (GPU) technology.
“Cooperation with local partners seeking our GPU chipsets will continue. This is not only to generate more revenue but also to expand Nvidia’s business as a whole,” Lee said during an interview with The Korea Times on Monday.
“Korea is an important country for Nvidia’s partnerships considering the significance of local IT giants such as Samsung and LG in the global smart devices market,” he said.
Samsung Electronics, the nation’s largest handset maker, and Nvidia have been long-standing partners as the U.S. firm provided GPU chipsets for the Samsung’s smart devices. Nvidia joined in Samsung’s foundry business to manufacture its products.
However, the two have been embroiled in a legal dispute at the International Trade Commission in the United States since September. Both are claiming the other side has infringed on respective patent rights and have requested import and sales bans in the United States.
Lee said the ongoing case is based on the U.S. culture that respects intellectual property and is about “demanding fair compensation for the use of the technology developed by world’s leading engineers.”
Making clear that Nvidia’s Seoul branch is not involved in the legal dispute in the United States, however, Lee emphasized the importance of a cooperative and longstanding partnership.
“I have never hesitated to work with local partners. I welcome further cooperation with Samsung,” he said, adding that a truly cooperative partnership cannot be harmed by such a dispute.
Established in 1993, the Santa Clara-based company has manufactured “GeForce,” the world’s most sought-after GPU product, as well as a system-on-a-chip (SoC) mobile application processor named “Tegra.”
Lee said Nvidia also focuses on augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technologies as the next destination of graphic technology.
“Both AR and VR technologies require GPUs to compute visual data. This means that all companies developing them may need to work with Nvidia,” he said. “We have closely worked with Oculus VR and Google with these technologies.”
Lee suggested a technology called “machine learning” will be in the mainstream of all technologies. This technology is applied to the process where a computer camera sees and recognizes an object like humans do.
“Within three to five years, machine learning will be used for healthcare, science, automobile and robot industries and we believe Nvidia’s GPU technology will play a crucial role in this industry,” he said.
The company will release its second-generation tablet computer dubbed “Shield Tablet” in Korea next month. The device has an 8-inch full high-definition display and a wireless game controller that users can buy additionally.
Lee said Shield Tablet is designed to have best performance in gaming thanks to the company’s Tegra K1 mobile processor with 192 GPU cores embedded within it. It also supports Nvidia’s mobile game content market “Shield Hub” where users can download mobile games specialized to the device’s high performance.
Lee said Nvidia has prepared for a cloud platform that uses the company’s GPU-based streaming technology called “Grid.” All the devices from smartphones to server computers that have Nvidia’s GPU chipsets can transfer data with 100-percent compatibility, he explained.
Lee concluded Nvidia will do what it does best and aims to become an IT company specialized in graphics and games.
“We will continue to develop the next-generation of graphic processors and chipsets and roll out gaming devices and cloud services based on such technologies. This is what makes Nvidia standout in the market,” he said.