'Augmented Reality will be the next big thing in graphics' Technology'

What's common to this year's Oscar winner for special effects, Spiderman
2, and the simulation equipment used by the US defense personnel in training?
They both run on nVidia's graphics processors. Recently, nVidia became one of
the latest Silicon Valley companies to announce its designs for India. The $2 bn
company recently opened its design and development center in Bangalore, and also
plans to tap the Indian market. Jen Hsun Huang, president, CEO and co-founder of
nVidia, was recently in Bangalore to inaugurate its Indian center. He spoke to
Priya Padmanabhan of CyberMedia News about the graphic processor business and
his plan to cultivate the Indian market.

What is your outlook on the graphic processing market today?

Right now, the market is poised at the intersection of consumer electronics
and computing. This is the growth driver for the industry. Digital technology is
becoming a universal language and the digital consumer is driving this
revolution. Technology is the only commodity that reduces cost by a factor of
two. This is made possible by advances in semi-conductor technology. This is
quite exciting for us because our products are incorporated into various
platforms including notebooks, PCs, mobile phones, PDAs, and game consoles.
Wireless media processors and cell phones are on the way to becoming a commodity
and the only differentiator in these gadgets is the technology.

What, according to you, would be the next big thing in graphics
technology?

Jen Hsun Huang

The next big thing that can be expected is computer vision, or as
"augmented reality"-when the computer would be able to see you. For
example, the PC would turn itself on when it sees you, or one could drive
through fog through 3D graphic displays in cars. It takes around 10 years, I
believe, for sci-fi dreams to turn into reality.

What are nVidia's plans for India?

We would like to work with Indian companies to promote I-cafes. I will be
meeting with Indian companies such as HCL, Zenith and others to see how we can
take this forward. We would also like to cultivate the video game companies
here. In this regard, we want to work with Indian designers and games and
animation companies. India has such a good tradition of story telling. We would
like to combine this Indian passion for stories with the available skill sets.
We would also like to partner with companies like Wipro, Sify and Infosys. There
is an extraordinary pent-up potential. Our immediate focus would be the Indian
film industry as well as the animation industry. We also want to partner with
companies, which can develop applications on our chips. This development would
be an extension of our engineering team. We also partner with Intel and AMD
since we have a common mission to make the PC accessible to more consumers.

What kind of work will be done out of Bangalore?

Around 140 engineers, or 10% of our global employees, are from India. I have
realized that it is not enough for us to sit in Santa Clara and design what we
think the rest of the world needs. So we will focus on building products here
and then sell it in the local market. I won't be surprised if we spend $100 mn
on R&D in India.