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Lol... Man... Inadvertently messing with Gamers, the AI crowd, and the Crypto crowd. That's not exactly a demographic I'd want to be pissing off all at the same time 😅
Honestly breaking up NVIDIA would probably be great for all 3 of those groups of done right. They're effectively a monopoly that has been leveraging their position to price gouge their customers for years.
I don't trust Trump to actually do that though. He's probably just using this as a threat for bribe money.
How would you do that?
This isn't even a google where they are separate products with shared revenue streams and dependencies.
Gamers, AI, Data Centers, and Crypto all use the same hardware. In fact, those gaming chips (and even a lot of embedded machine chips) ARE the same chips that go to super computers and major data centers just with more imperfections and thus lower peak performance.
That's for the FTC to figure out. I could speculate baselessly here based on what I know as a member of the general public, but really it would have to start with an FTC investigation and evaluation. Potential breakup plans would be evaluated alongside alternatives: fines, additional regulations, additional monitoring. I don't think the FTC (or their equivalents in other countries) would have the balls to consider nationalization, but in my opinion that option should always be on the table for consideration at least.
Do we need to explain why "I dunno. make the government figure it out. Worst case scenario they nationalize a major international company that is the backbone of many industries around the globe" is not a great idea in 2025?
Like, the US is its own particular level of fucked up. But other countries aren't THAT far behind in many regards.
Do I need to explain why "idk actually taking any action or enforcing any of the laws that have existed for over a century seems really hard. We should just allow the megacorporation to continue with their 92% market share" is an even worse idea?
And you alluded to another issue with this. "The backbone of many industries around the globe". GPU supply isn't just a matter of allowing privileged people to play their vidyagames. They are a key strategic resource used in a ton of industries, including strategic military functions. The US has already been slowly pushing for more domestic chip production under both Trump and Biden, encouraging TSMC to build their fabrication plant in Arizona for example.
Also it's really ridiculous to expect some random person on Lemmy to have a solution to such a complicated and nuanced thing that is so dependent on proprietary information to get right. I'm not claiming to have the solution, but it's obviously a problem and functioning governments have solved this repeatedly throughout history. Even if I did want to propose a more detailed solution you could, rightfully, point out that it's not possible to do such a thing without inside information about NVIDIA's operations.
The point is "I dunno, do something" when you don't even understand what you are talking about is literally what trump was trying to do.
There are already plenty of alternatives to nVidia and MUCH more successful efforts to even avoid the kind of "Well, you COULD use libre office but it won't support what we do to the docx format next week" stupidity. And... they all basically depend on TSMC which is even funnier.
Similarly, if you actually understand what nVidia's (hardware) product is, you will know why it fundamentally doesn't make any sense to split it up. Because the only way that works is "Okay, build all new fabs, all new research divisions, all new software divisions, etc to make the exact same product but with a lot more waste because you need perfect yields".
No. The solution to this is to incentivize the competition to make it actually competititon. Intel is... moving on. But we already see government orgs around the planet prioritizing AMD purchases. Sometimes just for cost reasons, but it encourages those vendor agnostic shims to continue to exist and, hopefully, will increase AMD's market share.
But "I dunno, do something to make it go away" is the kind of stupidity that we would expect from the president of the united states. If you can't contribute to a conversation then... don't. Or, better yet, actually ask questions rather than immediately jumping to regulation from known compromised agencies.
So you're clearly just arguing in bad faith. Falling for regulatory bodies to do their jobs, including a thorough investigation and evaluation of possible solutions, is nowhere close to saying "I dunno, do something". So I have to wonder why you're arguing in bad faith. Do you own NVIDIA stock perhaps?
What "plenty of alternatives" in the GPU market are you referring to? NVIDIA has a 92% share of the market. This may be a surprise if you slept through your history class on trust busting, but you do not, in fact, need to have 100% market share in order to be deemed to have monopolistic power under US law. The rule of thumb for most courts is 50%, though that is not statutory and can vary from case-to-case.
Also, what Trump HAS been doing is exactly what you suggest: sitting on his hands and allowing NVIDIA to exercise it's monopoly. He hasn't done anything at all yet, just like he has not yet deported Musk or cancelled the contracts for any of his companies. It's all theater, and until I see any actual action I'm just going to assume he is shaking them down for more campaign contributions. Or maybe engaging in some good ol' stock manipulation.
They've tried for years to "encourage competition" and that's exactly what got us to this point.
Maybe you're the one who should educate yourself before jumping into this conversation. The history of US anti-trust action is the history of repeated success stories where they are able to introduce competition by breaking up companies like Standard Oil or Bell Telephone, and it's worked every time.... Until future administrations allow those child companies to merge back together again, which is why we once again see these huge corporations once again obtain monopolistic, or at least oligopolistic, power.
How do you break them up, though?
Very carefully.
Seriously though that's a job for the FTC and their peers on other countries. It would start with an evaluation to confirm that NVIDIA does indeed have monopolistic power (they reportedly have 92% of the GPU market, which is waaaay over the thresholds of most courts for determining that), which would lead to an investigation and discovery process. I'm not naive enough to think breaking them up would be simple or easy. There isn't enough publicly available information to do anything more than speculate on what a breakup would look like.
There are other remedies available too. On the extreme side there is nationalization, while on the more moderate side there's fines or additional regulations.
That kind of thoughtful, attention-driven process is really the hallmark of any trump enterprise much less 'administration'.
Right, but when a company basically only has one product, how do you break that up?
Google can be broken up because they have many different product offerings, same with Amazon.
Nvidia only makes GPUs. The only option would be to artificially handicap Nvidia, or subsidize their competitors.
As someone else already commented, NVIDIA does a lot more than make GPU's. In fact, they don't even make GPU's, but rather design the chips. The chip manufacturing, and usually the board built around the chip, are outsourced. Chip manufacturing monopoly is a separate issue.
You can still break them up. I never said it would be easy. You could spend semesters in law/business school studying the process, but basically the FTC and/or DOJ would open an investigation into NVIDIA and do market analysis to determine the best solution. It would probably take a few years and smmillions of dollars to have all sorts of experts involved. I could pull some idea out of my ass for you here, but it would be just as worthless as anything else random person on Lemmy would propose.
Government subsidies have failed pretty spectacularly and cause more messes than they solve. Look at the dairy industry- it led to overproduction of milk, environmental devastation, the government spending billions of dollars, and contributed heavily to obesity in the US today. Or the oil industry, which is just a huge mess now (also in part because so many of the child companies of Standard Oil that WERE broken up were later allowed to re-merge). They could still be explored as part of a comprehensive solution, but I'd be skeptical of their effectiveness. Even a market with 2, or even 3 competitors if you add Intel, would probably not be sufficient. For consumers, for strategic redundancy, for employees, for board partners, for manufacturing partners, and every other business partner.
They also make full servers, and software products like CUDA, but the servers are basically a chassis for the GPUs and CUDA only runs on Nvidia.
Gamers rise up