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Comment by david-gpu | Hacker News Reader

As a former insider, this is NOT remotely how I would describe reality.

I have signed NDAs and don't feel comfortable going into any detail, other than saying that there is a TON going on inside GPUs that is not "basically all emulated".

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Maybe a tall ask, but have you considered writing down all your experiences into a book, and release it after all NDAs expire? I’d love to read more about low level hardware and the behind the scenes stuff involved. I’m sure you’ve got a lot of good stories.

> I’d love to read more about low level hardware and the behind the scenes stuff involved. I’m sure you’ve got a lot of good stories.

I don't know why you think there's anything resembling "good stories" (I don't even know what would constitute a good story - swash buckling adventures?). It's just grimy-ass runtime/driver/firmware code interfacing with hardware features/flaws.

Exactly right.

95% difficult, stressful and surprisingly tedious work

4% panic, despair, insecurities

1% friendly banter with very smart people

If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn't, even though it allowed me to retire early.

My experience to a T, down to the 1% friendly banter (because while there are lots of smart people working on hardware, almost none of them know how to banter lol).

NDAs don't generally have an expiration date. (As opposed to non-competes and non-solicitation agreements, which generally do.) An NDA typically ends only if the information in question becomes public, and then only for that particular information.

Nope in all accounts, I'm afraid.

But, in summary, it was grinding, grinding, and more grinding, with large dollops of impostor syndrome on top of it.

Met lots of nice smart people, but none were as impressive as the folks at NVidia. I was not worthy of being there.

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