I Once Gave an NVIDIA Keynote — and I Didn't Work for NVIDIA

At Diamond Multimedia, I was involved in the early NVIDIA NV1 and Diamond EDGE 3D effort. Ken Wirt, David Bates, and I were headed to Japan, where Nick Endo from Diamond Japan would host us. NVIDIA's engineers were supposed to be part of the trip, but they were tied up in the all-hands work around chip tape-out.

I was literally leaving Diamond for the San Jose airport when Jensen Huang stopped me. NVIDIA could not send the engineer who was scheduled to present because of the engineering emergency. I went back upstairs, grabbed the programmer's reference manual, and carried it onto the plane with me.

I spent roughly eleven hours in the air building the presentation. Two days later, I stood in front of a developer audience in Japan and explained the NV1 architecture. I remember it as NVIDIA's first developer-product keynote, although that is my recollection rather than a claim I can independently document. I did not feel ready when Jensen stopped me. I got ready on the way.

The trip also included another memorable piece of EDGE 3D business. Diamond planned to buy and bundle several games, including Virtua Fighter Remix, Panzer Dragoon, and NASCAR Racing. One evening we met Sega's number-two executive over dinner to flesh out the deal.

We walked down a narrow alley at night and stopped at a sliding door. Inside was a restaurant barely wider than its long counter. We squeezed behind the seated diners, climbed a staircase, and entered a private room. I went in first. A heavyset Japanese executive sat in the darkness with one narrow line of light across his face. For a second I was certain I had walked into a Japanese mafia movie.

I was the low man on the totem pole, seated beside my counterpart from Sega, who very patiently taught me how to use chopsticks. Then came the sake. Someone had told me that when a person fills your drink in Japan, you are supposed to drink from it. I misunderstood that to mean finish it.

My counterpart poured. I drank the whole thing like a shot. His eyes widened, and he poured another. I returned the favor; being gracious, he matched me. We repeated this ridiculous little ceremony until both of us were very drunk and working extremely hard to look completely composed. International business has many subtle protocols. That was not one of them.