The Chip Nobody Saw Coming

In May 2020, Nvidia announced a GPU built for data centers, not gaming rigs. Few people outside chip design circles paid much attention. That chip was the A100. Within three years, it became the single piece of hardware most responsible for the modern LLM boom. Understanding Nvidia LLM impact over the past five to ten years means tracing a story that runs through silicon design, software lock-in, and finally, staggering financial engineering. Each stage built directly on the one before it.