It won't be a duopoly because nVidia doesn't make x86 hardware. Even if they did, there would be three contenders (AMD, Intel, nVidia).
nVidia is becoming an AI/HPC behemoth. GPUs for Compute, ARM for feeding the GPUs, Infiniband for interconnect. All in a tightly integrated, closed package. This is a clear monopoly.
They're light years ahead in terms of GPU development and Debugging tools when compared to AMD. CUDA cornered AI/GPU computing it seems. Intel's interconnect foray has fizzled, like their Xeon Phi / Larabee efforts. So, nVidia has the interconnect (Infiniband) and compute part for now.
CPUs can be challenged and disrupted. It's a mature technology. AMD can catch nVidia in enterprise in medium term (hopefully), but Infiniband has no competitors for what it does. And no, 100G Ethernet is no match for 100G Infiniband (we use it a lot since DDR. It's an insane tech).
Looking 10 years into the future, do we really need x86 though? Is it not possible that Intel will loose and CISC will become basically obsolete? (Yeah, I'm ignoring AMD here for no good reason, but we were talking about nVidia vs Intel anyway.)
Looks somewhat unlikely. We may have other architectures as mainstream and, they would be more energy efficient for the same performance of x86 in mainstream use but, pure SIMD computation is underrated IMHO.
Yes, AVX has a clock penalty but, if your code is math heavy (scientific, simulation, etc.) it's extremely convenient for some scenarios still.
GPUs are not perfect for "streaming data processing" or intermittent processing because their setup and startup time is still in seconds. You need to transfer data first to the GPU if you want the full speed also. In CPU computing this overhead is nonexistent.
I develop a scientific application and we've seen that with the improvements in the FPU and SIMD pipelines across generations, a 2GHz core can match a 3.7GHz one in per core performance in some cases. This is insane. This is a simple compilation with -O3 only. march and mtune were not added intentionally.
Unless GPU becomes as transparent as CPU, we either need to catch or surpass X86 on SIMD / pure math level to replace it completely.
Infiniband (IB) is not a network per se. It's a HBA. It can run TCP/IP but it's not the main application.
Every infiniband adapter is self-aware & topology aware. They know where the other nodes are so, they can directly talk with each other, regardless of the topology (network is mapped, managed and maintained by a daemon called subnet-manager which can either run on switches or a dedicated server).
This hardware and software combo results in three things:
1. Memory to memory transfers: IB can transfer from RAM of a host to RAM of another host, directly with RDMA. This means, when you run MPI and send a message to other processes, it's magically beamed over there, direct to RAM of the target(s). IB is transparent to MPI via its libraries, so everything automagic and 100x faster.
2. Latency: A to B latency is around 2-5 ns (nanoseconds). This means, when running stuff like MPI, machines become one as much as they can be. Until ethernet assembles your one package, you're there; possibly finished your transfer and continuing to churn your code.
3. Speed: 40Gbps IB means 38+ Gbps real throughput. For every p2p connection if you're running through a cube topology core switch. 80Gbps means around 78 or so. So theoretical and maximum is not so distant from each other. In most cases, 100 means 100 sustained, 80 means 80 sustained and so on (you can attach storage devices to IB network and enjoy that speed and latency on your HPC compute nodes for files).
Moreover, with more modern cards and switching hardware, It hardware accelerates MPI operations (broadcast, atomics, summation, etc.) and has multi-context support for supporting multiple MPI processes without blocking each other as much as possible.
For HPC, it's a different universe of speed, latency and processing acceleration. Moreover, you can run TCP/IP over it but, we generally run another gigabit network for server management.
I'm just picturing something like Superman's crystal cave https://i.pinimg.com/564x/c9/d5/a4/c9d5a448c3c0eb98014e8be0d... with a bunch of computer modules plugged into an Infiniband connection system. It could be a collection of manycore ARM processor modules as well as Nvidia GPU and AI modules. You just keep plugging more of them in to build up your home supercomputer.
Then you use your Neuralink brain-computer interface (communicating with the home supercomputer cluster with an ultra-compact WiGig module) to "program" it by talking to an AI avatar that pops up in the middle of your living room (or whatever simulation you are replacing it with currently). The cluster runs the AI and the simulation.
nVidia is becoming an AI/HPC behemoth. GPUs for Compute, ARM for feeding the GPUs, Infiniband for interconnect. All in a tightly integrated, closed package. This is a clear monopoly.
They're light years ahead in terms of GPU development and Debugging tools when compared to AMD. CUDA cornered AI/GPU computing it seems. Intel's interconnect foray has fizzled, like their Xeon Phi / Larabee efforts. So, nVidia has the interconnect (Infiniband) and compute part for now.
CPUs can be challenged and disrupted. It's a mature technology. AMD can catch nVidia in enterprise in medium term (hopefully), but Infiniband has no competitors for what it does. And no, 100G Ethernet is no match for 100G Infiniband (we use it a lot since DDR. It's an insane tech).
We're living in interesting times.