Continuing its tradition of naming its computer chips after women and minorities, DEI-infested Nvidia named its next chips after astronomer Vera Rubin. Their justification seems tenuous, and may be based on leftist revisionism.

The company will release details of the chips at its annual GTC conference next week. Specifically, the CPU component of the module is being named “Vera,” the GPU chips (for AI training and inference) are being named “Rubin.” The two are combined into a single platform.

Vera Rubin was a smart and tenacious observational scientist. Definitely admirable, but not quite requiring the intellect of those with a more theoretical mindset (like Fritz Zwicky, discussed below).

Perhaps intent on being obstinate and contrary to anti-DEI trends, Nvidia’s nonsense nomenclature is exaggerating Rubin’s role in discovering “dark matter” (an invisible and hypothetical form of matter that may account for much of the matter in the universe). It’s “dark” because no one really knows what the heck it is, or even if it exists.

Actually, it was an astronomer named Fritz Zwicky who first postulated “dark matter” back in the 1930s. In fact, as Nature points out, he’s the “father of dark matter” [emphasis added]. It was not until decades later that Vera Rubin piggybacked off Zwicky’s work. She deserves credit for furthering astronomical observations about the rotation curves (affected by dark matter) of galaxies. However, it was Fritz who first had the truly extraordinary vision that galaxies moved too fast to be held together only by observed matter.

His brilliance far outshines hers in that he also contributed to the theory of supernovas, predicted the existence of quasars, and contributed many other insights into physics, such as gaseous ionization and thermodynamics. Indeed, Zwicky has been described as one of the unrecognized geniuses of the twentieth century. Now isn’t that what DEI is partly about -- recognizing the heretofore unrecognized?

Those at Nvidia who pretentiously pretend to be inclusionary might stress that Rubin was American, but Zwicky was born in Bulgaria and maintained Swiss citizenship. Nevertheless, after pursuing his career mostly in the U.S., he is described as a Swiss-American astronomer. He might not have exuded a warm and fuzzy demeanor, but his intellect reverberated around Caltech’s classrooms, corridors, and confabs (and way beyond) for nearly 50 years.

If Nvidia cared as much about real scientific accomplishments as it does DEI revisionism, it would show some discriminatory nuance. Sure, Vera deserves recognition for standing on the shoulders of giants, so name its new CPU after her. But if their new GPU chip (used for AI training and inference) is extraordinarily capable, then it could be renamed “Fritz” at their upcoming conference. That ought to garner some attention. Read the room!

If there’s a marketing concern that it may tempt fate, as in “going on the fritz,” then the “Zwicky” chip is agreeable, and is even fun to say. Wouldn’t that be more inclusionary for the often overlooked genius, albeit a white male? After all, his intellect and reasoning powers better reflect the power required for AI training and inference.

Image: ETH-Bibliothek