While code names are not rare in the corporate world, more often than not, the names tend to be unimaginative. NVIDIA’s code names, however, are pure marketing glory.
Take NVIDIA’s high performance computing product roadmap (below) – these are products that use the graphics processing capabilities of NVIDIA’s high-end GPUs and turn them into smaller, cheaper, and more power-efficient supercomputing engines which scientists and researchers can use to crunch numbers. How does NVIDIA describe its future roadmap? It uses the names of famous scientists to describe its technology roadmap: Tesla (the great American electrical engineer who helped bring us AC power), Fermi (“the father of the Atomic Bomb”), Kepler (one of the first astronomers to apply physics to astronomy), and Maxwell (the physicist who helped show that electrical, magnetic, and optical phenomena were all linked).
Who wouldn’t want to do some “high power” research (pun intended) with Maxwell?
But, what really takes the cake for me are the codenames NVIDIA uses for its smartphone/tablet chips: its Tegra line of products. Instead of scientists, he uses, well, comic book characters. For release at the end of this year? Kal-El, or for the uninitiated, that’s the alien name for Superman. After that? Wayne, as in the alter ego for Batman. Then, Logan, as in the name for the X-men Wolverine. And then Stark, as in the alter ego for Iron Man.
Everybody wants a little Iron Man in their tablet.
Leave a Reply