My theory is that by putting investment capital in to the tech, they have a "mob-like" hand in the technology. Yes, it doesn't seem like a good investment of DARPA's money now, but the favor WILL be repaid by nVidia at some point, probably to a tune of much greater than $20 million. GPU's have incredible potential for processing power even in current day, and DARPA is one of the government divisions that I would expect might need such power for various project(s).
Slashdot Mirror
My theory is that by putting investment capital in to the tech, they have a "mob-like" hand in the technology. Yes, it doesn't seem like a good investment of DARPA's money now, but the favor WILL be repaid by nVidia at some point, probably to a tune of much greater than $20 million. GPU's have incredible potential for processing power even in current day, and DARPA is one of the government divisions that I would expect might need such power for various project(s).