written by Achal Dave as part of the InPlace series by Cepstrum, IIT Guwahati
Hi! I’m Achal, a final year undergraduate student from ECE department, IIT Guwahati, and I spent the summer of 2019 with Nvidia Graphics.
A lot of you must have heard about Nvidia designing Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) for gaming and professional markets, and about its cutting edge research in AI — from self driving cars and medical imaging to IoT and visualization. Lesser known but equally exciting is their work in the fields of supercomputing (Nvidia’s DGX Station is the world’s fastest workstation for leading-edge AI development), autonomous machines (the Nvidia Jetson platform gives you the tools to develop and deploy AI-powered robots and drones) and healthcare (Nvidia Clara is a computational platform that makes it easy to build intelligent medical imaging workflows and instruments).
Nvidia is based out of Santa Clara and comes to IIT Guwahati to offer internships for the Bangalore office. Their selection process involves CV shortlisting followed by one technical and one HR interview. After anxiously waiting for the results, I was pleasantly surprised to hear that I had been selected to intern with them.
There were quite a few perks that came along with the internship. We were provided accommodation in a hotel for the entire duration along with free breakfast and lunch. Not to forget some really good coffee, and an all-you-can-eat snacks plan. They even provided transport to and from office.
All interns work on the latest technology that Nvidia is going to launch. You work on live projects, just like any other employee. I interned with the full chip verification team which was working on the upcoming Ampere Architecture. My task was to build a debugging tool and add functionalities to automate the different steps in the debugging process of multiple pipelines in the GPU. It mostly involved coding in Python and Perl. Having some knowledge about computer architecture, operating systems and finite state machine design proved to be useful. The harder part was getting familiar with many of their proprietary software packages, but my team was extremely approachable and helped me out every time I got stuck on something. From ray tracing and the graphics pipeline to understanding GPU architecture and coding in CUDA, I got to work with a lot of cool stuff and learned something new everyday.
Most of the tasks you’ll do will require you to collaborate with multiple people. My teammates and I would end up brainstorming for hours! All such discussions were really enriching and gave me new perspectives on how to tackle challenges. I saw myself grow from understanding almost nothing in the first couple of meetings to contributing something significant towards the end. Nvidia has a (more or less) flat hierarchy and the work culture is really chill - so much so that at some point, one could see the interns catching up with the director over lunch!
The people at Nvidia are super fun and friendly. To take our mind off work we played football every Tuesday and Thursday. Nvidia has really active volleyball and badminton clubs as well. If you are not an outdoor person, there’s foosball, ping pong and lots more. The best part would have been the gaming room (with the best GPUs) had it not been under renovation during our internship, sigh.
There was much to take away from these 2 months, and the learnings were not limited just to an internship or just to Nvidia.
- You’ll be completely clueless on day 1, and that’s okay!
Whether or not you have an idea of how your first day will be, things are going to be relatively new — be it the fact that the industry is totally different from what you learn in college, the responsibilities you are handed, or the freedom to ideate and bring solutions to the table. Keep in mind that everyone starts out in the same way as you, and you’ll be up to speed in no time. - Don’t be overwhelmed by responsibility.
There was no spoon-feeding throughout the course of the internship, which worked out well for me — it pushed me out of my comfort zone and held me accountable for the decisions I made. This is not to be taken in a negative manner — my mentor always had my back. I had complete control of my project and was free to explore various possibilities to get the job done. Being on your own might seem intimidating but trust me when I say this, people will literally stop doing whatever they are doing to help you out if needed. - Give your all and don’t forget to take back too.
The intern will be your first exposure to the corporate world. Make the most of it. Ask people about their career trajectories, the work culture and how they’ve grown in the company. You’ll be surprised to see how friendly everyone is. In a nutshell, find out if this is what you really want to do. - Stay organized from Day 1.
Keep your manager updated through weekly reports and bond well with your mentor. Chalk out a blueprint of what you want to achieve by the end of the intern and share your expectations with those concerned. Have a small notebook to note down achievements, this will help you to stay organized and to track your progress, as well as help your reviewers in assessing your work. - Ask for feedback!
Keep in touch with your mentor and ask for honest feedback. Don’t be overbearing but don’t stay quiet either — communication plays a vital role in showing how interested you are and how open you are to constructive criticism. - Soft skills are just as important.
Stay at par with the expectations of the team not only with respect to technical expertise but also when it comes to soft skills. Good work should go hand in hand with good presentation. Interact with different teams and try to get an overall picture of what the company does so as to see where you fit in best. Some companies might be able to accommodate you in a different division as well. - Don’t forget to chill.
At the end of the day, detach yourself from the Indian meaning of the word “internship” and don’t forget to have fun. Travel, meet new people and make it a memorable experience.
Good luck!
