> They don't deserve science award because they didn't do science or pioneer anything.

NVidia didn't do science? It depends on what you call science (math and computer science are not "science" according to a very strict definition involving falsifiability). But in any case, an enormous amount of research went into the development of GPUs. It's not just engineering work. Lots of PhD (students) contributed.

the context is DL.

True, but neural networks existed for a long time. The hardware is what made NNs actually practical. Recent theoretical advances have been only incremental. For example, CNNs are just evolutionary since image recognition has used convolutions long before NNs were practical, and CNNs are just a straightforward translation of existing techniques to NNs.

Sure theoretical advances may be evolutionary, but they resulted in exponential reduction of parameter space and sample complexity. These advances outpace Moore's law by a large margin.

Hardware served as a catalyst, but it was not a necessity.

good point, I think awards should go to NVidia