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Nvidia’s New Policy Limits GeForce Data Center Usage

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Re: Nvidia’s New Policy Limits GeForce Data Center Usage

#81

Post by WhitneyLand »

Veratyr wrote: post #77
nightcracker wrote: post #39

This is just a blatant attempt to sell the exact same product to two different types of customers at different prices based on their (presumed) willingness to spend. Actually it's worse. It's an attempt to cripple a perfectly functioning cheap product aimed at a different audience (gamers) for another audience (machine learning folks) in order to drive them to more expensive products that do the same thing. Pure gree…

While I agree it's likely motivated by greed, there is a legitimate reason too: GeForce cards simply aren't made to be run 24/7 in high density server environments. Put 200 of them in a rack and have them running inference or training 24/7 and I suspect you'll see them drop like flies. Tesla cards are explicitly designed for endurance.

You are 100% wrong. When that’s the concern, companies add warning labels or warranty limitations.

Whether the GeForce cards are less reliable in that environment or not, that is not why the EULA was changed in this way.

Re: Nvidia’s New Policy Limits GeForce Data Center Usage

#83

Post by duncan_bayne »

And here it is again: https://xkcd.com/743/

"It's the world's tiniest open-source violin."

As much as I disagree with most of RMS's politics, the man has been proved right time and time again with respect to the dangers of building on proprietary software.

This is just the latest in a long, long line of outrages.

When will we as a development community quit this weird Stockholm-syndrome-like relationship with proprietary systems vendors?

Build on NVidia, build on iOS, build on OSX, build on Windows, that's fine. It's your call. But don't act surprised when you discover the real nature of the extant power relationship.

Re: Nvidia’s New Policy Limits GeForce Data Center Usage

#84

Post by reilly3000 »

sabalaba wrote: post #74

Developers should be mad about this. Here's where to start contributing to open alternatives: ROCm: https://rocm.github.io/ OpenCL: https://www.khronos.org/opencl/ TensorFlow: https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow Nouveau: https://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/

TensorFlow depends exclusively (st time of writing) on CUDA for GPU acceleration. Leaning on them to support OpenCL fully would unlock the world of AMD GPUs that are move affordable and don’t have the same crazy EULA. I regret having bought GeForce cards for machine learning now...

Re: Nvidia’s New Policy Limits GeForce Data Center Usage

#85

Post by pjmlp »

jacquesm wrote: post #12

If true then Nvidia has gone nuts. There is no way that they can control what end users of their products do with their products and/or their software post download to the extent where they are going to have a say in what locality you can use their software and where not. Utterly ridiculous. For a company that has seen my solid support so far I'm extremely disappointed. Could someone fluent in Japanese please confirm…

Back in the 90's Borland got many customers pissed off, as they including a clause on their EULA preventing them to use Borland tools to write compilers.

It was quickly removed, given the backslash.

Re: Nvidia’s New Policy Limits GeForce Data Center Usage

#86

Post by Veratyr »

WhitneyLand wrote: post #81
Veratyr wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree it's likely motivated by greed, there is a legitimate reason too: GeForce cards simply aren't made to be run 24/7 in high density server environments. Put 200 of them in a rack and have them running inference or training 24/7 and I suspect you'll see them drop like flies. Tesla cards are explicitly designed for endurance.

You are 100% wrong. When that’s the concern, companies add warning labels or warranty limitations. Whether the GeForce cards are less reliable in that environment or not, that is not why the EULA was changed in this way.

I don't think you read my comment.

I said that they're likely motivated by greed but there _exists_ a legitimate reason too. I didn't say that _is_ their reason, just that it exists.

Re: Nvidia’s New Policy Limits GeForce Data Center Usage

#87

Post by pjmlp »

duncan_bayne wrote: post #83

And here it is again: https://xkcd.com/743/ "It's the world's tiniest open-source violin." As much as I disagree with most of RMS's politics, the man has been proved right time and time again with respect to the dangers of building on proprietary software. This is just the latest in a long, long line of outrages. When will we as a development community quit this weird Stockholm-syndrome-like relationship with proprie…

> When will we as a development community quit this weird Stockholm-syndrome-like relationship with proprietary systems vendors?

When most companies stop treating open source as a way to decrease their development costs, or as a legal way of doing piracy.

I was big into open source for a decade, but it hardly payed most bills.

Only software that requires consulting, training, or can be hidden behind a server wall is profitable as open source.

And since the supermarket lady and my landlord don't take pull requests, I build for systems vendors.

Re: Nvidia’s New Policy Limits GeForce Data Center Usage

#88

Post by Too »

greglindahl wrote: post #75
arbie wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems no different than Tesla prohibiting use of AutoPilot for gainful ridesharing.

A large amount of computing equipment is sold with the restriction that it not be used to control a nuclear power plant.

Did you just make that up?

Safety critical systems integrators only buy computing equipment explicitly designed to be safety critical. That's a requirement from the system designer (or possibly the law), not the other way around.

If a nuclear plant designer go npm install random package that doesn't explicitly say it's not designed for nuclear plants no amount of lawyers will be able to sue the package maintainer if it fails.

Re: Nvidia’s New Policy Limits GeForce Data Center Usage

#89

Post by gmueckl »

guitarbill wrote: post #35
forgotpassagan wrote: post #5

In good news, this may finally force a court case around EULA's, which basically everyone have known for a decade as bullshit. Having to agree to draconian terms to use something you own is ridiculous. If EULA's become enforceable there's nothing preventing a toaster maker from banning you from toasting bagels in your machine and countless other absurd usurious machinations. EULA 'shrinkwrap' license agreements are a…

Agreed, however this depends heavily on jurisdiction. E.g. in Germany [0], license agreements presented after purchase are completely void anyway (although defining the moment of purchase for non-physical goods is tricky - not so for a graphics card though). So in Japan, maybe? [0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endbenutzer-Lizenzvertrag

Well, Geforce GPUs are advertised more heavily for graphics than computing. If I were nVidia I'd try to argue that CUDA and other GPU computing libraries are separate products not purchased with this line of GPUs.

Re: Nvidia’s New Policy Limits GeForce Data Center Usage

#90

Post by dharma1 »

Was wondering how long until they pull off something like this. I've seen startups (and some established hosting companies) offering cloud and bare metal GPU with GeForce cards - which are far cheaper than the official datacentre cards Nvidia sell.

On the positive side, hopefully this will mean a consumer GeForce Tesla soon, now that they think it won't cannibalise their datacentre GPU sales.

I really wish ROCm worked seamlessly and they had some competition.

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