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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

#91

Post by Dylan16807 »

gone35 wrote: post #2

Japanese original: https://wirelesswire.jp/2017/12/62658/ -- Edit: Apparently it's just that GeForce cards have(/had?) no warranty for use in "data centers" --but academic use is not precluded in of itself: https://twitter.com/NVIDIAAIJP/status/943141204744585222 https://wirelesswire.jp/2017/12/62667/ Still, the line is somewhat unclear, I wonder how many university/academic cluster admins are aware of the fact..

Datacenter conditions for GPU clocks/power/air tend to be gentler than desktop conditions, so the warranty just disappearing is far from justified.

Edit: Ha, ridiculously unjustified if bitcoin mining is still covered.

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

#92

Post by teraflop »

Too wrote: post #88
greglindahl wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Did you just make that up?

You could have just googled "nuclear power EULA" to see how common this is, instead of throwing around accusations.

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

#93

Post by matt4077 »

reilly3000 wrote: post #84
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...

Instead of “leaning on them”, you can submit patches. The OpenCL effort is well underway, and pull requests are accepted every day.

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

#94

Post by gambiting »

xigency wrote: post #51
toomuchtodo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re going be surprised how CPUs are price segmented in that case (they’re cut from the same wafers and priced by the clock frequency QA validates at). Price semgnentation isn’t necessarily bad; you want to segment your product in order to maximize revenue across all possible customers; this is just a more egregious/bold attempt at doing so (and is hopefully prevented by a court).

Binning CPUs on clock frequency or number of functioning cores is a bit different. If you compared it to a precious metal, the higher price CPUs have fewer imperfections, therefore they cost more. The fact that they carry different product numbers is a bit misleading but the price segmentation actually makes sense.

We have both Xeon and i7 workstations in my office and functionally there is no difference, except that the Xeon ones cost 2-3x more. ECC support is not exactly worth it for a normal workstation use.

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

#95

Post by Dylan16807 »

wmf wrote: post #72
leggomylibro wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, doesn't it seem a little weird that they seem to want to enforce the distinction between gaming and industrial cards, but they also went ahead and included tensor cores in that new Titan card? Did they not think that through and have an 'oh shit' moment when they saw all the news articles or something? Or is this a 'the first hit is free' sort of deal where they want people to learn about using the product on a…

Titan V is so expensive that it's not cannibalizing anything. Once the GeForce 1180 comes out... they'll make it just slow/expensive enough that it still doesn't cannibalize anything.

They did take the "GeForce" label off of the new Titan. And the 1180 might not have any tensor cores at all.

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

#96

Post by Dylan16807 »

m3kw9 wrote: post #40
freeone3000 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can't price-differentiate FP64 compute out, since ML uses FP32 or even FP16. They tried discriminating FP16 performance but frameworks switched to using FP32 units and downconverting to FP16 after. They can't kill FP32 performance since that's used for gaming. They tried killing the virtualization, they tried differentiating based on clustering, they tried every reasonable technical procedure. This seems consume…

You cannot just look at that, the Tesla’s have bigger memory bandwidth and bigger memory which can help to utilize the GPUs better by having faster access to more data

If you're in the specific range where your problem doesn't fit in a GeForce and does fit in a Tesla, then it can be great.

For a very large number of problems that are smaller than both or bigger than both, that extra memory bandwidth is a lot smaller than the price difference.

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

#97

Post by willyt »

QAPereo wrote: post #57
solomatov wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL, but in the law there's a thing which is called Contra proferentem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contra_proferentem Basically, it means that ambiguous terms are interpreted against the contract drafter.

You get that pretty much everywhere that used to be British common law iirc, and it’s why contracts frequently define seemingly minor and silly terms, ones which are obvious such as “the undersigned“ and all manner of the seemingly banal. In essence the contract is first and foremost agreeing on the same language, to express a commitment which ideally all parties are fully cognizant of. Edit: spelling

Also there is no punitive damages in U.K. law. So what’s the worst that could happen? Would you put them back in the position they would have been had the contract not existed, so give the cards back plus a contribution towards depreciation? Would be interesting if someone with legal knowledge could chime in.

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

#98

Post by erric »

pjmlp wrote: post #85
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.

What’s interesting to me is seeing a physical tool company enclosing a “EULA” on something like a router but, saying you can’t use their physical bit to make other tools.

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

#99

Post by [deleted] »

jacquesm wrote: post #21
f1notformula1 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a legal expert and don't understand EULAs at all. I expected a "Datacenter" to be defined at some point but I didn't see a definition in the EULA. How should one interpret this? Is a research cluster a datacenter? How about a rack of a few dozen machines I built by hand? I've been in university research groups that had both options. Somewhat maddening to have a single line in the EULA that's so open to interp…

When you're not a legal expert and you feel like you are about to maybe break a term in someone else's license agreement the right avenue is to consult your company or university legal department.

[deleted]

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

#100

Post by matt4077 »

acd wrote: post #56
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…

The thing with EULAs is that you do not own the product. You are licensed to use the product under the company’s draconian terms. Agree that there needs to be new consumer laws protecting consumers. A contract used in the old times 1800s to be one to two pages of simple English that both parties negotiated the agreed terms on. Now EULas almost requires a degree in law to understand yet you abide to the terms under ci…

> can you limit free Speech?

God, this is getting out of hand...

Yes, of course you can. Confidentiality agreements, kn-disparagement clauses in settlement... it happens all the time.

Not to mention that the first amendment limits government censorship. Private parties are, as a first approximation, free to agree to whatever terms they like.

There’s also fraud, obscenity, and defamation laws. All limiting free speech. And, of course, using graphic cards has nothing to do with free speech.

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