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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

#101

Post by larrykwg »

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...

TensorFlow also supports Intel Xeon Phi as an alternative

https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/tensorflow-optimiz...

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

#102

Post by larrykwg »

They already were artificially limiting virtualization on GeForce cards and were always pointing to their data center cards when asked about it. It goes as far as the physical location of the power connectors on the top of the card so it doesn't fit in a server/rack case. I imagine it makes sense from their point of view, the data center cards like tesla are ridiculously more expensive than the consumer cards. NVIDIA was never really a consumer friendly company, instead of cooperating on open standards they always went their own proprietary way. Thats the obvious danger when a company becomes the de-facto standard in some area, they exploit their position for profit. That can't possibly be still a surprise to anyone.

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

#103

Post by jamesblonde »

Rapzid wrote: post #59
wmf wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that "humps" exist implies that quite a few people are putting GeForces in servers and not talking about it. https://www.servethehome.com/avert-your-eyes-from-the-server...

Plenty of people. You can find tons of articles on GeForce 1080 Ti based learning box builds.

Here's a figure on the scale-out you can get on the DeepLearning11 server (cost $15k) - it's about 60-80% of the performance of a DGX-1 for 1/10th of the price (for deep ConvNets and image classification, at least).

https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/distributed-tensorflow

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

#104

Post by jamesblonde »

Veratyr wrote: post #86
WhitneyLand wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We have been running a DeepLearning11 server for a few months now without any problem. I suspect its FUD from Nvidia. If you have fans in your data center actively cooling the cards, you'll be ok. You should use the 1080Ti Founders Edition or Blower card, as they have a single fan that blows air out of the box (in the DL11 setup).

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

#105

Post by fauigerzigerk »

matt4077 wrote: post #93
reilly3000 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>Instead of “leaning on them”, you can submit patches

Do yo know that he has the right skill set or the time to maintain the code for years to come? Do you know that the effort would be economically viable for him like it could be for AMD or perhaps Google?

If not then I would prefer if he didn't submit a patch, because he would be wasting everyone's time.

Sometimes the best contribution you can make to an open source project is to express your interest in particular features so that those who really can submit a patch know that there is demand for it.

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

#106

Post by a_f »

wmf wrote: post #42
freeone3000 wrote: post #29

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. So now they're fal…

In the future, Teslas will have Tensor Cores and GeForces won't, so deep learning will be much faster (but also much more expensive, so it kind of cancels out) on Tesla cards.

They have just released the new Titan V, which has Tensor Cores I believe. That would indicate that they do want to include them in non workstation/dedicated ML cards, no?

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

#107

Post by syshum »

arbie wrote: post #63
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…

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

Yes we all know EULA's contain a lot of moronic crap, just because Company A includes moronic things in their EULA should not be an excuse for Company B to include equally moronic things in theirs.

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

#108

Post by detaro »

garmaine wrote: post #58
acd wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That’s an argument for software licenses. My NVIDIA GPU on the other hand is hardware I own.

The EULA is for software (=the driver)

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

#109

Post by [deleted] »

garmaine wrote: post #58
acd wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That’s an argument for software licenses. My NVIDIA GPU on the other hand is hardware I own.

[deleted]

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

#110

Post by syshum »

This is problem I have with Driver EULA's. If I buy Hardware today under terms X, should the manufacturer of the hardware be allowed to unilaterally change the terms in order for me to continue to use that hardware securely and effectively, which would require updates to fix bugs and vulnerabilities created by the manufacturer.

Basically if I buy a GPU, discover a bug in the product, can nvidia hold that bug fix hostage and refuse to fix the product I bought under 1 set of terms until I agree to a new set of terms

At a minimum I believe the manufacturer should be required to refund, full original purchase price, of any product which they change the terms to anyone that objects to the new terms even if the new terms come out YEARS after the product was sold and well outside any warranty period

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