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Nvidia to Acquire Mellanox for $6.9B

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Re: Nvidia to Acquire Mellanox for $6.9B

#141

Post by mackal »

orbifold wrote: post #63
ktpsns wrote: post #58

Interesting. Since Mellanox is a big player in the HPC world, this means Nvidia wants to get more serious there. Due to Nvidia's bad Linux support and pricing (compared to AMD), I know quite a number of academic computing centers which like Mellanox hardware but avoid Nvidia hardware like the plague.

My GTX 1080 works flawlessly with Linux, as has any other NVIDIA graphics card I've ever owned (GTX 680, 480). The only time I tried an AMD card it was a complete dumpster fire, nothing worked (the open source driver at the time sucked and the proprietary driver wouldn't install properly). I bought the AMD card based on the myth that AMD has better linux support...

Ahh what are you talking about? That "myth" didn't exist until the open source drivers really started working.

Biggest issue with AMD on Linux right now is that they sometimes seem to forget to fully enable support in patches before release. Like the RX 590 had to have firmware updates post release because they forgot to do everything I guess.

nVidia GPUs were always recommended over AMD because their support was significantly better before the mainoine Radeon/Radeon si/amdgpu drivers really started being great. nVidia will still run better now, but the benefit of the open source driver ecosystem out weighs that for me.

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Mellanox for $6.9B

#142

Post by sangnoir »

orbifold wrote: post #130
Topgamer7 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trying to get a 1070 set up w/ 2 monitors on a laptop with hybrid graphics is a nightmare. 1 display driven by intel, 1 by nvidia. Cannot get both screens working without 2 Xscreens. Xinerama wouldn't work w. proprietary drivers. Nouveau has like no support for like 1050 up. Wanted to try out SwayWM, but they don't work around how nvidia handles things in comparison to what everyone else does. Works in Ubuntu, but co…

Maybe just maybe this is not the fault of Nvidia but due to the fact that large parts of the Linux ecosystem are fragile, time consuming to configure and break if you look at them in the wrong way. Professional linux distributions like Ubuntu paper over a lot of that fragility, whereas in Arch Linux you can easily burn days getting basic functionality to work (multiple sound cards come to mind) only for it to break w…

> Maybe just maybe this is not the fault of Nvidia but due to the fact that large parts of the Linux ecosystem are fragile, time consuming to configure and break if you look at them in the wrong way.

How it works with open source drivers is that you main-line your drivers so that the kernel maintainer maintain the drivers for you, for free. Choosing to keep your drivers closed source means committing to keeping your drivers up-to-date with changes in the kernel, or writing an open-source shim that does that. Which approach is more "fragile?"

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Mellanox for $6.9B

#143

Post by greglindahl »

cure wrote: post #40
gigatexal wrote: post #2

How bad is it that Intel didn't win?

There were only ever two major Infiniband vendors: QLogic and Mellanox. Intel already bought QLogic back in 2012. I'm not sure it would be in anyone's interest for both to be acquired by Intel, even if IB isn't very relevant anymore outside of supercomputing.

Intel bought QLogic's Infiniband assets in 2012, not everything.

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Mellanox for $6.9B

#144

Post by hexo »

So, intel took over qlogic, now fabless(!) nvidia takes over mellanox /o\. Is there some real "normal" manufacturer of fast cards like IB, 40+geth left? By normal I mean manufacturer without management doing stunt tricks and pissing off own customers (like intel and nvidia does). Please please, tell me this isn't HBA appocalypse :D (i do own 2 IB cards from "intel", guess what - it's almost completely unsupported so i just cant use them)

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Mellanox for $6.9B

#145

Post by mikaelronstrom »

jabl wrote: post #23

This is interesting. Mellanox has apparently been under activist investor pressure to reduce their R&D expenses and pay more dividends. And then there was the rumors that Intel were interested, but apparently Nvidia in the end offered more. From a HPC perspective I think it's good Nvidia got the deal, Intel is already a quite dominating force in that market, and if they'd have gotten the deal it wouldn't have surpris…

Mellanox is big in high-end Ethernet equipment as well which is growing faster than the Infiniband business, obviously a key technology for cloud providers.

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Mellanox for $6.9B

#147

Post by patrickg_zill »

sacheendra wrote: post #99
godelmachine wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May I ask what’s IB?

infiniband - The high performance interconnect by Mellanox

Infiniband is actually a standard and Mellanox became the go to supplier. However in the early stages there were many more suppliers.

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Mellanox for $6.9B

#148

Post by pjmlp »

mackal wrote: post #141
orbifold wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My GTX 1080 works flawlessly with Linux, as has any other NVIDIA graphics card I've ever owned (GTX 680, 480). The only time I tried an AMD card it was a complete dumpster fire, nothing worked (the open source driver at the time sucked and the proprietary driver wouldn't install properly). I bought the AMD card based on the myth that AMD has better linux support...

Ahh what are you talking about? That "myth" didn't exist until the open source drivers really started working. Biggest issue with AMD on Linux right now is that they sometimes seem to forget to fully enable support in patches before release. Like the RX 590 had to have firmware updates post release because they forgot to do everything I guess. nVidia GPUs were always recommended over AMD because their support was sig…

I am still waiting that benefit to provide the missing OpenGL and hardware video acceleration features that were never ported from fxglr.

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Mellanox for $6.9B

#149

Post by jblow »

bredren wrote: post #113
godelmachine wrote: post #95

I had great respect for Mellanox when I came to know that they invented InfiniBand. Again, I am suprisied it’s valued at only $6.9Bn. Pardon my ignorance, but how come mobile apps and websites get valued for 10+ or 20+ Bn dollars , while someone who creates real technology is valued at only $6.9Bn

"real technology" is not an objective measurement of societal value.

Except yes it is, because all these software apps are built on prior “real technology” and would be impossible without it. The flow of capital just doesn’t reflect that (and it’s not clear it should).

Re: Nvidia to Acquire Mellanox for $6.9B

#150

Post by yvdriess »

ineedasername wrote: post #146

As and outsider, can someone explain the "synergy" (god I hate that word) for the companies? It looks like Mellanox is primarily a network equipment company. What is the "fit" for that within a graphics/AI chip producer?

Communication is a key bottleneck. Modern supercomputers budget roughly half to interconnect. Nvidia invested heavily in developing NVLINK to be able to make GPUs communicate at the bandwidth necessary to make multi-GPU boxes more practical (e.g. DGX-1). To make it scale out across multiple boxes, you need a high bandwidth, low latency interconnect, which is where IB comes in.
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