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Nvidia bans using translation layers for CUDA software to run on other chips

tomshardware.com

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Re: Nvidia bans using translation layers for CUDA software to run on other chips

#101

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

mvdtnz wrote: post #68
dotnet00 wrote: post #34

This just seems to be a poorly researched knee-jerk article written based on a single off-hand tweet from 2 weeks ago, citing a clause that has been around for years, and thus obviously is not in response to something talked about 3 weeks ago. As an example, the license here has the exact phrase, on a file last changed 2 years ago: https://github.com/NVIDIA/spark-rapids-container/blob/dev/NO... The EULA here, listed…

I think you're focused too much on when this clause was added. Most of us are not so concerned with the chronology.

Well, never mind the date, the clause just doesn't say what the article author claims it to say, not even close ...

It doesn't say you can't run CUDA code via a CUDA comabability layer - it says you can't reverse engineer CUDA code in order to translate it to something else (i.e. NOT CUDA) to run on non-NVIDIA hardware.

It's almost the exact opposite of what the article claims - the only way to legally run CUDA software on non-NVIDA hardware would in fact be to leave it as-is and run via a compatibility layer!!

Re: Nvidia bans using translation layers for CUDA software to run on other chips

#102

Post by vidarh »

nottorp wrote: post #93
vidarh wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's fairly typical that the court wanted to make the narrowest decision possible. By conclusion that *even under the assumption they _may_ copyrightable, Google didn't violate copyright they saved themselves the hassle of deciding on the copyright issue.

IANAL. So basically the assumption language means there is no rule either that APIs are copyrightable or not, yet... Could have been worse i guess.

Well. There's no Supreme Court ruling on the copyrightability. The Federal Circuit did hold that APIs are copyrightable, and as far as I understand the Supreme Court carefully avoided deciding whether or not they were right about that.

So it's not great, as it does leave the Federal Circuit finding that the APIs were copyrightable standing so far, but as you say it could have been worse - it does not have remotely the same weight.

Re: Nvidia bans using translation layers for CUDA software to run on other chips

#103

Post by tzs »

dotnet00 wrote: post #34

This just seems to be a poorly researched knee-jerk article written based on a single off-hand tweet from 2 weeks ago, citing a clause that has been around for years, and thus obviously is not in response to something talked about 3 weeks ago. As an example, the license here has the exact phrase, on a file last changed 2 years ago: https://github.com/NVIDIA/spark-rapids-container/blob/dev/NO... The EULA here, listed…

The article has been updated to clarify:

> Nvidia has banned running CUDA-based software on other hardware platforms using translation layers in its licensing terms listed online, but those warnings previously weren't included in the documentation placed on a host system during the installation process. This language has now been added to newer versions of CUDA.

Re: Nvidia bans using translation layers for CUDA software to run on other chips

#104

Post by dotnet00 »

tzs wrote: post #103
dotnet00 wrote: post #34

This just seems to be a poorly researched knee-jerk article written based on a single off-hand tweet from 2 weeks ago, citing a clause that has been around for years, and thus obviously is not in response to something talked about 3 weeks ago. As an example, the license here has the exact phrase, on a file last changed 2 years ago: https://github.com/NVIDIA/spark-rapids-container/blob/dev/NO... The EULA here, listed…

The article has been updated to clarify: > Nvidia has banned running CUDA-based software on other hardware platforms using translation layers in its licensing terms listed online, but those warnings previously weren't included in the documentation placed on a host system during the installation process. This language has now been added to newer versions of CUDA.

That still doesn't seem accurate. I have CUDA 11.6 on my machine from Dec 2021, just checked the EULA included there, and it did have the mentioned clause there too.

Re: Nvidia bans using translation layers for CUDA software to run on other chips

#105

Post by Zetobal »

salawat wrote: post #98
Zetobal wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

More like " I refuse to be held hostage by your delusional business model" more like. I bought two GTX 970's, and a GTX 1030. Then I did the research on how they actually worked and the nefarious things the company got up to in order to spoliate open source drivers. The minute they switched to secritful Falcon units, is when any pretense of good faith was thrown out the door. They cheated me out of 3 graphics cards w…

[flagged]

Re: Nvidia bans using translation layers for CUDA software to run on other chips

#106

Post by wmf »

renewiltord wrote: post #88
jstanley wrote: post #4

People keep using proprietary software and keep getting burned by it. When will we learn?

Who's getting burned? It's the best stack to build on. The only ones getting burned are the third-party guys who want adoption.

Nvidia customers are paying $30K for GPUs that should be under $10K; that's how they're getting burned.

Re: Nvidia bans using translation layers for CUDA software to run on other chips

#107

Post by wakawaka28 »

marklar423 wrote: post #20
SomeHacker44 wrote: post #9

IANAL, but I don't see how this can be enforced (in the US) given the legal history of emulation. This is effectively just emulation. c.f., https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Licensing

I think they're trying to do the trick where they don't ban the emulation per se, but they make it a violation of the license to disassemble the code to understand how it works. Then they go after emulating projects for copyright infringement, since they must have violated copyright to get a compatible version running. It's a dirty trick IMO, but it has seen some mixed success.

Isn't CUDA documentation thorough enough to reimplement it without reverse-engineering? (Serious question.)

Re: Nvidia bans using translation layers for CUDA software to run on other chips

#108

Post by [deleted] »

dotnet00 wrote: post #104
tzs wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article has been updated to clarify: > Nvidia has banned running CUDA-based software on other hardware platforms using translation layers in its licensing terms listed online, but those warnings previously weren't included in the documentation placed on a host system during the installation process. This language has now been added to newer versions of CUDA.

That still doesn't seem accurate. I have CUDA 11.6 on my machine from Dec 2021, just checked the EULA included there, and it did have the mentioned clause there too.

[deleted]

Re: Nvidia bans using translation layers for CUDA software to run on other chips

#109

Post by solardev »

kllrnohj wrote: post #69
solardev wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could WebGPU fill that need?

WebGPU can't fill any need that GL, DirectX, or Vulkan can't. WebGPU isn't a native GPU API, but an abstraction over existing ones. As such its feature set is only ever at best comparable, but in practice will always be worse than the native ones (always worse due to needing to be implementable by multiple platforms - at a minimum both vulkan and metal)

I see. Thanks for the explanation!

Re: Nvidia bans using translation layers for CUDA software to run on other chips

#110

Post by Aloisius »

dotnet00 wrote: post #104
tzs wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article has been updated to clarify: > Nvidia has banned running CUDA-based software on other hardware platforms using translation layers in its licensing terms listed online, but those warnings previously weren't included in the documentation placed on a host system during the installation process. This language has now been added to newer versions of CUDA.

That still doesn't seem accurate. I have CUDA 11.6 on my machine from Dec 2021, just checked the EULA included there, and it did have the mentioned clause there too.

It was in fact added to the EULA.txt file in 11.6. The header says it was updated October 8, 2021.

    %  diff EULA.txt-11.5 EULA.txt-11.6 |grep -2 trans
    >   8. You may not reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble
    >     any portion of the output generated using SDK elements for
    >     the purpose of translating such output artifacts to target
    >     a non-NVIDIA platform.
That said, I believe 11.6 was released in January, 2022.
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