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

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

#121

Post by samus »

salawat wrote: post #113
samus wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recently, development has picked up again though. They basically surrendered and now use the proprietary blob. The Mesa driver supports Vulkan 1.3 and Zink will be used for OpenGL going forward. Now on to more performance optimization and maybe bringing up some of the other proprietary IP blocks...

Realistically, all that means is that Nouveau is giving in to the death of rights of First Sale, which is a fight I'm not willing to give up on fighting for yet even if every deep pocketed interest and it's sister seems to be swinging that way.

I don't completely get your point I fear. Using the blob is simply accepting the fact that the cards are hamstrung without it. They won that round. Let's hope that AMD and Intel eventually get it together and come up with products that can slowly erode Nvidia's moat.

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

#122

Post by rerdavies »

mordae wrote: post #82
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

Reversing in order to achieve interop is explicitly legal in EU. Well unless you have to break DRM in process.

Does that render UELA clauses that forbid reverse engineering invalid?

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

#123

Post by rerdavies »

williamDafoe wrote: post #85

They will lose in court. I am reminded of IBM trying to ban 3rd party disk drive makers for from making disks that fit the IBM disk interface in the 1960s. They lost, too. However, ZLUDA may have to do a clean room reimplementation of all of CUDA, like google did with their javascript reimplementation, however ...

I'm reminded of Apple modifying their hard drives to return "Copyright (c) Apple Computers" to appropriate prodding, and refusing to mount any drive that didn't do so. That one never went to court. These days, you just do the same thing with a little rudimentary crypto.

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

#125

Post by aneutron »

Aloisius wrote: post #110
dotnet00 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This clause would absolutely not fly in a French court, and IANAL but IIRC US case law does allow for reverse engineering for interoperability.

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

#126

Post by paulmd »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #101
mvdtnz wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 softw…

It’s a constant problem with nvidia articles, sites love to make up unapologetic bullshit or cite ancient stuff as if it’s new.

A few months ago all the internet sites were abuzz with jensen’s “recent” comment that “nvidia is fully focused on ai now” and the article that is from makes it clear that it happened in the “mid 2010s”.

Gamersnexus actually had the citation on the screen with “by the mid 2010s” literally on screen, they still went with “recently” and refused to issue a correction or retraction (I asked).

https://youtu.be/VSSb-t76EpU?t=147

Similarly, the “nvidia sells directly to mining farms!” articles from a few years ago, were citing an article that was an estimate of mining sales based on the hash rate… it never accused anyone of selling anything to anyone, but tech media didn’t bother reading the source, and once the first article got rolling everyone just cited that instead.

https://twitter.com/dylan522p/status/1332502890104188929

Just like with apple “parts/defect stories” news sites know these are potent money-makers that drive a lot of clicks, and frankly I think there is a lot of open fanboyism and hostility among tech media today. GN didn’t “accidentally” refuse to do a correction, they want to push that narrative. Just like the “long-term value is mathematically impossible” etc - we have been in a world where reviewers are openly feuding with one of the vendors for over a half decade over the direction of product development and the death of Moores law in terms of pricing and performance increases.

Winning rhetorical points in that debate is more important to tech media nowadays than little things like journalistic integrity, or reading your sources.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tu7pxJXBBn8&t=273s

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

#127

Post by rootkea »

dotnet00 wrote: post #111
Aloisius wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>That said, I believe 11.6 was released in January, 2022. Ah that's right, the Dec 2021 timestamp was for 'last modified', but 'created' is Jan 2022.

How can 'created' timestamp > 'last modified' timestamp?

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

#128

Post by hackerlight »

jstanley wrote: post #4

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

Collective action problem. So, never, because structurally there are game theory reasons pushing individual customers to behave this way. Therefore you can't blame the customer you have to blame the regulator and system.

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

#129

Post by mech422 »

j1elo wrote: post #91
marklar423 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wonder how it's not a trivial workaround to have a separate, anonymous project with the sole scope of disassembling the code (and thus violating the license), while acting as knowledge source for emulators. This way, emulators wouldn't be violating any license, just using technical details learned from third party sources. The anonymous project itself would be attacked by Nvidia, and in case this succeeded, replica…

It appears from the comments here that just disassembling the nvidia code would NOT be a violation? it seems that only disassembling to use in a compatibility layer would be ?

I believe, this 2 stage/project system was how DeCSS for DVDs worked? Someone cracked it and posted the code, which could them be picked up/used by others as it was 'public knowledge' or some such ??

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

#130

Post by mech422 »

mordae wrote: post #82
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

Reversing in order to achieve interop is explicitly legal in EU. Well unless you have to break DRM in process.

I believe, this 2 stage/project system was how DeCSS for DVDs worked? Someone cracked it and posted the code (for interop, in EU), which could then be picked up/used by other projects as it was 'public knowledge' or some such and didn't expose them to legal risk ?
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