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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

#141

Post by AstralStorm »

mech422 wrote: post #129
j1elo wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ??

It is already prohibited on copyright grounds. They put the extra clause to "close" some of the reverse engineering provisions not covered.

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

#142

Post by cm2187 »

Even for large ML/LLM models, how large is the part of the code that interacts with CUDA? In other words, how much of a moat does nvidia have if a better competitor comes up? My intuition is that the code itself could probably ported in a few weeks, ie if there is a moat, it doesn't consist in the CUDA implementation.

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

#144

Post by nimbius »

Looks like nvidia is trying to keep the lynchpin of their entire business model from crumbling underneath them. ZLUDA lets you run unmodified CUDA applications with near-native performance on AMD GPUs.

https://github.com/vosen/ZLUDA

With Triton looking to eclipse CUDA entirely, im not sure this prohibition does anything more than placate casual shareholders.

https://openai.com/research/triton

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

#146

Post by Zambyte »

> 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.

Does this actually have any legal weight besides being conveyed by a multi-trillion dollar company?

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

#149

Post by apetresc »

nimbius wrote: post #144

Looks like nvidia is trying to keep the lynchpin of their entire business model from crumbling underneath them. ZLUDA lets you run unmodified CUDA applications with near-native performance on AMD GPUs. https://github.com/vosen/ZLUDA With Triton looking to eclipse CUDA entirely, im not sure this prohibition does anything more than placate casual shareholders. https://openai.com/research/triton

What signs are you seeing that lead you to conclude that Triton is "looking to eclipse CUDA entirely"? I'm not much of an industry insider, but from my vantage point Triton has barely made any waves at all.

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

#150

Post by FredFS456 »

Nvidia trying to prevent adversarial interop by using EULAs. I doubt the Chinese companies will care, Intel and AMD may be sued if they don't comply. My understanding is that this means Intel/AMD will have to spend more time writing middleware (eg. ROCm's replacements for cuBLAS and cu* libraries) rather than run Nvidia's existing middleware on their own CUDA translation layer.
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