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Resistor hack turns a Nvidia GTX690 into a Quadro K5000 or Tesla K10

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Re: Resistor hack turns a Nvidia GTX690 into a Quadro K5000 or Tesla K10

#91

Post by sliverstorm »

wtallis wrote: post #66
sliverstorm wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it refers to crippling a chip that has already passed QA, it's a symptom of insufficient competitive pressure. I don't know, as I'm familiar with it early in the development of a process node they sell every top-bin-SKU they can make, and as the process matures they just have too many top-bin parts. I can only guess your argument is that in a competitive market they would start dropping the price of the top-bin…

When a working chip is crippled, that's a destruction of economic value. It may be offset in the long run by helping sustain Moore's Law, but that claim is very much in need of evidence. You have to actually consider what the computer market would look like if we could now buy the flagship CPU from 3-4 years ago for little more than the marginal cost on a mature process. That level of performance is good enough for m…

consider what the computer market would look like if we could now buy the flagship CPU from 3-4 years ago for little more than the marginal cost on a mature process.

If that was what the market wanted, don't you think that is what the market would get? I think the trouble is you are thinking "the marginal cost on a mature process" would be a few dollars.

You're right, the silicon would be a few dollars- but after testing and packaging and all that jazz, I believe most mainstream high performance desktop CPUs have a marginal cost of around $30. (Why not cheaper, like a 10MHz ARM chip? Package is expensive, due to cooling needs and pins for power & DRAM interface) So, perhaps you bring it to market for $40.

This chip you're selling probably performs like a mid-range part in today terms, in the $100-150 range. But when you consider TCO due to power draw and cooling, the numbers start to get closer.

I haven't carefully laid this out on paper or anything, but point being, if such a chip would sell so well, why is nobody doing it?

It becomes much clearer if you increase the contrast by comparing today's parts to those from a decade ago. The clocks are similar, but the performance has come a long ways due to improvements in IPC, multicore, updates to the memory interface, etc.

Re: Resistor hack turns a Nvidia GTX690 into a Quadro K5000 or Tesla K10

#92

Post by jsmeaton »

GhotiFish wrote: post #49
danilocampos wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about principles, it's about economics. This is a matter of price discrimination. Nvidia wants to be sure they have a chance to sell their gear to every single person who has money to spend on graphics cards at a range of price points. Consumers have smaller wallets than professionals, but both have similar needs. So the company performs a "hack" that allows them to extract maximum revenues from each segment…

Yes. That's a wonderful rhetoric, but really what it's saying is that the only people who don't deserve being screwed are the people that make it a hobby to tinker. There's many other areas of life to specialize in, not just technology/engineering side of things. I think general fair play trumps an incentive to learn and hack.

We see this behaviour in lots of industries. Car manufacturers will nerf the lower end vehicles so that there is more 'value' in purchasing a higher end car for enthusiasts.

And to hit a little more close to home - think of all the web companies doing exactly the same thing. There are usually 3 or 4 price points, each segment operating within the same code, but features enabled for the higher price points.

I see the same thing happening here. The 'performance' of the cards are the same after this hack, but the driver software 'lights up' exposing extra features. You could say the price differences pay for the driver features.

Re: Resistor hack turns a Nvidia GTX690 into a Quadro K5000 or Tesla K10

#93

Post by cookiecaper »

rumcajz wrote: post #44
memset wrote: post #23

The corresponding reddit thread is quite insightful: "It is far cheaper to make one very good chip for the highest market, and modify it slightly for lower end markets... Now, this is the part you hate: this is the only viable alternative. There's no point demanding different designs for different market segments as that would significantly increase the cost you, the consumer, pays. You can demand chips be sold at lo…

Lot of industries are able to survive without extensive market segmentation. Why should it not be possible for HW manufacturers?

Should we force our industries to survive, or should we allow them to charge what people willingly pay (for non-essential goods or services)?

Re: Resistor hack turns a Nvidia GTX690 into a Quadro K5000 or Tesla K10

#94

Post by cookiecaper »

jsmeaton wrote: post #92
GhotiFish wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. That's a wonderful rhetoric, but really what it's saying is that the only people who don't deserve being screwed are the people that make it a hobby to tinker. There's many other areas of life to specialize in, not just technology/engineering side of things. I think general fair play trumps an incentive to learn and hack.

We see this behaviour in lots of industries. Car manufacturers will nerf the lower end vehicles so that there is more 'value' in purchasing a higher end car for enthusiasts. And to hit a little more close to home - think of all the web companies doing exactly the same thing. There are usually 3 or 4 price points, each segment operating within the same code, but features enabled for the higher price points. I see the…

In the case of software as a service, different pricing tiers are at least semi-justifiable because you can argue that additional featuresets require more system resources to be added to the hardware infrastructure undergirding the site. If you want the more demanding features, you must compensate the provider for the extra infrastructure hit they'll be taking. Therefore, it doesn't feel as lame as intentionally performing a simple downgrade with the hope that you'll be able to trick others into paying more money for something that's already there if you know how to remove the foam/hack the resistor/whatever.

Re: Resistor hack turns a Nvidia GTX690 into a Quadro K5000 or Tesla K10

#95

Post by cookiecaper »

eupharis wrote: post #28
sargun wrote: post #5

I don't entirely know how I feel about this hack. I feel like this is really similar to unlocking the "Professional" version of a piece of software with a serial key generator. Although, I understand hardware is dramatically different than software, it's using the same principal -- the same reusable bits to assemble many different products, and then just using tools to mask features unless a user pays for them. Then…

Sargun, your point was, I think, why is it that we treat software modding differently than we treat hardware modding? The chorus of "The hardware is hardware, and we can do whatever we want!" misses the point. It is a good point sargun. One I wish I had an answer for. Perhaps one explanation lies in the fact that some level of risk and skill and ingenuity and research is required to actually mod hardware. So we feel…

It's about the volatility and potential danger to copyright holders. If something requires a hardware hack, it's always going to take that much effort to apply. There's no easy way to instantaneously apply that hack to millions of peoples' hardware with minimal human effort.

With a software hack, it's much more fearful because once it gets packaged as a crack, it's four clicks to a perceived infringement on the copyright holder's rights. A barrier to entry this low makes software mods much more frightful to rightsholders.

Though the grandparent is right that these are similar practices in principle, people react differently because one is perceived as a widespread threat to the traditional mechanism of creative livelihood and the other is perceived as an advanced hack that will be done only be a couple of tinkerers. Most people are happy to provide encouragement and information to the latter group, but are more worried about the first group, as most software companies depend heavily on copyright law for their business model.

Re: Resistor hack turns a Nvidia GTX690 into a Quadro K5000 or Tesla K10

#96

Post by Orva »

hkmurakami wrote: post #40

>The tight asses have decided that if you want this feature under Linux you have to get a Quadro which has Mosaic support :palm:. So naturally I decided to look at how mod the card... I just absolutely loved reading this line. I had been away from 'hacker culture' for nearly two decades (probably ever since I became serious about my studies back in middle school and I stopped 'having fun' with my studies and interest…

This made me smile. Also reminded me of http://prog21.dadgum.com/169.html

Re: Resistor hack turns a Nvidia GTX690 into a Quadro K5000 or Tesla K10

#97

Post by cookiecaper »

ISL wrote: post #38
eupharis wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sargun, your point was, I think, why is it that we treat software modding differently than we treat hardware modding? The chorus of "The hardware is hardware, and we can do whatever we want!" misses the point. It is a good point sargun. One I wish I had an answer for. Perhaps one explanation lies in the fact that some level of risk and skill and ingenuity and research is required to actually mod hardware. So we feel…

One possible future: Bits exist physically on my hardware. I get to twiddle them however I want. Furthermore, I can speak freely about having done so. This reality is at least partly responsible for the emergence of software as a service. Can't crack what you don't have.

Rosetta Stone is a great example of this. After years of heavy piracy and failed client-side protections, their solution was to make the program web and subscription based. While rips of services like this are still possible, they're much more effort than cracking a client-side application.

Re: Resistor hack turns a Nvidia GTX690 into a Quadro K5000 or Tesla K10

#99

Post by chmike »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #56
ippisl wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible for nvidia to replace the resistors with one-time-programable memory ,and program it at factory. And it's cheap, it's being used in $1 FPGA from silicon blue. And they'll probably do this in their next chip.

I don't even know if they'd bother to do this due to the handful of people who are actually going to buy the gaming card to make it into a pro card. Most people who are probably doing this are hobbyists at best. Most professionals would probably just have their company buying the cards anyway, and this hack won't at all change that. Actually, it being a hardware hack rather than a software hack makes it even less app…

Some people could turn this into a small business I guess.

Re: Resistor hack turns a Nvidia GTX690 into a Quadro K5000 or Tesla K10

#100

Post by socillion »

gdsimoes wrote: post #53
memset wrote: post #23

The corresponding reddit thread is quite insightful: "It is far cheaper to make one very good chip for the highest market, and modify it slightly for lower end markets... Now, this is the part you hate: this is the only viable alternative. There's no point demanding different designs for different market segments as that would significantly increase the cost you, the consumer, pays. You can demand chips be sold at lo…

I think it's incredible how some people enjoy getting screwed over. I have a friend that actually thinks it's a good thing that iPhones break easily.

That seems out of context; it is fairly common for people to abuse return policies like Apple's to get free upgrades after (un)intentionally breaking their hardware.
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