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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

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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?

Last modified was probably carried over from what the file had when it was packaged into the installer, with created being the time for when I actually installed the toolkit.

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

#133
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That works against small fishes, but it would be a different story if AMD or Intel take part.

Then it wastes double the time, and makes double the lawyers rich :D

It at least increases the amount of precedence regarding the subject. That would eventually decrease the time such trials take.

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

#135
post #91

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…

Nothing about this prevents you from developing a CUDA conformance test suite that can be used to verify that any given CUDA implementation is functioning properly. Nvidia wouldn't even be allowed to take it down.

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

#136
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AIUI, these libraries are generally implemented as shared objects that the resulting binary has to link to. So it should be quite possible to reimplement the interface that they expose, moreover something like ROCM has to do that anyway in order to compile HIP source code from scratch. Looks like that's what https://github.com/ROCm/hipDNN/ does.

Possible, yes, but reimplementing the CUDA runtime and the official libraries and getting them up to par with the originals is a much bigger task than just doing the former and running Nvidias libraries in it. AMD did try to do a complete reimplementation of cuDNN with hipDNN but "last commit 5 years ago" doesn't inspire much confidence in it being competitive with cuDNN proper.

They don't have any tensor cores so there is not much reason for them to work on this.

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

#137
In a way, this is great news for less regulated markets because it might give them a cost advantage in ML services commensurate with their lower overall development costs. This might help developing markets compete with established market leading countries.

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

#138
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.

First sale is not a thing in my country. Resale defaults to forbidden, and when allowed by original creator, is simply subject to the same royalty and licence protections as initial sale of the copyrighted work. Clean room reverse engineering is however allowed.

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

#139

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.

Emulation via an API wrapper is neither of these though.

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

#140
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.

I'm focused on what the article, and the full headline claims. "Nvidia bans using translation layers for CUDA software to run on other chips — new restriction apparently targets some Chinese GPU makers and ZLUDA" The time the clause was added also matters, because if it's ~3 years old and since then various translation layers backed by other large competitors have been released without any open lawsuit, it's a lot le…

I'm pretty sure that would be a dead clause since it is more restrictive than reverse engineering for compatibility, and every GPU and CPU is internally a translation layer...

So, it's essentially a clause flying in the face of antitrust law. NVidia wants to try it in court and pay more fines? Let's go. :)

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