I think the point of open cuda is to run it on non NVIDIA gpus. Once you have to buy NVIDIA gpus what’s the point. If we had true you competition I think it would be far easier to buy devices with more vram and thus we might be able to run llama 405b someday locally. Once you already bought the NVIDIA cards what’s the point
The NVidia software stack has the "no use in datacenters" clause. Is this a workaround for that?
It seems to me at least, yes.
You still need ptxas, but this piece of Software technically isn't deployed in the datacenter, if you AOT compile your kernels. Its usage seems more than fine, especially considering you could just run it on a system without Nvidia GPUs or old Tesla GPUs while still targeting eg. sm_89.
If using ptxas compiled kernels in the datacenter counts as indirect
datacenter usage, I don't know.
Also, technically you are never presented with the GeForce software license during the CUDA download and installation process, which sparks the question if it is even applicable. In this case, all you would need is the open source driver and you could stuff as many consumer GPUs in your datacenter as you want.
However, it technically governs all software downloadable from nvidia.com. I'm no legal expert if this matters, but I would assume consumers would be fine, but companies may be held to a higher standard of seeking out licenses which might govern what they are about to use.