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My new theory is the Nvidia driver can't be GPL and in the Linux kernel, because then they couldn't ban datacenter usage of their GeForce cards by not licensing
by etaioinshrdlu 6y ago
My new theory is the Nvidia driver can't be GPL and in the Linux kernel, because then they couldn't ban datacenter usage of their GeForce cards by not licensing the driver for datacenter use. The upcharge on the Tesla series of cards is huge compared to GeForce for mostly the same chips. (For those not aware, see if you can find and GTX 2080 or 3080 from a cloud provider. It's not a thing. This is actually a huge deal for the machine learning industry, massively increasing costs. I doubt Google would have made the TPU if not for this.)
Also, their driver is very complex, and they are constantly improving their hardware. They don't want to be dependent on getting new features and performance improvements upstreamed.
- amelius 6y ago> not licensing the driver for datacenter use. Why are these kind of licenses even allowed. If I buy a product, surely I can do with it as I please? Also, why doesn't TSMC slap a license on every IC that leaves their fab, taking (say) a 30% profit from every application in which their ICs are being used?
- sandworm101 6y agolol. When was the last time anyone actually bought a copy of software? You own nothing. You are a party to a contract written by nvidia and signed by you when you installed their driver. You can do only what they allow and they can yank thier permission whenever they see fit. Not happy? That is what makes FOSS so appealing.
- vbezhenar 6y ago> When was the last time anyone actually bought a copy of software? Satya Nadella bought Skyrim recently. All of it.
- jackvalentine 6y agoSkyrim includes licensed code such as Bink Video.
- manquer 6y agoMicrosoft did, even satya is perhaps not rich enough to spend 7.5 B on his own.
- tylerhou 6y ago> Also, why doesn't TSMC slap a license on every IC that leaves their fab, taking (say) a 30% profit from every application in which their ICs are being used? Because companies would stop using TSMC chips...? Not to mention the logistical problems to attribute "profit" to any chip in particular.
- lostmsu 6y agoI don't think not using TSMC is a viable option anymore. There's (slightly worse?) Samsung alternative, but they can't satisfy the demand.
- amelius 6y agoAlso, if TSMC introduces the license, then Samsung may do the same. But perhaps I'm too much thinking from the perspective of what large US based businesses would do.
- tylerhou 6y agoFor GPUs, I agree that you currently have to use TSMC. But if TSMC were to charge 30% of profits, you would almost certainly see a migration to other fabs which would harm TSMC's long-term profitability.
- formerly_proven 6y ago> For GPUs, I agree that you currently have to use TSMC. RTX 30 is manufactured by Samsung.
- bleepblorp 6y agoHave enough details about TSMC contracts ever been released/leaked to know they don't do this? I don't follow the semiconductor industry closely enough to know anything about TSMC's business practices, but these kind of contracts are far from unheard of in other sectors.
- zamadatix 6y agoIt's cheaper than designing, manufacturing, and stocking more chip models. It's also cheaper than designing and manufacturing 1 model and physically disabling the pieces after. You could try to regulate that what is manufactured is not gimped on it's way to the consumer for ideological reasons but in the end you'd just end up paying more for a separate physical model because the profit margins on these advanced use cases are simply what drives GPU design. As for the royalty licensing TSMC is ahead in abilities and has captured an enormous portion of the market but it's not so far ahead that it can eat however far into customer income streams as it wants. Other manufacturers still exist and get deals, Nvidia is using Samsung 8nm for the latest round of GPUs for example. If it continues to increase its lead then we may see that type of agreement grow though.
- nine_k 6y agoSure you can do anything with the hardware which you actually ha e bought! The problem is in the software (the driver) which you never can buy, only license under a long list of conditions which prohibit specific uses. If e.g. Noveau could implement interfaces needed for CUDA, you could probably try to use a 3050 in a datacenter. I bet NVidia has provisions against this turn of events, too.
- amelius 6y ago> The problem is in the software (the driver) which you never can buy, only license under a long list of conditions which prohibit specific uses. Ok, so who gave software a special status over hardware? Is this desirable? Can we reverse it?
- jiggawatts 6y agoYes, maybe, but step #1 is to sue Oracle. See if you can convince them to "let you" publish a benchmark of their database management system. Start there.
- Retric 6y agoAmusingly, Oracle is known as the slowest major DB despite their heavy handed tactics. So, actual benchmarks might actually help their sales rather than people simply assuming it’s unacceptably slow.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mcny 6y agoDid this change recently? I remember my database professor in college was adamant that when they talk about databases, I am to assume some things as a given (going by memory, am probably not completely accurate): that the data set is large enough that cannot fit in memory that storage is orders of magnitude slower than memory and memory is orders of magnitude slower than processor cache Oracle has the “best implementation” given these constraints. Is that not the case?
- formerly_proven 6y agoThe EULA / driver license may prevent you from reverse engineering the driver to enable these features, but that is only legal protection. nVidia sells these cards saying they don't provide feature X; nVidia also sells some cards, which do provide feature X (at a different price point). There is imho nothing per se wrong with this practice. The silicon being the same in both products is an implementation detail.
- labawi 6y agoIf you sold pork with different price on the condition of eating it in a wood vs. a stone house, some people would consider it market segmentation or maximizing profits. Others might call it illegal price discrimination.
- srtjstjsj 6y agoWho calls it illegal?
- stale2002 6y ago> nothing per se wrong with this practice. There is nothing wrong with someone doing whatever they want with a product that they now own. If someone wants to modify their own hardware, that is their right.
- matheusmoreira 6y ago> If I buy a product, surely I can do with it as I please? We no longer buy products these days. We license them. Another form of rent that allows the true owner to maintain control. Somehow this became the norm.
- closeparen 6y agoThis is called a royalty and is a pretty common business arrangement when licensing e.g. a patent for your product or some stock footage for your movie.
- dheera 6y agoMaybe you could just use it for the datacenter anyway. NVIDIA doesn't have a right to know how you are using it. What are they going to do, call you and ask how you are using the GPUs? Don't answer. Message you on Facebook? Don't answer. Visit you? Don't publish your address. Alternatively, just don't call it a datacenter. Just call it a private internet gaming cafe or something of that sort. NVIDIA doesn't have a right to know what's actually inside.
- amelius 6y agoI suppose you may get raided by an organization like the BSA upon suspicion (e.g. when you get reported by a disgruntled employee). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSA_(The_Software_Alliance) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSA_(The_Software_Alliance)
- dheera 6y agoBuild your dreams in a country whose government won't give a damn about enforcing it then. I can think of several where you can safely do so, and the government will just laugh it off as a waste of time if someone tried to file a suit about something like this. The US will fall behind in tech if it insists on enforceability of things like this.
- freeone3000 6y agoAll of the BSA members are US tech companies. One could argue the enforceability of US Copyright law is to protect this industry.
- Polylactic_acid 6y agoMost companies would rather just buy the enterprise card than go through all of this hassle. Its not even a rip off when you consider that the enterprise cards pay for the research and development on cuda which puts enterprise grade tools in the hands of students and hobbiests. AMDs version is simply not supporting their version of cuda (rocm) on consumer cards (the navi ones anyway)
- tpxl 6y ago>Why are these kind of licenses even allowed. They're not in (some parts of) Europe.
- aaomidi 6y agoMeanwhile people say capitalism drives innovation. How much is nvidia single handedly holding back innovation and new discoveries?
- paledot 6y agoThat viewpoint is adorably naïve. The Computer History Museum in Mountain View pretty clearly falls into three categories: government projects, genuinely innovative ideas from the private sector that failed, and the people who ripped off those ideas and made a killing. There is very little overlap between the last two categories.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago> The Computer History Museum in Mountain View pretty clearly falls into three categories: government projects, genuinely innovative ideas from the private sector that failed, and the people who ripped off those ideas and made a killing. There is very little overlap between the last two categories. This is ignoring two very important things. The first is the number of government-funded projects that burned a mountain of cash and led to nothing. Unfortunately this is the rule rather than the exception in modern times because modern government has been captured by interest groups that divert money from where it's supposed to be going to themselves, which makes everything cost ten times more than it did when the government was funding the Apollo program and ARPANET. So you can't just say "government fund more stuff" without fixing that first. And the second is that private companies inventing stuff only to see somebody else successfully commercialize it is still causing it to be invented. And the overlap between invention and commercial success can be very little and still cause people to do it, because the reward when it happens is very large.
- gruez 6y agoYour second sentence doesn't contradict the first sentence. Capitalism (or more precisely, IP law) can simultaneously drive innovation and hold back innovation. The more worthwhile question is whether capitalism drives more innovation overall, but that's hard to prove either way with snarky 1 liner.
- kanox 6y agoThis sounds dubious, isn't it easier/more reliable to just block parts of the hardware using fuses?
- dannyw 6y agoHow? That’s like saying an Intel i7 can’t be used in a datacentre.
- fomine3 6y agoTo differentiate products for consumer and enterprise, Intel disables ECC RAM support for Core i5 or upper series and enables for Xeon E series (i3 or below is sold for both market so not disabled). NVIDIA reduces (actually reduced on die) FP64 calculation units and disables ECC RAM support for GeForce (except some Titans) to not to be used in datacenter. Previously it works because most scientific calculations requires FP64 calculation and reliability is matter. But now is the deep learning era, it won't need FP64 calculation and rare RAM error isn't matter. So they must enforce the EURA to avoid dirt cheap Geforce to be used in datacenter for deep learning.
- Polylactic_acid 6y agoNo because they want students to have cuda to learn with and home devs to have so they develop tools for it. Then when the enterprises use it for profit they have to pay for the development of the platform.
- userbinator 6y agoDon't forget the fact that most of their silicon is basically the same and you can easily change it with some hardware/software mods[1] --- I think they have tried to lock that down a bit more, but ultimately it's a cat-and-mouse game and the only ones who win are those willing to ignore the insanity of Imaginary Property laws and take matters into their own hands. [1] https://www.eevblog.com/forum/general-computing/hacking-nvidia-cards-into-their-professional-counterparts/ https://www.eevblog.com/forum/general-computing/hacking-nvid...
- breck 6y agoI've spent a lot of time trying to come up with a better term for these laws, and I think your "Imaginary Property" phrase here is better than anything I've come up with. Thanks!
- Apofis 6y agoAMD does the same thing and so does Intel, this is for CPU's too. The yield on silicon has a probability that some transistors wont work, so they disable those cores and create lower end models. Sometimes, to meet demand they do just simply disable cores, as it's also cheaper to have one process. Tesla does the same thing as well with their cars, funny enough.
- AtlasBarfed 6y agoIBM did it for their mainframes back in the day.
- qayxc 6y agoThey still do to this day.