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The cynic in me is confused. Nvidia isn’t exactly known for making lots of things open source. What’s their angle here? Is the idea to take steam out of project

by blintz 6y ago

The cynic in me is confused. Nvidia isn’t exactly known for making lots of things open source. What’s their angle here? Is the idea to take steam out of projects like TPU by making viable, open-source alternatives?

sliken 6y ago
Seems pretty straight forward to me. Their maximum profit comes from selling more GPUs, instead of trying to sell a piece of software that has open source competition.
- tpmx 6y ago
  It's not like their sales people are having a hard time pushing the hardware at the moment. (In case someone hasn't noticed: All GPUs have been sold out for months.)
  - sliken 6y ago
    Sure, but they have to think ahead. GPUs make sense for ethereum, but not bitcoin (which moved from GPUs to FPGAs to ASICs). Ethereum is moving from proof of work to proof of stake. I expect the used market to flood with used mining GPUs once that happens.
modeless 6y ago
Commoditize your complement. Nvidia wants to sell neural net training chips. Neural net inference chips are a complement.
tasty_freeze 6y ago
> Nvidia isn’t exactly known for making lots of things open source. It is true nvidia drivers are not open source, but this github page says nvidia has 248 repositories: https://github.com/NVIDIA https://github.com/NVIDIA I'm not sure why the link was submitted today. The repo says it is 3-4 years old.
- kkielhofner 6y ago
  I understand why Nvidia gets a lot of heat from the Linux community regarding the closed source nature of their GPU drivers. That said, I use them on all of my Linux machines and not being a FOSS purist I don't take issue with it. Additionally, most of the complaints come from the Linux desktop community. You rarely see the ML community at large expressing any concern. For the most part they're just trying to get work done and the overall CUDA ecosystem is tremendously useful in that regard. Very usable desktop experience, CUDA just works, the rest of the software ecosystem makes anything else pale by comparison (see the Pytorch ROCm discussion that made the HN front page today). Every few months I take another look at ROCm and frankly don't understand how anyone can take it seriously. In the FOSS/Linux community the discussion around the closed source nature of desktop drivers seriously discounts the amount of FOSS work Nvidia has done.
  - pirocks 6y ago
    My perception is that Nvidia in particular gets a lot of heat because they have bad/buggy drivers which integrate poorly with existing package managers/distros, not just closed source drivers. Anecdotally I have at least one issue on my home desktop which is suspect is caused by Nvidia drivers and poor display hotswap on a work device which is definetly caused by Nvidia.
    - kkielhofner 6y ago
      That's fair but every time the issue is raised on HN, for example, there are anecdotal reports all over the place. Given the ridiculous number of variables I will believe virtually anything to be true for that specific person, configuration, use case, etc. I understand the support for AMD's in kernel drivers (and Mesa), rooting for the underdog, etc but anyone who is being honest will acknowledge there are plenty of issues with their drivers and various configurations as well. Assuming it's six of one, half dozen of the other the fact that Nvidia drivers also bring the entire CUDA ecosystem to any GPU made in the last five years (or more) really tips the scales (overall) for the justification of an Nvidia hardware purchase (all other things being equal).
fortran77 6y ago
NVIDIA has a lot of open source. https://github.com/NVIDIA https://github.com/NVIDIA NVIDIA's business is to sell GPUs. This helps.

by blintz 6y ago

sliken 6y ago

Seems pretty straight forward to me. Their maximum profit comes from selling more GPUs, instead of trying to sell a piece of software that has open source competition.

tpmx 6y ago
It's not like their sales people are having a hard time pushing the hardware at the moment. (In case someone hasn't noticed: All GPUs have been sold out for months.)
- sliken 6y ago
  Sure, but they have to think ahead. GPUs make sense for ethereum, but not bitcoin (which moved from GPUs to FPGAs to ASICs). Ethereum is moving from proof of work to proof of stake. I expect the used market to flood with used mining GPUs once that happens.

modeless 6y ago

Commoditize your complement. Nvidia wants to sell neural net training chips. Neural net inference chips are a complement.

tasty_freeze 6y ago

> Nvidia isn’t exactly known for making lots of things open source. It is true nvidia drivers are not open source, but this github page says nvidia has 248 repositories: https://github.com/NVIDIA https://github.com/NVIDIA I'm not sure why the link was submitted today. The repo says it is 3-4 years old.

kkielhofner 6y ago
I understand why Nvidia gets a lot of heat from the Linux community regarding the closed source nature of their GPU drivers. That said, I use them on all of my Linux machines and not being a FOSS purist I don't take issue with it. Additionally, most of the complaints come from the Linux desktop community. You rarely see the ML community at large expressing any concern. For the most part they're just trying to get work done and the overall CUDA ecosystem is tremendously useful in that regard. Very usable desktop experience, CUDA just works, the rest of the software ecosystem makes anything else pale by comparison (see the Pytorch ROCm discussion that made the HN front page today). Every few months I take another look at ROCm and frankly don't understand how anyone can take it seriously. In the FOSS/Linux community the discussion around the closed source nature of desktop drivers seriously discounts the amount of FOSS work Nvidia has done.
- pirocks 6y ago
  My perception is that Nvidia in particular gets a lot of heat because they have bad/buggy drivers which integrate poorly with existing package managers/distros, not just closed source drivers. Anecdotally I have at least one issue on my home desktop which is suspect is caused by Nvidia drivers and poor display hotswap on a work device which is definetly caused by Nvidia.
  - kkielhofner 6y ago
    That's fair but every time the issue is raised on HN, for example, there are anecdotal reports all over the place. Given the ridiculous number of variables I will believe virtually anything to be true for that specific person, configuration, use case, etc. I understand the support for AMD's in kernel drivers (and Mesa), rooting for the underdog, etc but anyone who is being honest will acknowledge there are plenty of issues with their drivers and various configurations as well. Assuming it's six of one, half dozen of the other the fact that Nvidia drivers also bring the entire CUDA ecosystem to any GPU made in the last five years (or more) really tips the scales (overall) for the justification of an Nvidia hardware purchase (all other things being equal).

fortran77 6y ago

NVIDIA has a lot of open source. https://github.com/NVIDIA https://github.com/NVIDIA NVIDIA's business is to sell GPUs. This helps.