14 ms·

China: Nvidia Loses Face and a 10 Million PC Order over Linux Drivers and NRE's

145 points by esbwhat 14y ago

bugmenot 14y ago
Link works for me.
NiekvdMaas 14y ago
It seems the site is down, so here is the Google cache link: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2012/6/21/china-nvidia-loses-face-and-a-10-million-pc-order-over-linux-drivers-and-nres.aspx&strip=1 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...
- Albuca 14y ago
  Thanks for posting the link! EDIT: And I get downvoted for saying thanks... so thanks. EDIT EDIT: And a upvote. Cheers!
  - SkyMarshal 14y ago
    Protip - if all you want to post is "thanks" or "cool" or something like that, just upvote and don't post anything, that's what the upvote button is for. The parent poster will know which one the upvotes mean. Otherwise, your post will tend to get downvoted around here for not saying anything a simple upvote can. 1. http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - Albuca 14y ago
      Thanks for the info SkyMarshal!
- beernutz 14y ago
  Thank you for posting the cache link.
y0ghur7_xxx 14y ago
I am happy that the Chinese invest this much in Linux. This obviously motivates big hardware makers to release quality/OS drivers for their products, and in the end I benefit from that as well. I remember the times I had to hack around for days to get some particular piece of hardware to work. That happens less and less, and now most of the stuff I buy just works. Video cards and capture cards are the big exception for now, they somehow work sometimes, but this is getting better every day, and this news takes us in that direction even more.
- davidw 14y ago
  > I am happy that the Chinese invest this much in Linux. I wonder how much of that investment finds its way back into upstream projects. Really - I don't know one way or the other, although I have a suspicion that they don't really 'get' openness and so probably violate the GPL.
  - dredmorbius 14y ago
    The ultimate incentive to contribute is that maintaining your own separate fork of development (and backporting/merging upstream changes) eventually becomes too challenging for most organizations. Now, for an organization operating at China scale, it's possible that a fork could be sustained (so, the "China Syndrome" becomes the "China Fork"), but it's likely still not an optimal strategy, and for mundane areas there could still be substantial leak-back. So long as changes aren't distributed "outside the organization" (quotes applied in context of defining "organization" relative to a Communist state in which nominally all property is State property), legal GPL code release requirements aren't triggered. Though you and what nuclear-tipped army plan on enforcing that against Beijing is of course another matter.
- wmf 14y ago
  I am happy that the Chinese invest this much in Linux. This obviously motivates big hardware makers to release quality/OS drivers for their products, and in the end I benefit from that as well. I don't see this happening. We're now seeing Chinese SoCs built from western IP cores (e.g. Allwinner) and soon there will be all-Chinese chips. They don't bother to write any English documentation and they just throw barely-working, uncommented drivers over the wall, never bothering to participate in upstream development at all. (Note that this is only marginally worse than traditional western embedded development, so I'm not really criticizing the Chinese electronics industry.)
vidarh 14y ago
As much as I want this to be true, I don't see anything in terms of sources, I've never heard of this site before, and the style of writing doesn't exactly make it seem very credible. I haven't tried very hard, but didn't immediately find any other sites with this news that weren't simply linking to or regurgitating this article. Losing or winning a contract this size is something you'd expect a lot of well known news sites to cover.
- vlasta2 14y ago
  Also, there is one thing about the title of this story that I do not understand. Why would a failed negotiation imply that "nvidia is losing face"?
  - dewiz 14y ago
    as far as I can understand the convoluted article, the losing face part refers to Linus' outing
    - obtu 14y ago
      The connection they imply is doubtful. They give no date for the Nvidia negotiation, but (assuming it isn't misrepresented) it must have taken a lot of time (enough that the Chinese could pick something from AMD in the end). And I doubt Linus heard about it, either (the “behind the curtain reason for Linus' frustration” idea must have come from someone unfamiliar with him or the video of the event). The only commonality is that both find Nvidia hard to work with, in different contexts.
    - boralben 14y ago
      My interpretation is that Nvidia caused the Chinese to lose face, and this what will doom them to lose future contracts. I've been living here in China for 6 months now, and the social aspects of business, like face, are really nuanced, but so so important. I don't really understand them yet.
  - drucken 14y ago
    The author clearly means Nvidia losing face with respect to China. This concept of "losing face" may seem like just a small word or minor loss of reputation to Westerners, but in a sense is more important in China (and to varying extent all over the Far East) than even money. If the story is true, and the depth of detail leads me to believe it is very likely, then the reputational damage to Nvidia would be high and, more importantly, entrenched (an aspect of face that makes it different from mere temporary reputational loss) due the public service, government angle and the size of the proposal.
lifeisstillgood 14y ago
China is investing in Linux for one simple reason - they can have someone read the source code. A (low-level?) war is going on right now between US and China - and the battlefield are the hardware and software that runs the world. Can't read the code - then we don't trust that you aren't spying on us. Unfortunately I doubt they will extend the same rights to their citizens. On the Nvidia side, this is either the dumbest commercial move ever,(#) or they really do have quite a lot to hide in that code. (#) Really I cannot imagine anyone turning down an order on 10 M PCs. Whats in that code base? Edit: @virdah - thank you for pointing out the should-have-been obvious.
- anonymfus 14y ago
  Microsoft provides Windows and Office source code for Chinese government since 2003 as part of Microsoft Government Security Program.
  - __alexs 14y ago
    Can you compile a working system from that source?
  - rbanffy 14y ago
    Does the Chinese government compiles and builds their own version or they trust Microsoft will use the exact same source they have shown? In Brazil we had some interesting questioning regarding the security of electronic voting systems - in 2002, I was on the team that developed the WinCE version of the electronic ballot - we had the source for the application and some of the device drivers, but we didn't have the sources for the compilers, libraries and operating system. Any of those layers could harbor a known (or unknown) backdoor that could allow tampering with the voting data. I'm pretty sure my compiler was clean (I installed my development machine from my MSDN subscription CDs before the corporate IT folks could get their hands on it, so I imagine nobody could have sneaked into my house to place the CDs in my backpack)
- ImprovedSilence 14y ago
  Well, there's that, and the fact that China is notorious for reverse engineering, and basically just stealing the technology and making their own knock-offs. I don't blame Nvidia for not giving them the source code.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
BadassFractal 14y ago
The article mentions that some of the brightest minds of NVIDIA are now working in China on its future generations of CPUs/GPUs. I don't have the full context, but is it possible that we're seeing the first baby steps of a reverse brain drain?
- jlmendezbonini 14y ago
  It's been happening for a while now (2009 article)[1] and there are probably earlier reports. [1] http://techcrunch.com/2009/10/17/beware-the-reverse-brain-drain-to-india-and-china/ http://techcrunch.com/2009/10/17/beware-the-reverse-brain-dr...
- wmf 14y ago
  I've seen it. The Chinese government is "buying back" their top people in the US.
jc-denton 14y ago
> As much as I want this to be true. So all the open source "enthusiasts" who are sooooo happy about this should really learn to think. 1.) Open Source drivers does not mean better drivers. AMD and Intel drivers are crap under Linux. Just google "I hate Linux graphics" to get a more elaborate explanation about this. 2.) Assuming the story is true and the Chinese gov wants open specs and drivers. Would you hand it over?! Nvidia employs a lot of really smart people and their GPU technology is based on decades of research. While I can't judge how much useful open drivers and specs are for the competition keep in mind that the Chinese gov also works on their own CPU / GPU tech. They would probably just rip you off. Paying for your stuff until they figure out how it works and then sell their own. It happened to large European and US companies before. So it is perfectly reasonable that Nvidia is protective.
jc-denton 14y ago
> But they don't need to provide that source, just hardware specs. Intels and AMDs drivers are open source and they suck. So no they do NOT need just the specs.
mchatfie 14y ago
IMHO it's a good move by NVIDIA. The main differentiating factor between NVIDIA and AMD are the drivers. Release the driver source on any platform and NVIDIA loose their competitive edge. They are leaps and bounds better when it comes to OpenGL support. I can't comment from a DirectX perspective, but they always seem to be pushing the boundaries where AMD play catch up. This would be worth hundreds of millions so a 10 million order has to be taken in perspective.
- rbanffy 14y ago
  Yet, their proprietary drivers are a problem for many clients. If I spend US$ 1000 troubleshooting a multi-GPU number crusher that's money I could have spent in better hardware with drivers that just worked.
- ginko 14y ago
  This makes is even more mind boggling that AMD isn't opensourcing their own driver. I'm sure a lot of the current driver problems could be fixed quite fast.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
gcb 14y ago
Summary: China asks nvidia for weird list of cpu support, oy maybe opensource drivers (not clear). Nvidia says no. Article wonders Chinese will knock on amds door. ...who might say the same, given track record.
aidenn0 14y ago
Probably a good business move on nVidia's part; doing a lot of extra work for free, for a single sale in the hopes that it leads to a better relationship is typically not profitable. Furthermore if China wasn't willing to spend $10s of millions more on a $300 million project, one has to wonder how important it was to them.

145 points by esbwhat 14y ago

Link works for me.

It seems the site is down, so here is the Google cache link: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2012/6/21/china-nvidia-loses-face-and-a-10-million-pc-order-over-linux-drivers-and-nres.aspx&strip=1 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...

Albuca 14y ago
Thanks for posting the link! EDIT: And I get downvoted for saying thanks... so thanks. EDIT EDIT: And a upvote. Cheers!
- SkyMarshal 14y ago
  Protip - if all you want to post is "thanks" or "cool" or something like that, just upvote and don't post anything, that's what the upvote button is for. The parent poster will know which one the upvotes mean. Otherwise, your post will tend to get downvoted around here for not saying anything a simple upvote can. 1. http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - Albuca 14y ago
    Thanks for the info SkyMarshal!
beernutz 14y ago
Thank you for posting the cache link.

y0ghur7_xxx 14y ago

I am happy that the Chinese invest this much in Linux. This obviously motivates big hardware makers to release quality/OS drivers for their products, and in the end I benefit from that as well. I remember the times I had to hack around for days to get some particular piece of hardware to work. That happens less and less, and now most of the stuff I buy just works. Video cards and capture cards are the big exception for now, they somehow work sometimes, but this is getting better every day, and this news takes us in that direction even more.

davidw 14y ago
> I am happy that the Chinese invest this much in Linux. I wonder how much of that investment finds its way back into upstream projects. Really - I don't know one way or the other, although I have a suspicion that they don't really 'get' openness and so probably violate the GPL.
- dredmorbius 14y ago
  The ultimate incentive to contribute is that maintaining your own separate fork of development (and backporting/merging upstream changes) eventually becomes too challenging for most organizations. Now, for an organization operating at China scale, it's possible that a fork could be sustained (so, the "China Syndrome" becomes the "China Fork"), but it's likely still not an optimal strategy, and for mundane areas there could still be substantial leak-back. So long as changes aren't distributed "outside the organization" (quotes applied in context of defining "organization" relative to a Communist state in which nominally all property is State property), legal GPL code release requirements aren't triggered. Though you and what nuclear-tipped army plan on enforcing that against Beijing is of course another matter.
wmf 14y ago
I am happy that the Chinese invest this much in Linux. This obviously motivates big hardware makers to release quality/OS drivers for their products, and in the end I benefit from that as well. I don't see this happening. We're now seeing Chinese SoCs built from western IP cores (e.g. Allwinner) and soon there will be all-Chinese chips. They don't bother to write any English documentation and they just throw barely-working, uncommented drivers over the wall, never bothering to participate in upstream development at all. (Note that this is only marginally worse than traditional western embedded development, so I'm not really criticizing the Chinese electronics industry.)

vidarh 14y ago

As much as I want this to be true, I don't see anything in terms of sources, I've never heard of this site before, and the style of writing doesn't exactly make it seem very credible. I haven't tried very hard, but didn't immediately find any other sites with this news that weren't simply linking to or regurgitating this article. Losing or winning a contract this size is something you'd expect a lot of well known news sites to cover.

vlasta2 14y ago
Also, there is one thing about the title of this story that I do not understand. Why would a failed negotiation imply that "nvidia is losing face"?
- dewiz 14y ago
  as far as I can understand the convoluted article, the losing face part refers to Linus' outing
  - obtu 14y ago
    The connection they imply is doubtful. They give no date for the Nvidia negotiation, but (assuming it isn't misrepresented) it must have taken a lot of time (enough that the Chinese could pick something from AMD in the end). And I doubt Linus heard about it, either (the “behind the curtain reason for Linus' frustration” idea must have come from someone unfamiliar with him or the video of the event). The only commonality is that both find Nvidia hard to work with, in different contexts.
  - boralben 14y ago
    My interpretation is that Nvidia caused the Chinese to lose face, and this what will doom them to lose future contracts. I've been living here in China for 6 months now, and the social aspects of business, like face, are really nuanced, but so so important. I don't really understand them yet.
- drucken 14y ago
  The author clearly means Nvidia losing face with respect to China. This concept of "losing face" may seem like just a small word or minor loss of reputation to Westerners, but in a sense is more important in China (and to varying extent all over the Far East) than even money. If the story is true, and the depth of detail leads me to believe it is very likely, then the reputational damage to Nvidia would be high and, more importantly, entrenched (an aspect of face that makes it different from mere temporary reputational loss) due the public service, government angle and the size of the proposal.

lifeisstillgood 14y ago

China is investing in Linux for one simple reason - they can have someone read the source code. A (low-level?) war is going on right now between US and China - and the battlefield are the hardware and software that runs the world. Can't read the code - then we don't trust that you aren't spying on us. Unfortunately I doubt they will extend the same rights to their citizens. On the Nvidia side, this is either the dumbest commercial move ever,(#) or they really do have quite a lot to hide in that code. (#) Really I cannot imagine anyone turning down an order on 10 M PCs. Whats in that code base? Edit: @virdah - thank you for pointing out the should-have-been obvious.

anonymfus 14y ago
Microsoft provides Windows and Office source code for Chinese government since 2003 as part of Microsoft Government Security Program.
- __alexs 14y ago
  Can you compile a working system from that source?
- rbanffy 14y ago
  Does the Chinese government compiles and builds their own version or they trust Microsoft will use the exact same source they have shown? In Brazil we had some interesting questioning regarding the security of electronic voting systems - in 2002, I was on the team that developed the WinCE version of the electronic ballot - we had the source for the application and some of the device drivers, but we didn't have the sources for the compilers, libraries and operating system. Any of those layers could harbor a known (or unknown) backdoor that could allow tampering with the voting data. I'm pretty sure my compiler was clean (I installed my development machine from my MSDN subscription CDs before the corporate IT folks could get their hands on it, so I imagine nobody could have sneaked into my house to place the CDs in my backpack)
ImprovedSilence 14y ago
Well, there's that, and the fact that China is notorious for reverse engineering, and basically just stealing the technology and making their own knock-offs. I don't blame Nvidia for not giving them the source code.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

BadassFractal 14y ago

The article mentions that some of the brightest minds of NVIDIA are now working in China on its future generations of CPUs/GPUs. I don't have the full context, but is it possible that we're seeing the first baby steps of a reverse brain drain?

jlmendezbonini 14y ago
It's been happening for a while now (2009 article)[1] and there are probably earlier reports. [1] http://techcrunch.com/2009/10/17/beware-the-reverse-brain-drain-to-india-and-china/ http://techcrunch.com/2009/10/17/beware-the-reverse-brain-dr...
wmf 14y ago
I've seen it. The Chinese government is "buying back" their top people in the US.

jc-denton 14y ago

> As much as I want this to be true. So all the open source "enthusiasts" who are sooooo happy about this should really learn to think. 1.) Open Source drivers does not mean better drivers. AMD and Intel drivers are crap under Linux. Just google "I hate Linux graphics" to get a more elaborate explanation about this. 2.) Assuming the story is true and the Chinese gov wants open specs and drivers. Would you hand it over?! Nvidia employs a lot of really smart people and their GPU technology is based on decades of research. While I can't judge how much useful open drivers and specs are for the competition keep in mind that the Chinese gov also works on their own CPU / GPU tech. They would probably just rip you off. Paying for your stuff until they figure out how it works and then sell their own. It happened to large European and US companies before. So it is perfectly reasonable that Nvidia is protective.

jc-denton 14y ago

> But they don't need to provide that source, just hardware specs. Intels and AMDs drivers are open source and they suck. So no they do NOT need just the specs.

mchatfie 14y ago

IMHO it's a good move by NVIDIA. The main differentiating factor between NVIDIA and AMD are the drivers. Release the driver source on any platform and NVIDIA loose their competitive edge. They are leaps and bounds better when it comes to OpenGL support. I can't comment from a DirectX perspective, but they always seem to be pushing the boundaries where AMD play catch up. This would be worth hundreds of millions so a 10 million order has to be taken in perspective.

rbanffy 14y ago
Yet, their proprietary drivers are a problem for many clients. If I spend US$ 1000 troubleshooting a multi-GPU number crusher that's money I could have spent in better hardware with drivers that just worked.
ginko 14y ago
This makes is even more mind boggling that AMD isn't opensourcing their own driver. I'm sure a lot of the current driver problems could be fixed quite fast.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

gcb 14y ago

Summary: China asks nvidia for weird list of cpu support, oy maybe opensource drivers (not clear). Nvidia says no. Article wonders Chinese will knock on amds door. ...who might say the same, given track record.

aidenn0 14y ago

Probably a good business move on nVidia's part; doing a lot of extra work for free, for a single sale in the hopes that it leads to a better relationship is typically not profitable. Furthermore if China wasn't willing to spend $10s of millions more on a $300 million project, one has to wonder how important it was to them.