
Nvidia’s New Policy Limits GeForce Data Center Usage - gone35
https://wirelesswire.jp/2017/12/62708/
======
sabalaba
Developers should be mad about this. Here's where to start contributing to
open alternatives:

ROCm: [https://rocm.github.io/](https://rocm.github.io/)

OpenCL: [https://www.khronos.org/opencl/](https://www.khronos.org/opencl/)

TensorFlow:
[https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow](https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow)

Nouveau:
[https://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/](https://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/)

~~~
reilly3000
TensorFlow depends exclusively (st time of writing) on CUDA for GPU
acceleration. Leaning on them to support OpenCL fully would unlock the world
of AMD GPUs that are move affordable and don’t have the same crazy EULA. I
regret having bought GeForce cards for machine learning now...

~~~
larrykwg
TensorFlow also supports Intel Xeon Phi as an alternative

[https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/tensorflow-
optimiz...](https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/tensorflow-
optimizations-on-modern-intel-architecture)

~~~
make3
afaik Xeon phi doesn't come close to the performance per buck of gpus in deep
learning

------
vinayan3
For the longest time they have encouraged people to use Geforce cards for
doing machine learning. Now they are changing the licensing and making it not
okay for data centers is not gonna sit well with people. Especially with the
carveout for Bitcoin miners. The number of customers who are impacted like the
article points out will be mainly universities. This is bad move overall and
isn't gonna gain them any good will with the community. Like seriously how
many companies are out there are putting out Geforce cards into data centers?
The big data centers from cloud computing platforms all use Tesla cards.

~~~
jacquesm
The exemption makes it even more ridiculous, not only do they want to restrict
where you can use the software but they also want to have a say in what kind
of applications you can use their software for.

This besides the fact that Bitcoin on GPUs is fairly dead, it's almost
entirely done on ASICs now.

If you read the license agreement it states that the term applies to
'blockchain processing', not to bitcoin specifically.

~~~
K0SM0S
Indeed.

There are a number of "alt-coins" (blockchain-based cryptocurrencies other
than bitcoin) designed to be "ASIC-resistant" e.g. by using the Lyra2REv2
algorithm.*

This is notably the case of Monero and Monacoin, two popular cryptos in Japan.
Generally, the Japanese and Koreans are very enthusiastic about
cryptocurrencies in general.

Cryptocurrency GPU-mining on Tesla cards would be outright unprofitable.

These facts may contribute to Nvidia's decision not to displease Japanese GPU
miners specifically.

____

* _This is to avoid big ASIC farms as is the case of bitcoin (apparently, more than 70% of bitcoin 's hash rate comes from China, most notably from a specific valley where electricity is dirt cheap). One purpose of ASIC-resistance is to maintain a high-enough degree of decentralization in mining, which increases security for the network/blockchain._

~~~
le-mark
$20,000 btc can make mining on gpu's potentially profitable again, more so as
the price goes up. If the price holds the 6 months or a year it takes to mine
one is another matter entirely :)

~~~
sgt101
I thought not - you have to win the race to confirm the block and that means
thz of hashes... which is unrealistic on a GPU cluster?

------
forgotpassagan
In good news, this may finally force a court case around EULA's, which
basically everyone have known for a decade as bullshit.

Having to agree to draconian terms to use something you own is ridiculous. If
EULA's become enforceable there's nothing preventing a toaster maker from
banning you from toasting bagels in your machine and countless other absurd
usurious machinations. EULA 'shrinkwrap' license agreements are a scourge on
the free market and should be banned unilaterally

~~~
acd
The thing with EULAs is that you do not own the product. You are licensed to
use the product under the company’s draconian terms. Agree that there needs to
be new consumer laws protecting consumers.

A contract used in the old times 1800s to be one to two pages of simple
English that both parties negotiated the agreed terms on. Now EULas almost
requires a degree in law to understand yet you abide to the terms under civil
liability. Further more Eula’s are so long most people blind sign without
reading and understanding the terms.

There is also questions whether terms in Eula’s are legal such as limiting
free speech about the product. In many countries free speech is a right
regulated as basic first amendment laws.

Can you limit free speech?

~~~
garmaine
That’s an argument for software licenses. My NVIDIA GPU on the other hand is
hardware I own.

~~~
discreditable
But is the hardware even any good without the NVIDIA firmware baked inside?

~~~
guitarbill
Or, is adding some firmware/software enough to impose shitty licensing on de
facto hardware products, like printer cartridges or Keurig cup things [0]?

If not, where do we draw the line? Luckily, it seems that people hate this
kind of thing.

[0] [https://www.theverge.com/2015/2/5/7986327/keurigs-attempt-
to...](https://www.theverge.com/2015/2/5/7986327/keurigs-attempt-to-drm-its-
coffee-cups-totally-backfired)

------
jo909
This is the relevant change in the EULA you need to accept when downloading
(installing?) the GeForce driver. The article is weirdly translated, this is
apparently a global NVIDIA thing and not specific to "NVIDIA Japan".

> No Datacenter Deployment. The SOFTWARE is not licensed for datacenter
> deployment, except that blockchain processing in a datacenter is permitted.

Edit: [http://www.nvidia.com/content/DriverDownload-
March2009/licen...](http://www.nvidia.com/content/DriverDownload-
March2009/licence.php?lang=us&type=GeForce) and
[https://www.geforce.com/drivers/license/geforce](https://www.geforce.com/drivers/license/geforce)

~~~
f1notformula1
I'm not a legal expert and don't understand EULAs at all. I expected a
"Datacenter" to be defined at some point but I didn't see a definition in the
EULA.

How should one interpret this? Is a research cluster a datacenter? How about a
rack of a few dozen machines I built by hand? I've been in university research
groups that had both options.

Somewhat maddening to have a single line in the EULA that's so open to
interpretation.

~~~
solomatov
IANAL, but in the law there's a thing which is called Contra proferentem:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contra_proferentem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contra_proferentem)
Basically, it means that ambiguous terms are interpreted against the contract
drafter.

~~~
QAPereo
You get that pretty much everywhere that used to be British common law iirc,
and it’s why contracts frequently define seemingly minor and silly terms, ones
which are obvious such as “the undersigned“ and all manner of the seemingly
banal. In essence the contract is first and foremost agreeing on the same
language, to express a commitment which ideally all parties are fully
cognizant of.

Edit: spelling

~~~
willyt
Also there is no punitive damages in U.K. law. So what’s the worst that could
happen? Would you put them back in the position they would have been had the
contract not existed, so give the cards back plus a contribution towards
depreciation? Would be interesting if someone with legal knowledge could chime
in.

~~~
TheGrumpyBrit
They could potentially claim damages for the difference in price between the
GeForce and the equivalent Tesla, using the argument that using the GeForce in
a DC has cost them that amount in lost revenue.

Of course, a counterclaim for existing owners would be that the product they
purchased was licensed for DC usage at time the contract was entered into, and
so the original rights cannot be unilaterally revoked without consent.

------
jacquesm
If true then Nvidia has gone nuts. There is _no way_ that they can control
what end users of their products do with their products and/or their software
post download to the extent where they are going to have a say in what
locality you can use their software and where not.

Utterly ridiculous. For a company that has seen my solid support so far I'm
extremely disappointed.

Could someone fluent in Japanese please confirm the claim in the title?

~~~
sabalaba
It's true, here is the updated license:
[http://www.nvidia.com/content/DriverDownload-
March2009/licen...](http://www.nvidia.com/content/DriverDownload-
March2009/licence.php?lang=us&type=GeForce).

Text:

    
    
      No Datacenter Deployment. The SOFTWARE is not licensed for datacenter deployment,
      except that blockchain processing in a datacenter is permitted.

~~~
jacquesm
So, once again proof that open source is the only way to go.

~~~
freeone3000
Open-source drivers don't even support Tesla, not to mention Volta. An EULA
challenge seems to the way to go here. I'll be emailing legal for advice once
I get back to work.

~~~
SauciestGNU
I think the point is less using nouveau drivers for nvidia hardware as it is
we should have never accepted CUDA as a standard since the implementation
isn't free. Proprietary standards leave us at the mercy of the owners.

------
larrykwg
They already were artificially limiting virtualization on GeForce cards and
were always pointing to their data center cards when asked about it. It goes
as far as the physical location of the power connectors on the top of the card
so it doesn't fit in a server/rack case. I imagine it makes sense from their
point of view, the data center cards like tesla are ridiculously more
expensive than the consumer cards. NVIDIA was never really a consumer friendly
company, instead of cooperating on open standards they always went their own
proprietary way. Thats the obvious danger when a company becomes the de-facto
standard in some area, they exploit their position for profit. That can't
possibly be still a surprise to anyone.

------
nightcracker
This is just a blatant attempt to sell the exact same product to two different
types of customers at different prices based on their (presumed) willingness
to spend.

Actually it's worse. It's an attempt to cripple a perfectly functioning cheap
product aimed at a different audience (gamers) for another audience (machine
learning folks) in order to drive them to more expensive products that do the
same thing.

Pure greed.

~~~
toomuchtodo
You’re going be surprised how CPUs are price segmented in that case (they’re
cut from the same wafers and priced by the clock frequency QA validates at).

Price semgnentation isn’t necessarily bad; you want to segment your product in
order to maximize revenue across all possible customers; this is just a more
egregious/bold attempt at doing so (and is hopefully prevented by a court).

~~~
xigency
Binning CPUs on clock frequency or number of functioning cores is a bit
different. If you compared it to a precious metal, the higher price CPUs have
fewer imperfections, therefore they cost more. The fact that they carry
different product numbers is a bit misleading but the price segmentation
actually makes sense.

~~~
jdietrich
The binning is a bit arbitrary, hence overclocking. A large proportion of
parts that are binned to a certain clock speed will perform perfectly well at
higher clocks. Bins are decided and priced based mostly on marketing rather
than fab yields.

Intel disable a lot of features on low-end chips, which has nothing to do with
yield management. There's no technical reason to disable vPro and Turbo Boost
on Core i3 chips.

------
syshum
This is problem I have with Driver EULA's. If I buy Hardware today under terms
X, should the manufacturer of the hardware be allowed to unilaterally change
the terms in order for me to continue to use that hardware securely and
effectively, which would require updates to fix bugs and vulnerabilities
created by the manufacturer.

Basically if I buy a GPU, discover a bug in the product, can nvidia hold that
bug fix hostage and refuse to fix the product I bought under 1 set of terms
until I agree to a new set of terms

At a minimum I believe the manufacturer should be required to refund, full
original purchase price, of any product which they change the terms to anyone
that objects to the new terms even if the new terms come out YEARS after the
product was sold and well outside any warranty period

~~~
zvrba
More interestingly: the targeted datacenters have installed drivers with EULA
that didn't include this clause. So if they don't upgrade the drivers, they
should be OK?

------
gone35
Japanese original:

[https://wirelesswire.jp/2017/12/62658/](https://wirelesswire.jp/2017/12/62658/)

\--

Edit:

Apparently it's just that GeForce cards have(/had?) no warranty for use in
"data centers" \--but academic use is not precluded in of itself:

[https://twitter.com/NVIDIAAIJP/status/943141204744585222](https://twitter.com/NVIDIAAIJP/status/943141204744585222)

[https://wirelesswire.jp/2017/12/62667/](https://wirelesswire.jp/2017/12/62667/)

Still, the line is somewhat unclear, I wonder how many university/academic
cluster admins are aware of the fact..

~~~
Dylan16807
Datacenter conditions for GPU clocks/power/air tend to be gentler than desktop
conditions, so the warranty just disappearing is far from justified.

Edit: Ha, ridiculously unjustified if bitcoin mining is still covered.

------
bearjaws
So if a data center is using these cards, and is eventually forced to install
a newer driver, they are now in violation?

That seems a bit insane to have used a product that then ammends its own EULA
to prevent you from using it entirely...

~~~
TheGrumpyBrit
The simple solution is to have some simple software that processes a
blockchain in some low priority way in order to easily bring you back into a
licensed state.

------
caf
If they manage to stick this - which is a big if - wouldn't that just cause a
major pivot of interest to ML on AMD? Sure, OpenCL is very much the poor
cousin right now, but an 8x cost hike is a pretty strong incentive to look
around for your Best Alternative Elsewhere.

------
lathiat
Realistically, this change is most likely aimed at "forcing" the hand of very
large companies to co-operate with using Tesla instead of GeForce-based stuff.

Think Amazon, Large Supercomputers, etc. They probably won't care or chase the
smaller folks (be careful if you get too big though :-)

I wonder if these terms are also on the Linux downloads?

~~~
kelnos
In the case of Amazon, who is responsible? Amazon might provide the hardware
to their customer via an EC2 instance, but it's the end customer who
downloads, installs, and uses the driver. The EULA restriction is on using the
driver, not the hardware.

~~~
lathiat
This is true, but (1) Amazon likely has special agreements with NVIDIA for all
sorts of reasons, if they did this kind of thing against NVIDIAs wishes they'd
just push back with those agreements (e.g. pricing on proper GPUs, etc) (2)
Many big customers won't like it

This kind of behavior works best for smaller players, who are the ones they
don't really care about either.

------
tudorconstantin
I wonder how this can be enforced?

How will nvidia know how its users are using the GPUs? How will they know if a
GPU sits in a datacenter, or in a desktop with xeon CPUs?

------
znpy
Curious coincidence... I was thinking of something similar earlier today.

What is physical object had EULA licenses like, software ?

Something more-or-less serious, like "you are not allowed to use this knife to
eat meat", or "you are not allowed to use this spoon to eat jelly" or even "it
is forbidden to publish a benchmark of this car" (related to an article that
passed here on hn like a week ago).

Would such EULA licenses be enforceable ? And so, assuming companies would be
allowed to enforce clearly ridiculous terms, what does this tell us about
software licenses ?

~~~
dchest
Physical objects are sold. Software (GPU drivers) is subject of copyright law
— it's licensed.

~~~
iamnothere
Many (most?) new high-end consumer products run on software now. Your car,
your fridge, your washing machine, your thermostat, etc. You do own the
product, but they could make you "activate" the software license using the
web, with an included EULA to click through. I suspect we will see some abuse
of this in the future.

------
duncan_bayne
And here it is again: [https://xkcd.com/743/](https://xkcd.com/743/)

"It's the world's tiniest open-source violin."

As much as I disagree with most of RMS's politics, the man has been proved
right time and time again with respect to the dangers of building on
proprietary software.

This is just the latest in a long, long line of outrages.

When will we as a development community quit this weird Stockholm-syndrome-
like relationship with proprietary systems vendors?

Build on NVidia, build on iOS, build on OSX, build on Windows, that's fine.
It's your call. But don't act surprised when you discover the real nature of
the extant power relationship.

~~~
pjmlp
> When will we as a development community quit this weird Stockholm-syndrome-
> like relationship with proprietary systems vendors?

When most companies stop treating open source as a way to decrease their
development costs, or as a legal way of doing piracy.

I was big into open source for a decade, but it hardly payed most bills.

Only software that requires consulting, training, or can be hidden behind a
server wall is profitable as open source.

And since the supermarket lady and my landlord don't take pull requests, I
build for systems vendors.

~~~
duncan_bayne
I think you may have missed my point (which in turn implies I didn't explain
it well ;) ).

What I meant was: if you're building a system for your own use (including
things like ML platforms and SaaS sites) why pick a target platform that is
known hostile?

------
TazeTSchnitzel
Did they do a find/replace of “NVidia” to “NVidia Japan”? It is strange to
attribute everything to the subsidiary.

~~~
mgnn
The original Japanese posted elsewhere does not make the distinction; it's
just NVIDIA. So, it's a translation thing?

------
zaroth
I can see how you might try to limit warranty claims under unapproved
operating conditions (like 24/7 100% duty cycle) but this is a bridge too far.

------
pzxc
From a sales point of view, Nvidia actually doesn't care that much about
researchers, they make up a small percentage of sales. They care about gamers
(VR has been a big help), and especially cryptocurrency mining where customers
will buy multiple video cards at a time (kaching). There are even blockchains
now that are resistant to ASIC mining, where GPU mining is the best again.
(BTG for example)

I suspect that from Nvidia's viewpoint, cloud providers are a middleman and
make GPU usage more efficient, which threatens sales. Why should I, ask a
cryptocurrency miner, buy 4 new video cards when I can rent unused time that
has already been paid for by someone else at the data center? (if the cost is
cheaper, which sometimes it is)

Though I question how they intend to enforce this new provision of theirs
given that GPU cloud usage is already widespread.

~~~
vinayan3
The inverse I think might be true. If the GPUs are much more accessible on the
cloud, deployment and placement problems handled, then more developers will be
comfortable building around that. Otherwise, it's a massive hassle to have
physical machines with specialized hardware.

------
kyledrake
I don't know if this article is correct, sans a legal/safety reason or a
warranty void. Doesn't seem like something Nvidia could legally prevent you
from doing.

That said, I use GeForce GPUs in production datacenters and this wouldn't stop
me. I put a dummy load on the display output and use them to take screenshots
of web sites with WebGL for Neocities. It's the only way to really do it. The
Tesla blowtorches are just for ML crunching, I don't think they work for what
I use datacenter GPUs for.

Also my datacenter power connection I get would trip under the Tesla's power
requirements, to say nothing of the costs. Might as well plug a Tesla car in
while I'm at it.

------
matt4711
I thought the NVIDIA drivers for the more fancy cards (TITAN etc) are the same
as for the gforce cards. Wouldn't this restriction apply to those cards as
well? Doesn't make much sense to me...

~~~
freeone3000
They can't price-differentiate FP64 compute out, since ML uses FP32 or even
FP16. They tried discriminating FP16 performance but frameworks switched to
using FP32 units and downconverting to FP16 after. They can't kill FP32
performance since that's used for gaming. They tried killing the
virtualization, they tried differentiating based on clustering, they tried
every reasonable technical procedure. So now they're falling back to legal
means, to defend an artificial price distinction that has no reflection in
card features that anyone cares about.

~~~
wmf
In the future, Teslas will have Tensor Cores and GeForces won't, so deep
learning will be much faster (but also much more expensive, so it kind of
cancels out) on Tesla cards.

~~~
a_f
They have just released the new Titan V, which has Tensor Cores I believe.
That would indicate that they do want to include them in non
workstation/dedicated ML cards, no?

~~~
Deathmax
Except that they dropped the GeForce branding from the Titan V, and appear to
be targeting the card for compute at developers/researchers [0].

[0] [https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-titan-v-
transforms...](https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-titan-v-transforms-
the-pc-into-ai-supercomputer)

------
sabalaba
This should be a rallying cry to the developer community to stop using
software with restrictive licenses.

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9sJUDx7iEJw](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9sJUDx7iEJw)

“Join us now and share the software!”

In all seriousness anybody using CUDA should immediately start checking out
and contributing to ROCm, AMD’s Open Source Compute Platform:

[https://github.com/RadeonOpenCompute/ROCm](https://github.com/RadeonOpenCompute/ROCm)

~~~
cheeze
While I agree with you, saying things like "dirty software hoarders" kind of
kills your message.

------
godman_8
Hell ya, more reason for people to switch to AMD.

------
yuhong
One of the benefits of the AMD-ATI acquisition is that they can weather GPU
shortage/oversupply more easily. I assume that NVIDIA is worried about an
oversupply of GeForce GPUs when the mining boom ends, right?

------
dharma1
Was wondering how long until they pull off something like this. I've seen
startups (and some established hosting companies) offering cloud and bare
metal GPU with GeForce cards - which are far cheaper than the official
datacentre cards Nvidia sell.

On the positive side, hopefully this will mean a consumer GeForce Tesla soon,
now that they think it won't cannibalise their datacentre GPU sales.

I really wish ROCm worked seamlessly and they had some competition.

------
KaoruAoiShiho
I wouldn't call a uni's server room a "datacenter". NVIDIA should clarify that
it doesn't apply to experimental researchers.

------
ezoe
I really can't understand how could this license change not mentioned at all
previously in Non-Japan countries.

This issue has been widely known because a famous[citation needed] Japanese
entrepreneur accuse NVIDIA for the recent silent license change.

------
m3kw9
I can see the reason they are making this move is because the supply of
GeForce Video cards is being used up for things other than Graphics duty like
mining block chains or AI training. It’s probably a desperate supply move

~~~
mickronome
While I think it's probably part of the reason, if it was the only reason
there are bound to be other less customer hostile ways of solving that
particular problem.

~~~
freeone3000
They can't price-differentiate FP64 compute out, since ML uses FP32 or even
FP16. They tried discriminating FP16 performance but frameworks switched to
using FP32 units and downconverting to FP16 after. They can't kill FP32
performance since that's used for gaming. They tried killing the
virtualization, they tried differentiating based on clustering, they tried
every reasonable technical procedure.

This seems consumer-hostile because the entire thing is consumer-hostile -
they want ML researchers to pay more for graphics cards because they have more
money to spend, not because they can offer superior performance. (They _can_
offer superior performance to GeForce, just not superior performance/$ or
performance/W.)

~~~
m3kw9
You cannot just look at that, the Tesla’s have bigger memory bandwidth and
bigger memory which can help to utilize the GPUs better by having faster
access to more data

~~~
Dylan16807
If you're in the specific range where your problem doesn't fit in a GeForce
and does fit in a Tesla, then it can be great.

For a very large number of problems that are smaller than both or bigger than
both, that extra memory bandwidth is a _lot_ smaller than the price
difference.

------
okadahiroshi
This EULA change are not acceptable. For example: If a game developer creates
gameplay video for customers at the data center it will be the violation of
the EULA.

------
tomc1985
So... fuck the license agreement. They can't sue everyone.

~~~
mindslight
It's so weird to see the responses in this thread of people saying they're
going to ask their legal department. Have fun when your self-justifying legal
department turns around and dictates the company can only buy the more
expensive cards, they now want to review the legalese bombs for everything
else, etc.

Just ignore the wordbarfs as the UPPER CASE INCOHERENT SHOUTING THEY ARE.
Everybody knows that nobody reads "EULA"s, and a meeting of minds is a
necessary requirement for there to even be a contract. These fantasy "terms"
literally only exist to the extent we acknowledge and dwell on them!

~~~
tomc1985
This is more about making a statement of defiance against openly monopolistic
and abusive terms, about showing companies that they do not get to twist
around the market like this. Show them that customers are in charge, and that
companies are mere stewards

------
mr_toad
Does this apply to just the GeForce app, or the drivers themselves? If it’s
just the app you can always manually install drivers.

And how does it affect Linux kernel drivers?

------
jaimex2
Good luck enforcing this nVidia.

------
mlosapio
What’s the tl/dr on this?

------
ai_ja_nai
So, it's just of matter of reverse engineering the driver?

~~~
Spivak
Or just using it despite the EULA? It's not like the driver knows where the
server is physically located.

~~~
owl57
> It's not like the driver knows where the server is physically located.

Well, it probably currently doesn't guess the server location, but it doesn't
seem impossible or even hard if they think it's useful to them.

------
danijoo
When does a bunch of servers become a datacenter though? When a university
group runs their own servers that only the group has access to, is it a
datacenter? If I buy 2 servers and put it in my basement, is it a datacenter?
What if its only one server?

------
tfolbrecht
Typical HN kneejerk comments.

The GeForce series cards are designed, spec'd, priced for consumer usage.
Nvidia has to warranty and guarantee what they sell, consumer confidence is
important.

When you're doing ML or blockchain Proof-of-Work the card becomes a
consumable. Is it fair for manufacturers to guarantee them like they would a
consumer desktop or gaming GPU? You expect people who play with ML in their
free time to subsidize your GPU cluster?

That said, hope this gets people angry enough to make TF support OpenCL. CUDA
is too pervasive.

~~~
samfisher83
They want people to buy their more expensive card for ML stuff. The silicon
probably isn't all that different.

~~~
tfolbrecht
Not all chips are born equal and that's why faulty/poor performance cores and
components are deactivated and chips sold in tiers. Look into it, same silicon
on paper, but not on silicon. The problem comes from those specs and the
warranties, guarantees, consumer protection, etc.

So decide, overbuilt GPUs (more expensive), firmware gimped GPUs (less
performant), or non warrantied( risky ).

