
NVIDIA GeForce driver deployment in datacenters is forbidden now - f2n
http://www.nvidia.com/content/DriverDownload-March2009/licence.php?lang=us&type=GeForce
======
electic
This is a great time to remind everyone that AMD does not have this
restriction for their Radeon graphics cards. Also, AMD has always been very
supportive of the community and they've always respected their customers.

After decades of being the principled underdog, hopefully everyone can rally
around them and make sure their open source projects work well with AMD
products and contribute to their new open source initiatives.

~~~
niyazpk
For most Deep Learning developers, using AMD is out of question until DL
frameworks like TensorFlow start natively supporting them. I am not really
sure if/when this is going to happen. AMD needs to really step up their game.

~~~
kmicklas
Why is it on AMD to support TensorFlow? Pretty sure it is on the machine
learning people to use the standard APIs like OpenCL or Vulkan etc instead of
CUDA...

~~~
rdlecler1
The’re not running a non-profit. It’s on them to respond to the market.

~~~
Nullabillity
Goes the other way around too. This whole debacle demonstrates how dumb it is
to base your product on a proprietary API with just one vendor.

~~~
binaryzeitgeist
Here you go:
[https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/issues/22](https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/issues/22)

------
andars
So, my summary:

Unsourced Japanese news outlet published an article claiming this clause was
added to the EULA. (Edit: located here:
[https://wirelesswire.jp/2017/12/62708/](https://wirelesswire.jp/2017/12/62708/)
)

This version of the EULA, located at:
[http://www.nvidia.com/content/DriverDownload-
March2009/licen...](http://www.nvidia.com/content/DriverDownload-
March2009/licence.php?lang=us&type=GeForce), has the no-data center clause.
Note the "2009".

The version linked from the actual driver download page (at
[https://www.geforce.com/drivers/license](https://www.geforce.com/drivers/license)
), has no such clause.

I think I'll postpone my outrage until the clause appears on the EULA that I
actually have to agree to when I download GeForce drivers.

Alright, edit: For me, downloading drivers through
[https://www.geforce.com/drivers](https://www.geforce.com/drivers) gets me the
second EULA that I linked to. However, downloading drivers through
[http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-
us](http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us) gets me a EULA with
this data center "limitation". This seems to me to be pretty problematic and
an ineffective update.

~~~
anniely
The "2009" license is the correct license. If you try to download a GeForce
driver from NVIDIA's website today, that is the license that you must accept
before in order to download the driver.

On Windows, it's also the license you must accept during installation time
before you can use the driver, even if you did not accept it during your
download.

Interestingly, the license inside the Linux package does not include the data
centre clause at this point in time.

[https://www.geforce.com/drivers/license/geforce](https://www.geforce.com/drivers/license/geforce)

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

~~~
andars
I went to [https://www.geforce.com/drivers](https://www.geforce.com/drivers)
and searched for 1060 on Linux.

Then clicked through to
[https://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/126577](https://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/126577).
This page has the standard "*By clicking the "Agree & Download" button, you
are confirming that you have read and agree to be bound by the License For
Customer Use of NVIDIA Software..." That sentence links to the EULA that I
linked to.

EDIT: Alright, it matters which site you download the driver from. See the
edit to my original comment.

~~~
oneshot908
Try downloading drivers for a Titan V - it goes to that very specific 2009
license (complete with the absurd exception for the blockchain). This is very
specific and targeted at crushing small system vendors who were selling to
scientists across many domains who preferred GeForce over Tesla because of the
huge price difference. They have already pursued vendors and they have tried
to shut them down. If you don't believe me or you're OK with that behavior, be
my guest to continue enabling it.

~~~
andars
I just tried for Titan V on Linux through geforce.com and got a EULA without
this clause. Downloading through nvidia.com probably gets the no data center
EULA.

~~~
oneshot908
Windows 64 got me the datacenter-limiting license, Ubuntu 16.04 as well. No
idea how you're getting past this:

"2.1.3 Limitations.

    
    
        No Modification or Reverse Engineering. Customer may not modify (except as provided in Section 2.1.2), reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble the SOFTWARE, nor attempt in any other manner to obtain the source code.
    
        No Separation of Components. The SOFTWARE is licensed as a single product. Its component parts may not be separated for use on more than one computer, nor otherwise used separately from the other parts.
    
        No Sublicensing or Distribution. Customer may not sell, rent, sublicense, distribute or transfer the SOFTWARE; or use the SOFTWARE for public performance or broadcast; or provide commercial hosting services with the SOFTWARE.
    
        No Datacenter Deployment. The SOFTWARE is not licensed for datacenter deployment, except that blockchain processing in a datacenter is permitted.

"

------
arcanus
[https://github.com/ROCmSoftwarePlatform/hiptensorflow](https://github.com/ROCmSoftwarePlatform/hiptensorflow)

Everyone on HN knows to always go with free, open software. Without
competition any company (Intel, nvidia, etc.) starts to exploit the consumer.

------
trishume
1\. Write a Tensorflow wrapper that mints a new private cryptocurrency where
the proof of work is training your deep learning model.

2\. Sell it to companies who bought racks full of GeForce GPUs for deep
learning.

3\. Profit!

~~~
ascom
Alternatively, you could simply have your GPUs calculate a few hashes every
hour. So technically, you're doing blockchain processing...very slowly...

~~~
TeMPOraL
They don't care. But more importantly, _courts won 't care_. Your compute is
all tainted and has the wrong colour, due to your intent of working around the
licensing restrictions.

------
otakucode
Is this even at all legal? Wouldn't the First Sale Doctrine and the extremely,
extremely limited rights to use software that courts have defended (the
implied license to use software necessary for a purchased device HAS been
defended in court) protect the purchaser? I really don't think nVidia would be
able to go after anyone legally for deploying the software in a datacenter.
Companies can put whatever they want in software licenses and most of it is
totally unenforceable bunk that just hasn't been tested in court. And if it
comes to it, they will normally drop the case or do whatever they can to avoid
it ever being tested.

~~~
sandworm101
Not first sale as this isnt the sale of a copy. This is a contract.

------
ixtli
Linus tried to warn us!
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_36yNWw_07g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_36yNWw_07g)

~~~
visarga
That "NVIDIA, fuck you!" from Linus comes in expensive now that NVIDIA cares
about Linux. They were jerks with Linux before deep learning became famous,
and that's why Linus was so French about them.

~~~
snvzz
Nothing's changed, still jerks. No hardware docs, no cooperation with the open
drivers beyond ensuring distribution install media do work (i.e. basic
modesetting).

~~~
AnssiH
There are docs for some things, including beyond basic modesetting:
[http://download.nvidia.com/open-gpu-doc/](http://download.nvidia.com/open-
gpu-doc/)

They at least used to be responsive to questions a couple of years back when
they started publishing the docs, but I'm not up-to-date on the present
situation.

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

I thought they were trying to mitigate the diversion of gaming gpus towards
mining, apparently not.

~~~
make3
it's for deep learning

------
popcorncolonel
Quick question: Why? What does NVIDIA have to gain by forbidding people from
using GeForce for ML in datacenters?

~~~
dragontamer
The Titan V is $3000 (GeForce)

The Tesla V100 is $17,000:
[http://www.nextwarehouse.com/item/?2782569_g10e](http://www.nextwarehouse.com/item/?2782569_g10e)

We're talking the difference of ~5.5x the price here for otherwise similar
cards.

~~~
krautt
I've spent some time training tensorflow cnns on nvidia 1080gtx.

It works pretty well, but i couldn't reliably train production models for work
on it. it's just too flaky. I mentioned this to our 'trustworthy' dell rep who
suggested that a good v100 suite would surely solve all the reliability
problems, what with it's greatly increased memory bus, or something...

~~~
jamesblonde
You mean your algorithm is too flaky. The hardware is fine. A V100 won't fix
your convergence problems.

~~~
krautt
yes. salesman bullshit. i think it was tensorflow that was flaky.

------
jamesblonde
If you want to know what Nvidia are afraid of, look at the last figure in this
O'Reilly blog on distributed tensorflow.

[https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/distributed-
tensorflow](https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/distributed-tensorflow)

On a DeepLearning11 server (cost $15K), you get about 60-75% DL training
performance compared to a DGX-1 (cost $150k)

------
binaryzeitgeist
What surprised me in the first place is why Tensorflow an "OpenSource"
initiative by Google chose proprietary CUDA over "OpenSource" OpenCL.

Check Tensorflow issue 22 for more info.

Just sayin.

~~~
solomatov
CUDA is superior to OpenCL. Also NVIDIA provides CuDNN, a proprietary library
with very efficient implementation of deep learning primitives. If you want to
train models faster, you have to use them.

------
binaryzeitgeist
[Merry Xmas Nvidia! - Torvalds]([https://4bds6hergc-flywheel.netdna-
ssl.com/wp-content/upload...](https://4bds6hergc-flywheel.netdna-ssl.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/09/Linus-Torvalds-Fuck-You-Nvidia.jpg))

------
steanne
discussion here

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15983587](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15983587)

~~~
tenryuu
thanks

------
ixtli
What is a "datacenter"? I try to come to these things with an open mind but
EULAs are really the dregs of legal writing :/

~~~
gsich
If you label your place "datacenter".

~~~
tzahola
Then I’ll just call mine “data processing farm”.

~~~
marcoperaza
That’s not how contract interpretation works. The vast majority of things are
clearly datacenters or clearly not datacenters. Assuming the contract is
enforceable for other reasons, if you use it in something that is clearly
understood to be a datacenter, you would be in breach.

Do you really think a judge would be swayed by your little word game?

~~~
gsich
I doubt it would come to trial.

~~~
marcoperaza
My point is that you’re mistaken in saying above that something is a
datacenter only if you call it such. Words must have meanings if we are to
have agreements.

Whether this particularly contract will result in a court case is beside the
point. And I wouldn’t be so sure it wouldn’t. Nvidia’s lawyers might have
something to say if you start a business reselling GPU time for ML tasks and
run it off thousands of GeForce cards with these drivers. And if they don’t
get what they want, they would have good reason to go to court to defend their
market segmentation strategy.

~~~
gsich
Because that is how such things work. People and companies trying to find
loopholes. And renaming your stuff is exactly that. On a side note you can
just go to countries where you are not at mercy of corporations.

There are other examples too: Software that is not allowed for more then 1 CPU
socket; just create a VM with as much cores as you like. Loss in performance
is often not an issue, problem solved. Standard practice.

~~~
marcoperaza
For that interpretation of a contract to fly, you would have to argue that a
reasonable person would believe that the meaning of datacenter is nothing more
than “a thing that is called a datacenter”.

I should make a contract to sell you gold, take your money, then give you a
pile of rotting wood and argue that I call it “gold”, so you have no remedy.

~~~
gsich
Well yes. The definition of data center (which is laking from Nvidia) is very
wide. My room in the house could be a data center. Besides that, since the
contract wasn't made at the point of purchase (datacenter clause) I can ignore
it anyway.

Why should I give you money for rotting wood in the first place?

~~~
marcoperaza
Have you never paid for something before receiving it? The whole point of the
example is that you pay for a contract for gold, then I deliver rotting wood.

Playing dumb about a definition doesn’t do much for you. Barring the other
party having good reason to expect you to be confused, you are held to the
_objective_ meaning of a contract. And for all of the situations Nvidia cares
about, it is obviously a datacenter.

~~~
gsich
I have. If the quality or the product isnt the correct one, it goes back.

I don't have a contract with Nvidia to begin with when buying cards. The
driver EULA is hardly a contract.

------
tensor
This is one way to help the competition immensely. The premium nvidia charges
for their tesla cards just isn't worth it. It's not enough of a performance
advantage to warrant the price increase, and reliability wise you can by 6-10
1080ti's for the cost of one p100.

------
acd
So it will be profitable for a third party company to develop a GeForce
driver.

This will also not be enforceable in all countries. It is probably not
enforceable at sea where maritime law rules.

~~~
mtanski
firmware needed by modern nvidia cards is cryptographically signed

~~~
cube00
The keys will leak eventually.

------
Nition
The NVIDIA website has a whole section on Data Center graphics cards:
[https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/data-center/](https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/data-
center/)

Won't this just be hurting their own sales possibilities? I can only guess
they'll be announcing some datacenter-specific version of the software soon,
which is essentially the same but mysteriously more expensive.

~~~
pepsi
This is about the GeForce products, which are consumer/gaming targeted GPUs.
Pro-style Quadro, Tesla, etc. cost quite a bit more for similar hardware due
to the firmware, drivers and licensing.

~~~
ixtli
I searched the site for high end Quadro drivers and they all link to the same
"March2009" license.

EDIT: I was wrong. Apparently they dont include this "datacenter" provision
[http://www.nvidia.com/content/DriverDownload-
March2009/licen...](http://www.nvidia.com/content/DriverDownload-
March2009/licence.php?lang=us)

------
jimrandomh
Was this actually an executive-level decision? The announcement of this change
(if you can call it that) was so bungled it creates the impression some low-
level person in legal did this without coordinating with the rest of nVidia.

------
rocky1138
Obligatory Linus Torvalds response, re: NVIDIA:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYWzMvlj2RQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYWzMvlj2RQ)

------
balls187
If I understand the underlying issue here, it's that Nvidia presumably doesn't
want it's consumer graphics cards used in Datacenters, and instead wants to
sell more expensive cards.

Isn't this similar to how movie studios used to require Video Rental Stores
pay more money for a film, vs the retail cost?

------
KenoFischer
Somebody should write an adapter that hooks into their GPL shim and forwards
requests over the network to a machine not in the data center that runs their
binary blob. Trying to limit use of certain hardware via stupid legal means
just begs for stupid technical solutions.

~~~
O_H_E
Did you mean 'GPU' instead of 'GPL'

~~~
KenoFischer
No, since the linux kernel is GPL, as far as I understand, their must be some
part of their driver that is also available in source form to interact with
the kernel API. I haven't investigated this at all, but it feels like it may
be possible to hook that. It's a terrible amount of work of course, but would
be kinda fun to try. Perhaps an easier thing to try would be to run something
like QEMU and have it forward activity on the PCIe bus over the network to a
host system. Not sure if that's something people have done before.

------
anon1253
Eeh I have quite a few of these in data centers for Deep Learning work. What
am I supposed to do now. Swap them out for Tesla/Quadro cards? Switch to AMD
or Xeon Phi? Or just ignore it and possibly violate ToS. Nice move Nvidia ...

~~~
O_H_E
[https://4bds6hergc-flywheel.netdna-ssl.com/wp-
content/upload...](https://4bds6hergc-flywheel.netdna-ssl.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/09/Linus-Torvalds-Fuck-You-Nvidia.jpg)

------
andars
Anyone else bothered by the 2009 in the url?

Edit: Some driver download pages currently link to this page.

~~~
ixtli
While these EULAs are head bangingly dumb, generally untested, (and sometimes
totally unenforcable) i just wanted to say that i think that's just a CMS
artifact. Can confirm that this is still linked as the "software license
agreement" throughout the site for current driver downloads

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

------
jsonmez
Just laugh and do it anyway.

------
kovariance
This is why open source drivers are important.

------
decentrality
"Datacenter" undefined.

------
solomatov
That's a great example of why we need open source hardware. 10-20 years ago
this was a norm in software field. Now, you can license world class products
with complete source for free.

------
jacquesm
They're nuts and I'd love to see them try to enforce this. Coming soon to a DC
near you: The Nvidia inspectors, picking locks on cages and racks looking for
humping.

------
TheRealPomax
Sounds like one of those hilarious EULA clauses that is void in many countries
with laws around companies not having the right to control the use of their
product after sale.

------
puzzle
Between this and the high Tesla prices, they really want to move people to use
Google's TPUs...

------
k3a
And THAT'S WHY it's good for corporations to have closed non-libre drivers :)
They can make an easy buck by selling 'more expensive' licenses. You are the
buyer, you decided for a closed solution, so pay more for it!

------
AdamJacobMuller
Nowhere in the document does it define "datacenter," very nebulous term.
Perhaps too nebulous to enforce.

I have 2 racks in my basement, if I had an NVIDIA GPU in one of my servers for
playing games, am I violating their EULA?

~~~
marcoperaza
The law is not so obtuse. If otherwise enforceable, the inability to draw an
exact line where something starts being a datacenter will not void a contract.
The vast majority of things are on either side of that line.

------
blt
Is there some legal reason why AMD can't implement a CUDA compiler for their
architecture? Seems like the obvious move right now.

~~~
kuschku
AMD has a CUDA compiler. It requires two-step compilation, though. First into
GPU-neutral code, and from there you can use AMDs actual compiler.

------
MichaelBurge
I think the card itself takes more power and wears out faster compared to the
data center versions. Is this true in practice?

------
bhouston
I think this is designed to deal with the low prices offered by ovh and
heizner. And in favor of Google and Amazon.

------
O_H_E
Does that blockchain clause target miners? Aren't they called Mining Farms,
not Data Centers?

------
sqreept
How does NVIDIA define a datacenter exactly?

------
LyalinDotCom
It's beyond sickening to see one more product you buy attempt to control you
via license. when will this shit end for hardware or is it just the start?

~~~
naikrovek
This is EXACTLY the kind of thing that NVidia do. This is the kind of thing
they ALWAYS do.

Don't be surprised. NVidia are assholes.

~~~
jey
What are some other examples?

~~~
userbinator
Here is another interesting read:

[https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/hacking-nvidia-cards-
into...](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/hacking-nvidia-cards-into-their-
professional-counterparts/)

The difference between their "professional" GPUs and regular ones is literally
a few sub-cent resistors.

~~~
andars
Sometimes. The GeForce GTX 690 used the same chip as the Quadro K5000 (the
GK104). More recent generations typically have different silicon (or bins with
defective regions) in the pro and gaming lines. For instance, high end pascal
gaming cards use GP104, but Tesla P100 uses the GP100.

For more details, see
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nvidia_graphics_proc...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nvidia_graphics_processing_units)
(Notably the "code name" columns).

