NVIDIA Forbids GeForce Driver Deployment in Data Centers

Megalith

Megalith

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Based on new legalese in the EULA, NVIDIA wants to ban the use of GeForce and Titan graphics cards in data centers. Instead, the company is encouraging researchers to use its Tesla GPUs, which includes support and longer life expectancy.

Clearly, NVIDIA isn't wasting any time and has already started to enforce their new EULA. Sakura Internet, one of the largest data centers in Japan, was the first to receive a notice from NVIDIA to stop providing servers with TITAN X products.
 
If I bought an Nvidia card to wipe my butt after using the toilet, I should be free to do so.

If I bought an Nvidia card to put into a "server", I should be free to do so too.

They should not be able to dictate where the card resides or it's uses.
 
the-one1 said:
If I bought an Nvidia card to wipe my butt after using the toilet, I should be free to do so.

If I bought an Nvidia card to put into a "server", I should be free to do so too.

They should not be able to dictate where the card resides or it's uses.
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Sure you can, but if you accept the license agreement, they can sue you if you are in breach if it. If you don't like it, don't use it. Or sign a separate license agreement with Nvidia that allows you do do whatever. Understanding software license agreements is kinda my full time job.
 
I see further crippling in the future if they do not manage to enforce this.

What about Geforces not working with Photoshop, Illustrator, Gimp, 3DS Max, Autocad and other productivity software. Ok they'll spare MS Office 365 & MS Publisher I guess...lol
 
I see two sides. If you purchase a product and use my outside the intended use and then come back for warranty work...should I as Nvidia eat that cost to repair it under warranty?

On the other hand should I as a data center be forced to use a more expensive option when a lower cost alternative would suit my business needs.

It seems like there could be a amicable solution to this issue without the need for litigation or heavy handedness.
 
Somewhat funny to me (at least tangentially) is that Apple restricts the use of OSX/macOS and iirc iOS as well from being used in places where mission-critical computing needs to be done like nuclear fields and anything else related to potentially life-altering aka life-threatening situations as well which I also find quite ironic considering they love claiming their OS is "The world's most advanced computer operating system" constantly - if it's so fucking advanced, why can't it be trusted in mission-critical and other such situations, eh? :D

From the macOS High Sierra EULA (and a similar clause is found in all the other versions of macOS and older OSX as well:

macOS_BS.png



Realistically an EULA means nothing in the long run, but Nvidia will obviously drop a hammer and refuse to provide support for products they can prove are being used outside of the EULA for the given products. It's a shitty move, really, and just a money grab more than anything else and it'll bite 'em in the ass soon enough. Nvidia can't sue some company for using products however the purchaser wants - all Nvidia can do is literally hang up on 'em if a support phone call comes in or just not return emails thereby refusing to support the product(s).

This isn't a legal question, not to any degrees at all.
 
JargonGR said:
I see further crippling in the future if they do not manage to enforce this.

What about Geforces not working with Photoshop, Illustrator, Gimp, 3DS Max, Autocad and other productivity software. Ok they'll spare MS Office 365 & MS Publisher I guess...lol
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I can see that happen.
 
elation said:
Curious how AMD would approach something like this if the opportunity arose?
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Well since their presence in datacenter is pretty much ZERO, I don't think they can have the luxury to enforce something similar.
 
I know how easy it is to scream 'Money Grab' I am tempted to do so myself from what I see here.....

I wonder what the real behind the scenes true reasons for this decision... Money might be part of it, could ability to produce enough consumer cards with data centers grabbing them causing shortages like the miners do?

Interesting that miners are exempted... goes back to the perceived money grab.

I wonder if there is some hidden glitch like the famous AMD Phenom TLB thing that didnt affect consumers was only bad in work center loads that Nvidia doesnt want to have come to light.
 
I assume Quadro is allowed? Tesla would be overkill for VDI

Elf_Boy said:
I know how easy it is to scream 'Money Grab' I am tempted to do so myself from what I see here.....

<snip>

I wonder if there is some hidden glitch like the famous AMD Phenom TLB thing that didnt affect consumers was only bad in work center loads that Nvidia doesnt want to have come to light.
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Nope, same parts, different price tags
100% money grab​
 
JargonGR said:
I see further crippling in the future if they do not manage to enforce this.

What about Geforces not working with Photoshop, Illustrator, Gimp, 3DS Max, Autocad and other productivity software. Ok they'll spare MS Office 365 & MS Publisher I guess...lol
Click to expand...
The already do that and have for years with cad software.
The gamer/general market cards drivers does not have the full opencl stack enabled that high end cad software needs.
AMD has done the same at times, which is even more of a mess.
Some gamer models had full opancl support and others didn't.
 
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Nvidia just kick started the impetus to start putting serious work into open source video drivers & people to start thinking about driver licencing in their hardware suppliers.
One a hardware manufacturer has started using copyright threats to tell people which buildings they can and cannot use their hardware in, I think the open source community will see the need to speed up the driver process.

I hope AMD notices and seizes the opportunity to embrace a different philosophy and gain a new wave of dedicated converts.

I'd much rather support a hardware company that is happy to sell you stuff & use it as best you can, than one going down the corrupt short term greed path of telling you the hardware usage still belongs to them.

We should see if we can get a boycott of Nvidia going on grounds of not rewarding them for evil, maybe that will get the shareholders attention.
 
Could it be a warranty issue? By using these in a Data center environment, the card could fail early and well within the warranty period. Thus them having to replace more then planned too via said warranty
 
James21 said:
I hope AMD notices and seizes the opportunity to embrace a different philosophy and gain a new wave of dedicated converts.
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They will need to make a card that can compete with Titan first

And then they also need to up production of mid range stuff that is popular to miners, so that there is enough to go around to gamers.
 
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ecmaster76 said:
I assume Quadro is allowed? Tesla would be overkill for VDI


Nope, same parts, different price tags
100% money grab​
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I would think Quadro is obviously ok as thats the product line created for professional environments. Additionally, EULAs are not legally binding whatsoever. They are merely publisher conditions and in this case just state that they will not support your 1080 or Titan if found to be used in a datacenter or environment that violates the EULA.
 
It's not the card that can't be used, it's the driver software. You can fill a datacenter with Titan's if you want. You're not in breach. But install the drivers and you dun messed up now, A-A-Ron.
 
the-one1 said:
If I bought an Nvidia card to wipe my butt after using the toilet, I should be free to do so.

If I bought an Nvidia card to put into a "server", I should be free to do so too.

They should not be able to dictate where the card resides or it's uses.
Click to expand...


Why not?

Devil's advocate here ..... I build a desktop card and I build a server card, both have warranties intended to support the card in their intended platform. You use it outside of that use case and why should I honor the warranty?

You can still wipe your ass with your card, I don't care, I'm just not going to replace the fucker cause it smells bad and don't work any more.

Did you consider that server class equipment is so expensive because businesses expect business class support, next day replacement, a tech on site if you call for one, and the best telephonic support going?

Data Center IT is not anything like home IT, at least not yet.
 
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They have been doing this years and years and years.

Note - for instance - how Nvidia paid off VMWare to prevent passthrough of their consumer GPU's in ESXi. Want passthrough? You have to buy a Quadro or Tesla for that...

It makes sense though. It has been famously noted (in 2009 by Nvidias Jen-Hsun Huang himself) that he sees the company not as a hardware company, but primarily as a software company.

Software EULA's have governed how we use our software for ages, telling us whgen we can and cant use certain features, keys or versions for what applications. He is just trying to do the same for Nvidia's hardware.

I think it is shitty as all hell, but I understand why they are doing it. When a consumer GPU can do almost everything an enterprise compute GPU can do, how can they otherwise get away with charging thousands for the Enterprise version and only hundreds for the Gaming version?
 
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The evil and stupid part of the debate:

Nvidia, NO One, can dictate what you do with the CARD it's self after you purchase it.

The Firmware in the card and the driver software for the card are protected by copyright and they can dictate what your limited licence to use is permitted to do.

IMO - Inane, Insane, stupid and our legal system needs to pull it's head out of corporate asses (not pointing this solely at Green Team) and fix the issue. Cause it is stupid.
 
Nvidia ... I did loved you, but you need to understand CUDA is really not as good as you say it is.

Yes, you have your rights and you can do that EULA thing, but the question is ... should you? By doing so, our relation will be severely damaged, remember that GPU as PPU thing you played and how I let it go? Okay okay, you don't care, and you don't have to care.

No, it isn't AMD, it has nothing to do with it. I do hope you do see that those who buys comsumer grade GPUs for data centers are the ones who don't want to pay for those industrial GPUs. No, it isn't AMD! It has nothing to do with it, it would be anyone else!

Okay, whatever you say. Bye.
 
This is what happens when you have no competition.

Hopefully Intel or Google or anyone (as AMD doesn't seem up to the challenge) starts building something that makes Nvidia simply happy to be selling product... and not happy to milk every last dime of their current monopoly. Stuff like this makes you cheer for the underdogs in that market.
 
I can't imagine many data centers using consumer grade GPU's anyway, the only scenario where an Nvidia GPU is likely to be used in a data center is supercomputing applications and no supercomputer is going to use consumer grade GPU's.

Perhaps this is an attempt to stop the potential abuse of consumer grade GPU's for mining? In which case I think it's a great idea as 1060's are getting stupidly expensive and hard to find as a direct result of miners.
 
Tiberian said:
Somewhat funny to me (at least tangentially) is that Apple restricts the use of OSX/macOS and iirc iOS as well from being used in places where mission-critical computing needs to be done like nuclear fields and anything else related to potentially life-altering aka life-threatening situations as well which I also find quite ironic considering they love claiming their OS is "The world's most advanced computer operating system" constantly - if it's so fucking advanced, why can't it be trusted in mission-critical and other such situations, eh? :D

From the macOS High Sierra EULA (and a similar clause is found in all the other versions of macOS and older OSX as well:

View attachment 47979


Realistically an EULA means nothing in the long run, but Nvidia will obviously drop a hammer and refuse to provide support for products they can prove are being used outside of the EULA for the given products. It's a shitty move, really, and just a money grab more than anything else and it'll bite 'em in the ass soon enough. Nvidia can't sue some company for using products however the purchaser wants - all Nvidia can do is literally hang up on 'em if a support phone call comes in or just not return emails thereby refusing to support the product(s).

This isn't a legal question, not to any degrees at all.
Click to expand...

I've read this in the Apple EULA before, it definitely made me chuckle...

...No controlling a nuclear arsenal with a Mac Mini!
 
Nvidia's getting too big for their britches! Time for Intel to step in and knock em down a notch.
 
ChadD said:
This is what happens when you have no competition.

Hopefully Intel or Google or anyone (as AMD doesn't seem up to the challenge) starts building something that makes Nvidia simply happy to be selling product... and not happy to milk every last dime of their current monopoly.
Click to expand...
But that's not now business works in America now. Today, it's about capturing a market, getting laws changed so you can keep it, and then introduce legal EULA's so that your customers don't actually own anything, only lease stuff from you, and you can end the lease agreement at any time for any reason you can put in that 11,000 page EULA. It's the wave of the future. The fine print / disclaimer has always been used as a way to hide information about a product, by big businesses. Nothing new happening here at all.
 
Enterprise products exist for a reason. If a consumer product messes up your millions if not billion $ investment. Nobody is going to be happy.

If you are trying to use consumer products to something it´s not designed for, you already failed.

And no, NVidia isn't the only one to enforce this. Everyone does it, even down to storage and memory makers.

But hey, clickbait and drama sells ;)
 
Krenum said:
Nvidia's getting too big for their britches! Time for Intel to step in and knock em down a notch.
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oh AMD will do that soon enough...I've got a feeling. Just like they started kicking ass in the CPU business
 
So will people be happy that nvidia never releases their full GPU to 'consumers' -- they are only asking people who operate or sell to a datacenter and therefore have the resources to match to 'pay up'.

imagine a 'cloud' type datacenter that charges per cpu/gpu cycle ... do you really think they will pass on the savings to customers or just benefiting financially from nvidia's 'gesture' to enthusiasts -- it's not like they've really needed to release the full GPU core to consumers recently.. but I for one am very grateful for my GTX1080ti and it's unflinching performance..
 
[21CW]killerofall said:
Sure you can, but if you accept the license agreement, they can sue you if you are in breach if it. If you don't like it, don't use it. Or sign a separate license agreement with Nvidia that allows you do do whatever. Understanding software license agreements is kinda my full time job.
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You sure it's your full time job? Because a license agreement can't break the law. And laws are notorious for being very different depending on where you live.
 
percydaman said:
You sure it's your full time job? Because a license agreement can't break the law. And laws are notorious for being very different depending on where you live.
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Oh I knew that. Doesn't mean that they couldn't still sue you, it would just mean that they would loose the suit if what was stated in the license agreement was not legally enforceable. You can put what ever you want in a license agreement but it doesn't mean that it is legally enforceable. Also it depends on what venue that the suit is brought up in.
 
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