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posted by cmn32480 on Thursday January 04 2018, @11:42PM   Printer-friendly
from the gotta-be-hip dept.

Nvidia's updated license for NVIDIA GeForce Software bans most usage of gaming-oriented GPUs in data centers, except for the purpose of "blockchain processing":

Nvidia has banned the use of its GeForce and Titan gaming graphics cards in data centers – forcing organizations to fork out for more expensive gear, like its latest Tesla V100 chips. The chip-design giant updated its GeForce and Titan software licensing in the past few days, adding a new clause that reads: "No Datacenter Deployment. The SOFTWARE is not licensed for datacenter deployment, except that blockchain processing in a datacenter is permitted."

In other words, if you wanted to bung a bunch of GeForce GPUs into a server box and use them to accelerate math-heavy software – such as machine learning, simulations and analytics – then, well, you can't without breaking your licensing agreement with Nvidia. Unless you're doing trendy blockchain stuff.

A copy of the license in the Google cache, dated December 31, 2017, shows no mention of the data center ban. Open the page today, and, oh look, data center use is verboten. To be precise, the controversial end-user license agreement (EULA) terms cover the drivers for Nvidia's GeForce GTX and Titan graphics cards. However, without Nvidia's proprietary drivers, you can't unlock the full potential of the hardware, so Nv has you over a barrel.

It's not just a blow for people building their own servers and data centers, it's a blow for any computer manufacturer – such as HPE or Dell – that hoped to flog GPU-accelerated servers, using GTX or Titan hardware, much cheaper than Nvidia charges for, say, its expensive DGX family of GPU-accelerated servers. A DGX-1 with Tesla V100 chips costs about $150,000 from Nvidia. A GeForce or Titan-powered box would cost much less albeit with much less processing power.

NVIDIA's DGX-1 product page.

Also at DataCenter Knowledge.


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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by TheRaven on Friday January 05 2018, @12:58PM (1 child)

    by TheRaven (270) on Friday January 05 2018, @12:58PM (#618302) Journal
    The concept of a EULA for software is based on the argument that you must copy a program into memory to be able to use it, and therefore all uses of the software require a copyright license, not just a usage license. It's somewhat tenuous and as I recall there is case law of different courts upholding and rejecting the argument.
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 06 2018, @01:31PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 06 2018, @01:31PM (#618741)

    What fun, that means that books can now also be covered by EULA's since the process of reading them involves making a copy of the current page on your retina!