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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.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday January 05 2018, @02:29PM (1 child)
I remember such a license clause, back in the day.
But it was more of a notice than a prohibition. A notice that this software was not designed for safety critical operations, and used examples such as medical applications or nuclear power plants.
But looking at the license [java.com] today, the only place the word nookular appears is related to export controls, which is a US government thingy.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday January 05 2018, @02:40PM
One more thing. Java IS ALREADY used in highly critical applications. Like Twitter, which has become infrastructure of major national importance rivaled perhaps only by reddit.
Twitter started with Ruby, as I recall. In 2012, Twitter rewrote in Java. You can Google it. ("twitter 2012 rewrite java") Reasons cited were scalability1 and performance. Routing a billion plus tweets a day, in real time, to all sorts of destinations (phones, etc) is probably not to be taken lightly -- no matter what I may think of the value of those tweets.
Similarly, people complain that Java is bloated and slow, yet it is used by Banksters for high speed tirading.
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1fish are also highly scalable [youtube.com]
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.