cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/9700996
Nvidia’s AI customers are scared to be seen courting other AI chipmakers for fear of retaliatory shipment delays, says rival firm
I did some contract work for nvidia a few years ago to build out a data center for a client in the domain of pharmaceutical research. I’ve never worked for any employer more hypersensitive and narcissistic than nvidia. They will waste your time and fire you on the spot if you voice any concerns.
That should be your very first clue that Nvidia needs to be broken up into smaller, competing companies.
How do you imagine that would work?
Limit them producing PCIe cards to low volume reference models and require their software to be open source to break that aspect of the lock-in, that’s the two big things. As alternative to the latter, require them to have actual platform docs, right now they’re not only providing the only compiler for their cards which is deliberately incompatible with everything else they’re also making sure that noone else can get performance out of NVidia cards without excessive reverse-engineering, some things are even locked down hard via firmware signing. Splitting AI off from GPU would be a bonus.
require their software to be open source
I’m all for open source, but that would basically be like confiscating and giving away that part of the company.
Something we might expect from China, but not a democratic society.Is their product the GPU or is their product softwares?
They are basically abusing their customers into doing less with the hardware by obfuscating it’s functionality.
AFAIK you don’t pay extra to use CUDA or drivers, so while software is part of the ecosystem, there is no doubt the product is the hardware. When in doubt, follow the money.
It’s both. Jensen himself has said they aren’t a GPU company anymore, highlighting their software stack. CUDA was not built in a day.
CUDA was not mostly ‘built’ by them. It was originally built on top of technology acquired by a company called Aegia. Aegia built an ASIC and a physics engine that could run instructions for the ASIC, called “PhysX” and that team ported their toolchain to run on GPUs and other ASICs.
CUDA was initially released in 2007, and Aegia was acquired in 2008. It would be extremely dishonest to not say that CUDA is what it is today due to Nvidia.
I get that hating on big corpos is cool on this platform, but there’s no need to warp reality just to talk smack about them.
So essentially destroying one of US’ most important companies going into the future. Their chips are so highly valued that the US government are creating sanctions specifically to stop the sale of their high end chips to hostile nations. I can’t imagine the US shooting themselves in the foot like that.
If you think that would destroy nvidia you’re selling them quite short. Other companies in the market are following that exact business model: Don’t produce your own boards, actually document the hardware / have FLOSS drivers.
If you’re an nvidia fanboy making nvidia compete on a level playing field by making them play fair sounds of course like a disaster, but you come here and throw national interest into the mix. How the fuck would nvidia losing market share to AMD damage US national interest it would strengthen its standing by having independent options.
It might even enable Intel to secure their foot into the market, remember, the only one among RGB to actually produce their own chips. In the US.
If you think that would destroy nvidia you’re selling them quite short. Other companies in the market are following that exact business model: Don’t produce your own boards, actually document the hardware / have FLOSS drivers.
Nvidia not producing their own boards wouldn’t solve anything but complicate matters for Nvidia. Ask Asus or EVGA what their margins are on their Nvidia GPUs. Nvidia opening their stack to the competition was the only half realistic suggestion.
but you come here and throw national interest into the mix.
Why do you think the whole 4090 D debacle happened? The US government have obvious interests in limiting the compute power China has access too. Nobody cares about their gaming GPUs, it’s the ML chips that are making the waves, and those are of obvious national interest to the US government.
How the fuck would nvidia losing market share to AMD damage US national interest it would strengthen its standing by having independent options.
Brush that chip off your shoulder, not sure what’s making you so angry. And why are you bringing AMD into the picture, they aren’t even the biggest threat to Nvidia’s ML hegemony. I was also specifically referring to how dismantling Nvidia would be counter productive to US interests, not Nvidia’s market share.
It might even enable Intel to secure their foot into the market, remember, the only one among RGB to actually produce their own chips. In the US.
Neither AMD nor Nvidia are into the foundry business so I don’t see how that’s relevant. Intel is decoupling their foundry so nothing is stopping either companies from porting their chips if need be.
Ask Asus or EVGA what their margins are on their Nvidia GPUs. Nvidia opening their stack to the competition was the only half realistic suggestion.
Nvidia could only fuck them over like that because they were able to produce their own boards: If they have to rely on board manufacturers to sell their chips, they have to be nice enough for board manufacturers to actually bother doing that.
The US government have obvious interests in limiting the compute power China has access too.
That’s not the point of contention, this is:
I was also specifically referring to how dismantling Nvidia would be counter productive to US interests, not Nvidia’s market share.
…and market share going to other US companies would hurt that interest in what way exactly?
And why are you bringing AMD into the picture, they aren’t even the biggest threat to Nvidia’s ML hegemony.
AMD shmahemde. There’s a gazillion US startups in the space which could make it, or not, and/or be bought up by AMD or Intel, both certainly have their eyes and products on the market. The US’ national interest is hurt by nvidia’s unfair business practices limiting bringing innovation to market.
Nvidia could only fuck them over like that because they were able to produce their own boards: If they have to rely on board manufacturers to sell their chips, they have to be nice enough for board manufacturers to actually bother doing that.
Margins wouldn’t change. GPUs are brand sellers, OEMs would try to make their margins on other products. E.g. if Asus were to stop producing graphic cards for Nvidia, their mindshare would plummet
…and market share going to other US companies would hurt that interest in what way exactly?
You are the one bringing up market share into the discussion. I haven’t said anything about Nvidia losing market share hurting US interests
AMD shmahemde. There’s a gazillion US startups in the space which could make it, or not, and/or be bought up by AMD or Intel, both certainly have their eyes and products on the market. The US’ national interest is hurt by nvidia’s unfair business practices limiting bringing innovation to market.
You’re acting as if they’re the only actor in the market, but there is competition from multiple sides. You don’t dismantle a company purely on them having a dominant position.
Yeah, don’t be unrealistic. We can’t just have a group of competent individuals properly plan out how to dismantle a monopoly to allow for proper competition in the industry. If they don’t hold onto their monopoly, how will we ever see technological advancements?
There is no monopoly. If Nvidia doesn’t play it right in the coming years they won’t hold on to their current position. Nvidia aren’t getting into custom chips just for fun. If the major cloud providers end up using their own custom silicon, that’s a major blow for Nvidia.
The point that the article makes is that NVIDIA is pressing current customers by threatening shipping delays, which is an abuse of their power
And I hope they get punished for it, but that is not the same as Nvidia having monopoly.
They have as much a Monopoly as Google has on search. Sure, there are competitors, and there is a chance that new tech might disrupt them, but they are able to abuse their market position (for example, forcing websites to use Google analytics or be penalised in search results)
I disagree. Most of the big actors in the cloud/AI space got their own silicon that they are working on which is a big enough concern for Nvidia that they are looking into providing custom solutions. If the CUDA moat breaks, Nvidia will be in a much weaker position.
The search engine landscape is completely different, although I don’t think you meant that those markets are really directly comparable to be fair.
No really. NVIDIA’s entire business is based on one main chip design. How would you brake up a company, that essentially only has one design it implements in various degrees for their products.
There is literally nothing to break up.Ai accelerators and gaming gpu could definitely be split apart. AMD already uses different architectures for those applications and they have notably smaller engineering teams.
Raytracing could also ostensibly be spun into a separate division. That’s already split quite a bit in the architecture. Then Intel, AMD and whatever other competitors pop up could license the raytracing tech stack or even buy raytracing chiplets.
Some of the software solutions like DLSS could be spun off and allowed to license to competitors.
Ai accelerators and gaming gpu could definitely be split apart.
Raytracing could also ostensibly be spun into a separate division.
No they can’t, because they are the same base design at different scales.
These designs are all connected and necessary for ALL Nvidia hardware. You can’t simply take one out.
Thank dog that their ARM purchase got torpedoed.
And CUDA forcefully open sourced.
Yikes, how Draconian. Id be fucking pissed if someone came in and forcibly open sourced a product I had invested millions in developing.
If you took even $1 of grants funded by taxpayers, will you take back your words?
Wait until you hear about generic trademarks
Until then you can use ZlUDA
Nvidlets?
And this should be your first clue that I don’t give a fuck.
I guess the monopoly has to be preserved, so that Mr. Jensen has pocket money for another leather jacket.
Removed by mod
Monopolies gonna monopoly. Fuck Jensen.
AMD had decades to see where the wind was blowing and offer a first-party CUDA bridge.
NVIDIA earned this monopoly through business savvy predictions.
NVIDIA earned this monopoly through business savvy predictions.
There’s no such thing as earning a monopoly. Even in theory a monopoly can be earned only for an infinitely small moment, until that monopoly is a result of perpetuating itself.
And since this is intuitively obvious, I’d say every person talking about “earning a monopoly” just cannot imagine more honest ways of being successful.
Built? Sure. Earned? That’s a stretch. Deserved? Fuck no.
Deserved never once appeared in my comment so idk what you’re trying to say.
We live in a capitalist society. Deserved? Probably not. Earned? They’re one of the most valuable companies in the world for a reason.
Wasn’t Nvidia the one that was caught intentionally doing things to break games on competitors drivers with their sponsored games?
Earned isn’t the right word when you have to do shitty things and cut your competition down…
I think we found Robin William’s character in Hook before he went to Never Never Land. 🤣
If I didn’t live in this sick society, I might not believe such a sociopath existed. I bet OP also praises Nestle, Monsanto, and Theranos for their business savvy.
The first user I’ve ever encountered with literally every single comment they ever made showing negative points.
Yeah I saw that too! A super conservative, tech bro chud troll account for sure.
Almost as if they’re perpetually fried. It’s a rage bait account.
That does not give them a free pass to now assfuck every consumer (both individual and B2B) so he can buy more leather jackets. Fuck corporate monopolies, fuck Jensen. Do not support such behavior.
fuck Jensen
I never asked for this
Ever heard of OpenCL? AMD started that project. CUDA is closed source.
What kind of business school, anti-customer chud counts it as a point AGAINST a company for developing open source technologies when they could have easily closed their IP warchest?
through business savvy predictions.
More like through shoving its solutions onto everyone around.
And nope, “earn” is a wrong word.
Nobody “earns a monopoly”. I’ll take advocating for the public trust over ethical bankruptcy. I’m not aware of anytime that nVidia did anything in fairness, only through high pressure antitrust tactics that border on illegal. Fuck Jensen and fuck nVidia.
That’s like saying the burgler earned his robbery just because he was business savvy.
Lol hilarious watching companies be ruthless then scramble to keep shit together since they only want to line exec pockets and don’t tackle real issues
Fuck them, their customers, fuck their execs 🤞
Fuck them, their customers, fuck their execs
I expect nothing less out of a tech sub filled with people who were too left leaning for even Reddit.
no one is forcing you to stay
You’re presenting such convincing arguments.
How is this person wrong? Or did you just come here to tell people their are leftist? Then why come here, if you don’t like that? Seems like self harming behavior …
Are you an Nvidia employee with stock options or something? It’s so WEIRD to see you all over this comment section saying they are one of the most valuable companies in the world and by that logic DON’T NEED YOU to defend them, lol.
If only there were some sort of anti-monopoly laws that existed and were actually enforced…
The FTC has at least been going after companies again, but their targeting priorities seem very strange. They seem to like picking impossible fights they can’t win, rather than cases like these.
Regulatory theatre
Antitrust isn’t about just a binary win or loss. A lot of the cases, the FTC/DOJ has been losing because of concessions made by the merging parties. By showing a willingness to fight on mergers, the FTC is influencing the structure of mergers where merging companies are now willing to specifically identify business units to be spun off or sold.
Microsoft/Activision agreed to terms that would prevent their biggest titles from going Xbox exclusive. The Court that allowed the merger to go through specifically cited public statements and legally binding contracts as part of the reason why that deal could go through. The willingness to fight forced Microsoft to preserve some level of competition.
And a lot of the other deals haven’t gone through. The FTC successfully blocked the merger between Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster. The Nvidia/ARM deal was blocked. So was the Amazon/iRobot deal.
The smaller deals they’ve successfully blocked are also shifting the legal landscape on how courts view these deals. Nobody outside of biotech is familiar with names like Illumina/Grail, but that FTC win is a big deal for applying to a vertical merger between companies operating at different points of a supply chain, rather than a horizontal merger between direct competitors.
The heightened regulatory scrutiny is chilling mergers, even before they get to the point of FTC review, too. So there is some concrete effect here.
I wonder who this riva^(md)l is.
No way they would do something like that!
Gaussian, the molecular modeling software company, liked to do similar shit.
