Nvidia's 900 tons of GPU muscle bulks up server market, slims down wallets

Re:Nvidia's 900 tons of GPU muscle bulks up server market, s... by chrisandchris on Tuesday September 19, 2023 @11:11AM (#37571042)

There's some EUA that prohibts you from using consumer-grade GPUs in server or renting them (can't remember the exact rule, but for sure it's not allowed for Amazon or others to use them).

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Nvidia's 900 tons of GPU muscle bulks up server market, s... by latchkey on Tuesday September 19, 2023 @11:19AM (#37571174)

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/geforce-license/

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

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Nvidia's 900 tons of GPU muscle bulks up server market, s... by slashdev on Tuesday September 19, 2023 @11:32AM (#37571393)

Can I stick it in the corner of the office? Serious question.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Nvidia's 900 tons of GPU muscle bulks up server market, s... by latchkey on Tuesday September 19, 2023 @11:35AM (#37571447)

Is your office a data center?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Nvidia's 900 tons of GPU muscle bulks up server market, s... by WithinReason on Tuesday September 19, 2023 @11:52AM (#37571769)

That's the question.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Nvidia's 900 tons of GPU muscle bulks up server market, s... by wongarsu on Tuesday September 19, 2023 @01:14PM (#37573067)

Yes.

Realistically you can also build a server with 8 RTX 3090 and put in in colo in a datacenter. That would technically violate the license, but nobody is going to go after you for that. What Nvidia wants to prevent is hosting providers/IaaS renting out servers with consumer GPUs.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Nvidia's 900 tons of GPU muscle bulks up server market, s... by moffkalast on Tuesday September 19, 2023 @11:39AM (#37571525)

Haha so as long as you append some light proof of work to every task, you get them on a technicality?

Honestly though, who the fuck are they to tell you what to do with the hardware that you bought? Like telling people they are not allowed to drive their car on gravel roads or not being allowed to drink wine from a beer glass without paying for a special overpriced one or something.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Nvidia's 900 tons of GPU muscle bulks up server market, s... by latchkey on Tuesday September 19, 2023 @11:52AM (#37571768)

Usually it involves warranty issues. Although in this case, it seems especially odd since this clause was added to effectively force data centers to buy their more expensive hardware. It goes back a while (~2018), so you'd think they would have revised this policy:

https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/nvidia-updates-ge...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Nvidia's 900 tons of GPU muscle bulks up server market, s... by dotnet00 on Tuesday September 19, 2023 @12:39PM (#37572523)

It mostly just means that don't expect them to provide you any support for that use case. It isn't all that uncommon for smaller studios to just cluster together a couple of computers with 3-4 high end gaming GPUs each as a rendering farm for instance.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Nvidia's 900 tons of GPU muscle bulks up server market, s... by eternityforest on Tuesday September 19, 2023 @06:47PM (#37578103)

Why the #-@-#&# do they allow blockchains??? I guess they probably figured out it's good for the bottom line and all, but it's pretty obnoxious to allow blockchains, which seems to have been the cause of the shortages, while banning everything else.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Nvidia's 900 tons of GPU muscle bulks up server market, s... by latchkey on Tuesday September 19, 2023 @11:55PM (#37580208)

After ETH switched from PoW to PoS, it had the effect of decimating the entire GPU mining market. Very few GPUs are being used for crypto any more.

If there are shortages, these days it is because of ML/AI/Gaming.

In fact, there are shortages... did you know it is nearly impossible to get data center space of any size for any decent price? AI has eaten it all up.

On top of it, AI doesn't care about the environment. There is so much money being dumped into it right now, that people are pulling power from wherever they can get it and at any cost.

On the bright side, at least crypto tried to go the cheapest routes... which happened to be mostly green based power.

So yea... be mad at AI now.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Nvidia's 900 tons of GPU muscle bulks up server market, s... by slashdev on Tuesday September 19, 2023 @11:19AM (#37571171)

Could you use them for your own purposes? Not to rent/resell?

At that price differential, on premises might make much more sense, provided you have decent utilization. Your breakeven is likely well under 10%.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Nvidia's 900 tons of GPU muscle bulks up server market, s... by Scaevolus on Tuesday September 19, 2023 @11:12AM (#37571067)

You can't legally use their drivers, particularly CUDA, for consumer gear in a datacenter.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Nvidia's 900 tons of GPU muscle bulks up server market, s... by jacquesm on Tuesday September 19, 2023 @02:25PM (#37574058)

Has that clause ever been tested? You'd say this is against the doctrine of first sale.

https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual...

[ Parent | on HN ]