Tuesday, December 26th 2017
NVIDIA Forbids GeForce Driver Deployment in Data Centers
NVIDIA recently updated the end-user license agreement (EULA) for their GeForce Software. There's one particular statement in the limitations section that caught our eye. And it reads: No Datacenter Deployment. The SOFTWARE is not licensed for datacenter deployment, except that blockchain processing in a datacenter is permitted. It seems that NVIDIA isn't too happy with data centers that utilize GeForce and TITAN graphics cards instead of the more expensive Quadro or Tesla cards. With this prohibition in place, data centers are forced to either invest in NVIDIA's pricier offerings or completely switch over to AMD. Data centers that are using GeForce products for cryptocoin mining are unaffected by this change in the EULA.
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.
Here's the Google-translated press release from Sakura:
Sakura's dedicated servers High-firing series Quad GPU new provision temporary suspension
December 21, 2017 Dear customers, Sakura Internet Inc. Thank you very much for your continued patronage of Sakura Internet.
On November 30, 2017, the licensing terms for the use of NVIDIA Corporation's driver software have been revised and the license terms for the latest GeForce driver software. The provision of "prohibition of introduction to the data center" has been added. For details, refer to Article 2.1.3 from the following URL.
In addition, we received written notice from NVIDIA Corporation. According to this notice, NVIDIA Corporation agrees to the above license terms on the GPU server service (Sakura's dedicated server high-fire series Quad GPU model) equipped with TITAN X provided by the Company, Based on the view that downloading the driver software for GeForce on the server is an infringement of copyright (reproduction right). We urge customers who have downloaded it on or after December 7, 2017 to stop offering the Quad GPU model.
We are currently considering NVIDIA Corporation's notice content with experts as well, but considering the possibility of inconvenience to our customers, we are considering the following "Sakura's dedicated server. We will temporarily suspend the new provision of the high-fire series Quad GPU model ".
We are sorry to cause inconvenience, but we will do our utmost to make it possible for our customers to use our services with confidence. We sincerely appreciate your continued patronage.
Sources:
NVIDIA, Sakura Internet
Here's the Google-translated press release from Sakura:
Sakura's dedicated servers High-firing series Quad GPU new provision temporary suspension
December 21, 2017 Dear customers, Sakura Internet Inc. Thank you very much for your continued patronage of Sakura Internet.
On November 30, 2017, the licensing terms for the use of NVIDIA Corporation's driver software have been revised and the license terms for the latest GeForce driver software. The provision of "prohibition of introduction to the data center" has been added. For details, refer to Article 2.1.3 from the following URL.
- Japanese:
- English:
In addition, we received written notice from NVIDIA Corporation. According to this notice, NVIDIA Corporation agrees to the above license terms on the GPU server service (Sakura's dedicated server high-fire series Quad GPU model) equipped with TITAN X provided by the Company, Based on the view that downloading the driver software for GeForce on the server is an infringement of copyright (reproduction right). We urge customers who have downloaded it on or after December 7, 2017 to stop offering the Quad GPU model.
We are currently considering NVIDIA Corporation's notice content with experts as well, but considering the possibility of inconvenience to our customers, we are considering the following "Sakura's dedicated server. We will temporarily suspend the new provision of the high-fire series Quad GPU model ".
- Quad GPU (Pascal) model: TITAN X (Pascal architecture) installed
- Quad GPU (Maxwell) model: TITAN X (Maxwell architecture) installed
We are sorry to cause inconvenience, but we will do our utmost to make it possible for our customers to use our services with confidence. We sincerely appreciate your continued patronage.
90 Comments on NVIDIA Forbids GeForce Driver Deployment in Data Centers
This is a good move from Nvidia.
If you have a philosophical issue with particular product being "hardware", remember that GPU is not just the electronics: it's also the software that makes it work. I guess you're fine with software licensing.
So yes, you definitely can buy a Titan V and use it as a paperweight (hardware), but to use it as an elevated calculator, you have to meet license limits.But are datacenters using consumer-grade NVIDIA GPUs right now? I very much doubt that, but have no data to validate this guess.
@Solaris17 ?
Besides, their last quarter seemed pretty good to me.
Everyone here would do the same thing nvidia did if they were in their shoes.
How in earth does Nvidia know there are DC's deploying consumer cards in datacenter enviroments?
They might come handy in:
- virtuliazation
- GPU encoding / decoding, streaming (video website for example)
- Other sort of things where a GPU might come in handy
They are far more faster then traditional CPU's anyway. Nvidia is targetting to maximize it's profit and with Telemetry it just found a way. I really hope company's slowly move over to the red side since AMD is more easyer on that part. A sold card is a sold card.
Anyway , this is yet another move which confirms their actual priorities. Turns out investing all the cash they get from consumer products to R&D for datacenters and AI wasn't really 100% effective.
And are you sure this applies to commercial use? I.e. does a company also have the right to use things however it wants? Or is it just the consumers?
What about typical software licenses? Microsoft, Adobe, AutoDesk, SAS and so on. If you're right about NV, what stops companies from using non-commercial software?
In most cases (Microsoft, for example) a fully featured free version is available for learning. Why are companies paying millions for commercial SQL Server or Visual Studio?