French Authorities to File Competition Charges Against NVIDIA

[Nomad76]

On July 1st, Reuters reported that the French antitrust authority plans to file charges against NVIDIA for alleged anti-competitive practices, marking France as the first country to take such action against the tech giant. This follows a raid on NVIDIA's local offices in September 2023, as we reported here, which was part of a broader investigation into the graphics card and cloud computing sectors. A recent report released by French authorities regarding competition in generative AI highlighted concerns about potential abuses of power by chip suppliers, specifically noting the industry reliance on NVIDIA. If NVIDIA is to be found guilty of charges made by French authorities it can be facing fines of up to 10% of its global annual revenue. However, NVIDIA may have the option to make concessions to avoid such penalties.

As the world's largest manufacturer of AI chips and computer graphics cards, NVIDIA is under intense scrutiny from antitrust authorities in Europe and the United States. The European Commission is gathering informal feedback to assess whether NVIDIA had breached its antitrust rules, though it has not yet launched a formal investigation. The Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission are reportedly conducting joint investigations into NVIDIA, Microsoft, and OpenAI, reflecting growing regulatory concern in the United States over these tech giants' market influence.



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[Klemc]

Me FRench here

 

[64K]

Leather Jacket Man could use some humbling right about now and this is coming from someone who really likes their GPUs and have been using them exclusively in my gaming rig builds for 17 years but no corporation is above the law. Nvidia is flying to great heights. Just don't pull an Icarus.

 

[natr0n]

oui oui

 

[Neo_Morpheus]

Meanwhile, the rabid fanbois at Jensen’s Hardware (formerly known as Toms) staff and forum dwellers are foaming at their mouths over this egregious attack on their deity. Cant wait to see what Tim from Ngreedia Unboxed will say

I do wish that they are forced to open up CUDA for everyone because lock-in tech doesn’t benefit the consumers.

 

[lilhasselhoffer]

-And the UserBenchmark troll...I mean ownership...has a collective panic attack that maybe they'll not be able to talk smack about AMD as a copy-paste to all of their "reviews" in perpituity.

Joking aside, I've had both Nvidia and AMD GPUs over the years. While Nvidia has basically been the crown winner for most powerful hardware, more often than not the two teams trade a back-and-forth with value. I...would say that Nvidia getting a black eye for treating everyone as cash machines would be nice...given Jensen has already stated that he's come around to not giving a crap about anyone that cannot put huge amounts of money down to buy a server farm's worth of his hardware.


That said...how long will this really take? There's a part of me that's already asking how much the EU is willing to roll the dice on making Nvidia pay them...when the primary motivation for China to seek reunion with Taiwan (besides the one China policy) is the amount of semiconductor hardware available a short hop away from the mainland. Considering the embargoes...it's a fine line between protecting us and not pissing off the company that is currently defining the near future.

 

[qlum]

Let's hope things are dealt with swiftly.
Nvidia especially in OEM system's AMD has little to no ground. If that is because Nvidia incentives prevent them from carving out smaller segments of the market, that should be dealt with.

 

[Dr. Dro]

Meanwhile, the rabid fanbois at Jensen’s Hardware (formerly known as Toms) staff and forum dwellers are foaming at their mouths over this egregious attack on their deity. Cant wait to see what Tim from Ngreedia Unboxed will say

I do wish that they are forced to open up CUDA for everyone.

That's hilarious, because I often call the same publication "AMD Unboxed"

Turns out the Hardware Unboxed fellas must be doing something right. Back to you, Steve!

 

[wolf]

Threads going well already.

 

[mechtech]

#Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang makes a BOLD PREDICTION about the future of AI in the workplace.

Like what you see? Subscribe - http://bit.ly/3aTKcuz Listen & subscribe to The ETCs podcast featuring Kevin Durant: http://apple.co/37PAk2PFollow Boardroom o...

www.youtube.com

Jen I'm using it can I take your job??

 

[Minus Infinity]

LOL Huang will just pull Nvidia from the French market. He's not paying a dime or modifying his companies criminal behaviour.

 

[watzupken]

It is good to see a regulator having both the sense and guts to call out what is very obvious. People may not think it is a problem, but if you allow bad behaviors, you are essentially encouraging the bad behaviors to continue or get worst.

 

[nguyen]

Nvidia is like a player so good everyone think he is cheating .

 

[MHD34567]

oui oui

pres de moi les amis font la ronde
Potiron et Mirou, Melissa
le gendarme connait bien les villains lutins
c est la joie
Hourrah!!
dans tout mon petit monde

oui vas y oui oui
OUI OUI

 

[stimpy88]

It's more shocking this hasn't been done by the EU, but good on the French.

nGreedia needs a smack it won't forget.

 

[Prima.Vera]

This is just the first step. EU is cooking something big for them as far as the rumors are to be believed...

EU Investigates GPU Market Abuse in Wake of Nvidia Office Raid

EU probes AI hardware market to find out whether there has been an abuse.

www.tomshardware.com

 

[Paganstomp]

HOW DARE nVidia make better stuff then anybody else! ( Well, Bob, everybody bought into GreedVida it makes perfect sense. Intel and AMD slacked off so much that they are better off being used as a floor polish then being putting to use in your PC. ) BTW... Ars would have banned me for making this comment. Just sayin...

 

[Double-Click]

There's a difference between being the best and being a dick, they are not intrinsic properties.

 

[boomheadshot8]

french gov can't manage his own country and attack foreign company
why not, but remember huawei they were 1st for some years, sanctions have killed the smartphones
will see but there is more important to do right now

 

[stimpy88]

HOW DARE nVidia make better stuff then anybody else! ( Well, Bob, everybody bought into GreedVida it makes perfect sense. Intel and AMD slacked off so much that they are better off being used as a floor polish then being putting to use in your PC. ) BTW... Ars would have banned me for making this comment. Just sayin...

But it's not even the best!!! Why do you think all the tech companies are making or at least designing their own? It's not just about cost.

nGreedia just got insanely lucky with timing and with Cuda, A.I. pretty much came out of nowhere and exploded, and nGreedia was the only ones with the whole platform.

As soon as a workaround for Cuda comes out, nGreedia is dead.

 

[64K]

The last I saw from JPR was that Nvidia now has a market share of 88% for dGPUs and AMD is down to 12% and Intel has less than 1% share.

Shipments of graphics add-in boards decline in Q1 of 24 as the market experiences a return to seasonality

Quarter to quarter, graphics add-in board shipments decreased by -7.9% and increased by 39.2% year to year.

www.jonpeddie.com

This is not a healthy market at all and it's only going to lead to more abuses by Nvidia. I don't follow the AI side of this. Just the gaming side and I believe that RT is the future of gaming despite the opposition. It's just going to happen anyway and some gamers will be dragged kicking and screaming into that future but once there they will accept it.

There has been a recent article here on TPU that AMD's next generation GPUs will be much better at RT and now there is an article that Intel's next dGPU will be better. I hope they deliver and some balance and better prices as a result come to the gaming market. I remain a bit skeptical though. Hope floats.....but so do turds.

 

[Kyan]

In this interview, the guy explains that a lot of companies working on AI aren't too happy that Nvidia is dominant and imposing very high prices for their products. AMD is starting to get some traction with rockM and the industry is looking closely at it, as well as anything else from other companies elsewhere. He says the table can turn in 18 months. If Nvidia doesn't change its prices, it will probably lose market share.

The title is a bit click bait but the content is great, and there's good explanation.

 

[bitsandboots]

It's not just about cost.

Made me laugh, happy Friday.

Anyway, would anyone be surprised to hear nvidia doing something anti-competitive? They've been doing that in the gaming market for decades.
Yet, by the time anything's actually done about it it's too late because AMD's barely competing in the markets with the most profit to be made (though the MI300X looks like a beast once the software actually catches up... )

Reminds me of Intel v AMD. Intel did anti-competitive things until they were so broke they could barely develop anything new. It's a miracle Zen saved the day and Intel embarrassed itself.
But that's x86 vs x86. CUDA causes far more of an inertia problem. I'd love to see competition save us from the insane prices but my crystal ball doesn't reveal anything surprising short term.

 

[3djlab]

LOL Huang will just pull Nvidia from the French market. He's not paying a dime or modifying his companies criminal behaviour.

He would need to pull from entire EU market, because if French find nVidia guilty then EU 100% will too, EU competition rules apply directly in all EU countries.
nVidia would probably try to appeal the desition in EU level as EU have authority over national courts in matters like this but i find it unlikely EU would change the desition.

nVidia right now has another issue under EU law, Abuse of a dominant position.
If company has large market share then it holds dominant position and must take extreme care to not charge unreasonably high prices, unreasonably low prices, discriminate between customers and force trading conditions on business partners.

 

[nguyen]

A fine of 10% global revenue sounds like robbing to me.