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Nvidia's AI customers are scared to be seen courting other AI chipmakers for fear of retaliatory shipment delays, says rival firm (www.tomshardware.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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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

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[–] 166 points 2 years ago (5 children)

That should be your very first clue that Nvidia needs to be broken up into smaller, competing companies.

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  • [–] 32 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    And CUDA forcefully open sourced.

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  • [+] -33 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Yikes, how Draconian. Id be fucking pissed if someone came in and forcibly open sourced a product I had invested millions in developing.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    How do you imagine that would work?

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  • [–] 48 points 2 years ago* (2 children)

    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?

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  • [+] -10 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 14 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    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.

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  • [+] -7 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

    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 all Nvidia products are similar base designs at different scales.
    NVIDIA has for many years designed the main chip first, the biggest baddest of them all, used for the very highest end products. All other products are based on selecting parts of that, to make the chips cheaper for their respective markets. There is no reasonable way to split this up.

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  • [+] -14 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 21 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    The point that the article makes is that NVIDIA is pressing current customers by threatening shipping delays, which is an abuse of their power

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  • [–] -4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    And I hope they get punished for it, but that is not the same as Nvidia having monopoly.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    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)

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    I argue that Google is suffering kind of the same issues when it comes to LLM’s. They freaked out when chat GPT dropped, and I’m pretty sure that Bard got rushed just to compete with Bing Chat

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  • [–] 15 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] -1 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    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.

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  • [+] -7 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    You don’t dismantle a company purely on them having a dominant position.

    Yes, yes you do because that's a market failure. In the free market there's no monopolies, thing is the real world lacks the perfect information and perfect rationality of actors for the market to actually be free, so we have to use regulations to approximate it.

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