Nvidia discusses $2k-per-GPU annual fee for software

Posted by gscott 2 days ago

Comments

Comment by vkaku 2 days ago

Everyone is making better software than NVIDIA today with AI, to the extent they are un-nerfing hardware and making stuff run 2x faster. Why would anyone in their sane mind pay NVIDIA anything when they can vibe engineer a faster library?

Comment by pacman1337 2 days ago

because NVIDIA can force them

Comment by Bluestein 2 days ago

... they can force them and they will - I think it is telling that they are beginning to consider extracting software rents, which could indicate they are beginning to prepare for some lack of sustainability in hardware sales - though right now they cannot make them fast enough, 'em chips.-

Comment by vkaku 2 days ago

They've got no hardware moat and they somehow think people will pay more money for slow software?! Hmmm ....

Comment by saintfire 2 days ago

Not that I necessarily agree with their rationale, but you're framing it differently.

> Lack of sustainability in hardware sales

Doesn't necessarily imply competitors will be eating market share, it can imply the market will shrink. e.g. data center commitments and AI dries up. Or, it can imply hardware development will slow or become "good enough" and slow sales of latest and greatest.

Comment by Bluestein 2 days ago

Totally agree, and was more my thinking: Commitment weakening (we are seeing signs of that overall, I believe) and to some degree hardware being sufficient (baring some qualitative paradigm shift ...).-

Comment by jwilcoxson 2 days ago

In the industrial automation world, you pay for the hardware (PLC), and then separately have to pay for the software to program it (made by the same company). Now if you want support for the software or hardware, that’s another cost.

At every interaction point, someone has their hand out wanting payment.

Comment by outlock 2 days ago

[dead]

Comment by TazeTSchnitzel 2 days ago

What software is this? A value-add nobody uses, or a core CUDA component everyone is stuck with?

Comment by Kevin_Flynn 2 days ago

At what point do market forces take over, and give Nvidia the collective middle finger ?

Couldn't customer #1 just have AI reverse engineer, clean room recode, and open source publish it, because its software ?

It's all in how your attorneys define "clean room" now isn't it ?

Comment by georgemcbay 2 days ago

> Couldn't customer #1 just have AI reverse engineer, clean room recode, and open source publish it, because its software ?

Probably.

But... Nvidia is currently close enough to a monopoly in this space, and our antitrust enforcement is so weak/nearly-non-existent, that I suspect that anyone who either did this or used the software that resulted from it would be blacklisted by Nvidia and never get another Nvidia GPU.

So (unfortunately) chances are very good anyone in a position to do this will just shut up and pay the rent.

Comment by Kevin_Flynn 2 days ago

Perhaps we should all start pledging allegience to AMD.

They seem to be the only company punching Nvidia and Intel in the nose when they can.

Comment by bigbadfeline 1 day ago

Intel is good, better than AMD in the open source area.

Comment by j45 2 days ago

Folks over time do build their own, or alternative tools.

In the model space the open source efforts have been not disappointing at all.

Comment by nubinetwork 2 days ago

> At what point do market forces take over, and give Nvidia the collective middle finger ?

I haven't bought an Nvidia gpu since the 980. /shrug

Comment by NBJack 2 days ago

Why does this sound so much like an Oracle move?

https://www.cfodive.com/news/nvidia-hands-new-cao-129m-rsus-...

Oh. Former senior VP at Oracle hired...May this year? Color me surprised.

Comment by 2 days ago

Comment by cyanydeez 2 days ago

Someone put up a ishuggingfacedead.com death watch and just post articles like this until it's obvious.

Comment by threecheese 2 days ago

One thing I've noticed is a lot more HF assets require personal information collection to download. Not sure if that's new corporate compliance or an attempt to manage bandwidth (or a marketing channel).

Comment by j45 2 days ago

First it was licensing per cpu, now gpu?

Comment by mrlonglong 2 days ago

Time for a Linus Torvalds middle finger.

Comment by Danox 2 days ago

Apple dropped them for a reason...

Comment by throwaway919233 2 days ago

Surprised its not based on wattage

Comment by MisterMunchkin 2 days ago

Lmao! Sorry AI companies, even if you somehow survive to profitability, daddy Nvidia will just decide you have to pay rent in perpetuity. 99% margin on chips isn’t enough.