I think the might EU hammer needs to be brought down on these fucks. Anti-competitive shit like this should be beaten out of companies.
and the Enshittification continues
and, perhaps more critically, some Chinese GPU makers from utilizing CUDA code with translation layers.
Like that ever deterred China from violating copyright claims to trademarks. Maybe if they’re huge companies that want to export, but if they’re just making in-country chips, especially if it’s useful for the Chinese government, these companies are not going to change anything based on some license warning
CUDA was always nakedly anti-competitive posturing - like literally everything else Nvidia chucked into their GPUs - and now they’re saying the quiet part real fuckin’ loud.
Hey, assholes! Turing completeness doesn’t give a shit about hardware. Computing is computing! You literally cannot tell people how to run your code. Congratulations on making your proprietary horseshit the de facto standard. By all means, enjoy the mountains of cash you’ve extracted via that abuse. But the rest of us have shit to do, and we don’t remember asking your permission.
What does this mean? Thanks I don’t understand the terms here
CUDA is an API to run high performance compute code on Nvidia GPUs. CUDA is proprietary. So CUDA programs run only on Nvidia GPUs. Open alternatives like vulkan compute and opencl aren’t as popular as CUDA.
Translation layers are interface software that allow CUDA programs to run on non-Nvidia GPUs. But creating such layers require a bit of reverse engineering of CUDA programs. But they are prohibiting this now. They want to ensure that all the CUDA programs in the world are limited to using Nvidia GPUs alone - classic vendor lock-in by using EULA.
Thank you, that’s simply enough that I can understand what you’re saying, but complex enough that all of my questions are answered.
Great answer
… and in addition to the specifics of this abuse, fuck EULAs in general.
CUDA is a system for programming GPUs (Graphics Processing Units), and it can be used to do far more computations in parallel than regular CPU programming could. In particular, it’s widely used in AI programming for machine learning. NVIDIA has quite a hold on this industry right now because CUDA has become a de facto standard, and as a result NVIDIA can price its graphics cards very high. Intel and AMD also make powerful GPUs that tend to be cheaper than NVIDIA’s, but they don’t natively support CUDA, which is proprietary to NVIDIA. A translation layer is a piece of software that interprets CUDA commands and translates them into commands for the underlying platform such as an AMD graphics card. So translation layers allow people to run CUDA software, such as machine learning software, on non-NVIDIA systems. NVIDIA has just changed its licence to prohibit this, so anyone using CUDA has to use a natively CUDA-capable machine, which means an NVIDIA one.
Thank you, these are really great entry-level answer s so that I can understand what the heck is going on.
They’re telling you how to play with the toys they sold you.
You can’t use CUDA drivers and then insert translation layer, that translates calls to NVIDIA hardware to calls to non-NVIDIA hardware and use non-NVIDIA hardware with CUDA.
Do you think this is something the EU will say is anti-competitive or something? I don’t think current late-state capitalism America will do anything.
Oh the EU will definitely call this anticompetitive. Especially when nVidia have a monopoly in the AI segment as is.
I hate so much that I need CUDA so badly. Also for gaming raytracing is my jam, I pay a lot of money for high-end components. Fuck Nvidia with a burning stick, but I’m also not going to be the forefront, AMD has to deliver.
I hate to say it to ya, but people are you are why they can get away with it. I feel your pain though, i couldnt imagine what would happen if vlc were to go this low. Id have no replacement i like as much as vlc hebe
Nvidia does make most of the money with professional GPUs sold to companies by now. Consumer sales with the RTX cards are only a small percentage to them. Boycott would actually do very little. I expect the next line of consumer GPUs to be even more expensive.
I was planning to get a new nvidia graphics card. Now I’m not so sure. This is bad news for everyone.
If I understand correctly, this would only affect you if you have non Nvidia hardware and wanted to use their software with it.
I would say the point is not wanting to buy from a company that’s clearly anti-consumer… particularly with CUDA not being new and then comparing it to something open and hardware-agnostic like FSR this headline also looks petty.
Never buying nvidia again lol
So I haven’t been keeping up with computer hardware stuff in quite some time, and I’ve actually been looking into getting a laptop for gaming. Yes I know, desktops are superior in every way, except the one that matters most to me. Portability.
So really, what are my choices for non-nvidia devices? It seems like every laptop I see is geared for intel/Nvidia for c/gpu with only a couple offering amd/Nvidia instead.
What are some good places to look for things other than Intel and nvidia?
I know your pain! (Cries in Nvidia laptop) when i bought mine i literally couldn’t find a laptop with AMD graphics in my region.
There is some hope these days. In addition to the previously mentioned Frameworks laptop, there’s also this TUXEDO Sirius 16 - Gen1. (Tuxedo is a German company specializing in Linux-compatible computers). It might not be exactly what your looking for, but AMD graphics laptops are so few and far between I thought I should put it out there.
cries in 2015 acer aspire with GeForce 940m
The price wasn’t as bad as I was expecting, even with the exchange rate.
As much as I’m all for the “lol get Linux” memes, I don’t know the first thing about Linux, and prefer to debload windows. It sounds kind of dumb and circuitous, but literally everything I do is geared to windows. I wouldn’t even know where to start to move everything over to Linux/win11 vm (which I did notice they’ll preload for an extra 150 which is neat)
I feel like the Chinese government is probably the best defense here. If that project they’re supposedly sponsoring continues in spite of this, NVIDIA won’t do shit because they won’t want to lose that market. Just as long as that project is available to others, it’s a perfect sidestep.
