Nvidia discusses $2k-per-GPU annual fee for software | Hacker News Reader

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

tomshardware.com

41 pointsgscott23 comments

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?

because NVIDIA can force them

... 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.-

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

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.

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 ...).-

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.

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

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 ?

> 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.

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

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

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.

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

> 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

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.

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

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).

First it was licensing per cpu, now gpu?

Time for a Linus Torvalds middle finger.

Apple dropped them for a reason...

Surprised its not based on wattage

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.

buy the hardware and pay rent, even better /s

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