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New NVIDIA EULA prohibits GTX/Titan cards in datacenters

Posted: Wed Dec 27, 2017 10:19 pm
by Phantom107
Guys check this out,

So you're linking up computers with GTX and/or TITAN cards in them to do Octane rendering? That's a datacenter. That's NOT ALLOWED by the new NVIDIA EULA.
No Datacenter Deployment. The SOFTWARE is not licensed for datacenter deployment, except that blockchain processing in a datacenter is permitted.
Article: https://wirelesswire.jp/2017/12/62708/
Dutch article: https://nl.hardware.info/nieuws/54656/g ... vidia-eula
https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topi ... eployment/
CNBC: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/27/nvidia- ... -gpus.html
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearnin ... arning_on/

If you Google around you will find a ton of articles and forums posts on this.

Panic mode enabled...

If this topic is in the wrong place then please move it (and let me know)

Re: Octane network rendering BANNED/MADE ILLEGAL by NVIDIA

Posted: Wed Dec 27, 2017 10:59 pm
by moritzw
[...] linking up computers with GTX [...] to do Octane rendering [...]
That's a datacenter. That's NOT ALLOWED by the new NVIDIA EULA.
No. That's a datacenter by your panicful interpretation.
Panic mode enabled...
Enjoy your panic, I will let others discuss this topic with you ;)

Re: Octane network rendering BANNED/MADE ILLEGAL by NVIDIA

Posted: Wed Dec 27, 2017 11:08 pm
by Phantom107
Who decides what's a datacenter? NVIDIA? ;)

Re: Octane network rendering BANNED/MADE ILLEGAL by NVIDIA

Posted: Wed Dec 27, 2017 11:19 pm
by mojave
A data center has as its final purpose to provide Infrastructure as a Service, which refers to cloud computing providers and not to any network of computers.

This is defined and described by RFC7365 (https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7365):
Data Center (DC): A physical complex housing physical servers, network switches and routers, network service appliances, and networked storage. The purpose of a data center is to provide application, compute, and/or storage services. One such service is virtualized infrastructure data center services, also known as "Infrastructure as a Service".
I hope that clarifies your doubts.

Re: Octane network rendering BANNED/MADE ILLEGAL by NVIDIA??

Posted: Wed Dec 27, 2017 11:46 pm
by Phantom107
Thank you!

Sorry for the clickbait, I wanted a solid response fast :)
We're building an automated rendering system with Octane. Our infrastructure will be running our own software, which is a service accessible through our upcoming website, but the hardware itself is not a service on it's own. It won't do anything else than run our own software + Octane. Noone else can put anything or run anything on it. So I think we're good!

Re: Octane network rendering BANNED/MADE ILLEGAL by NVIDIA??

Posted: Thu Dec 28, 2017 12:11 am
by mojave
Glad it makes sense. Unless a specific definition would be provided, the IETF is always the place to go when it comes to Internet and network terminology and standards.

Just so other users don't get nervous by your headline, would you mind to please edit your initial FB post about this?

Thank you.

Re: New NVIDIA EULA prohibits GTX/Titan cards in datacenters

Posted: Thu Dec 28, 2017 4:21 am
by Zay
That's called fake news, Phantom107. Search engines loves that.

Re: New NVIDIA EULA prohibits GTX/Titan cards in datacenters

Posted: Thu Dec 28, 2017 10:15 am
by renderingz
Who exactly does this effect then? This Japanese company have already been contacted by Nvidia and asked to stop due to their offering of 4xGTX Titan servers...

https://www.sakura.ad.jp/news/sakurainf ... hp?id=1828

Re: New NVIDIA EULA prohibits GTX/Titan cards in datacenters

Posted: Thu Dec 28, 2017 11:30 am
by glimpse
renderingz wrote:Who exactly does this effect then? This Japanese company have already been contacted by Nvidia and asked to stop due to their offering of 4xGTX Titan servers...

https://www.sakura.ad.jp/news/sakurainf ... hp?id=1828
ouch. Now curious then, how this would end up influencing RNDR? =)

Re: New NVIDIA EULA prohibits GTX/Titan cards in datacenters

Posted: Thu Dec 28, 2017 4:24 pm
by frankmci
This isn't good news for our little shop. We've been using Deadline and AWS for could based CPU rendering for several years. We have begun making the move to hardware rendering with the assumption that it wouldn't be long before GPUs would be as ubiquitous/cheap in the cloud as CPUs have become.

Perhaps Octane will soon be just as viable on AMD and AMD won't have any problem selling shipping containers full of GPUs to Amazon and Google for their cloud services. But this move by NVIDIA doesn't set a good precedent.