For AAA centric game console vendors, their only requirement this time around was high graphics perf/area ...
NVIDIA discussion [2024]
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This wasn't the only requirement which is easy to see if you look at what specs both console GPUs have ended up with.
What? No. The rules, as defined in antitrust law, basically say that when you have market power (also, as defined in antitrust law), you can no longer do things like deciding who you sell to based on what benefits you, but you will instead have to start treating all customers the same. There's nothing in it about having to make products worse. As I put in my posts above twice already, there is nothing wrong with having market power, it's just that the rules of what you can do change when you have it. Refusing to ship product to a customer who also buys from your competitor is perfectly legal to do in a fully competitive market. It is not legal to do if you hold market power.
In the past, at times market share alone has been used to determine market power. Looking at earnings in the sector, Nvidia seems to trivially qualify.
Anti-trust typically applies to larger dominant companies but can also apply to smaller nondominant firms. Rules don't change all that much for nondominant firms.
Nvidia bans using translation layers for CUDA software — previously the prohibition was only listed in the online EULA, now included in installed files [Updated]
Translators in the crosshairs.
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March 6, 2024
wccftech.com
SK Hynix Sends Cutting-Edge 12-Layer HBM3E Memory Samples To NVIDIA For Qualification Tests
The industry-leading HBM manufacturer SK Hynix has reportedly sent samples of its 12-layer HBM3E process to NVIDIA for qualification testing.
wccftech.com
NVIDIA: no longer a graphics company
CEO sent out an email on Friday evening saying that everything is moving to deep learning and We're no longer a graphics company. Nvidia, known for its longstanding role in video card manufacturing, has traditionally served both consumer and professional markets, maintaining a strong presence in...
www.guru3d.com
NVIDIA: no longer a graphics company
CEO sent out an email on Friday evening saying that everything is moving to deep learning and We're no longer a graphics company. Nvidia, known for its longstanding role in video card manufacturing, has traditionally served both consumer and professional markets, maintaining a strong presence in...
Although arguably neither are AMD or Intel.
Nvidia has been trying to be more than "a graphics company" since the launch of G80 and CUDA in 2008. This doesn't mean that they'll abandon graphics anytime soon as it is still very much the basis of everything they are doing.
Also this post on Guru3D is from two months ago.
Also this post on Guru3D is from two months ago.
Bondrewd
Veteran
Silent_Buddha
Legend
It depends on if AMD is using that dominance to coerce partners into potentially unfavorable contracts. IE - are they withholding or delaying shipments to Sony and/or MS if they don't meet "unwritten" AMD guidelines WRT how much they are being paid? The unwritten part is the contention being levied against NV. Unwritten, because the accused behavior would certainly see them going to court if they were written down in the contract due to their market position.
The question becomes, is this really happening? Even if the accusations are true, it'd be hard to prove in a court of law becase it's not written in a contract. They would need to find evidence in a "paper trail" (any correspondence would suffice, even inter office e-mails and memos). Without that a company can continue to get away with the behavior as long as they leave no evidence that they are doing it "on pupose" or in court it may be termed "in malice" or "premeditated". I'm not saying NV are or are not engaging in this behavior, BTW.
As for AMD, all evidence points to the console makers having more power in negotiations as AMD need the console makers more than the console makers need AMD. This is due to their semi-custom buisiness being overly reliant on Sony and MS without other significant major contractees. Thus, AMD doesn't have significant leverage and thus have to offer beneficial to the customer contracts in order to get their business.
IE - if Sony or MS pull out then AMD suffers immensely. Conversely, if MSI or EVGA (oops one happened already) pulls out of buying GPUs from NV, there are many many other contractees willing and able to (and happily so) absorb any GPUs that may have been allocated to the company that drops out. That gives NV more power than the contractees because it's no loss to them if a customer or two or three pulls out. Perhaps that changes in the future for AMD (if their semi-custom business gets more high volume customers), perhaps it doesn't (Sony and MS remain the largest customers by a long shot).
Regards,
SB
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You could argue before remember nforce motherboards at roughly the same time as the Geforce 2 / 3
Bondrewd
Veteran
Yeah but the genuine GPGPU push started with Fermi and either way didn't really materialize until GK110 won Titan.
Then it got real.
Will Nvidia GTC Mark The Peak Of AI?
In these explosive times and stock market surges, how to find the nuggets in the most important AI show in the world.
www.forbes.com
DavidGraham
Veteran
CEO of NVIDIA on why some competitors choose to focus on Inference.
Not sure I agree, he's right that training is a systems problem rather than just a chips problem, which makes it more difficult technically (i.e. you need to solve 2 separate-but-related problems at the same time). And he's right that their install base is an advantage to get new models deployed on them first.
But once you have a successful model (e.g. Copilot or ChatGPT at MS/OpenAI) or you're about to deploy an improved version of the same thing (e.g. GPT4 Turbo), and you know you know you've got huge scale, *and* you still need your existing NVIDIA GPUs to train the model *after* that, your only focus is going to be cost, cost, and cost (although it's full system cost including engineering salaries & power/cooling/etc.) - that cost includes the cost of highly paid engineers optimising the model for another architecture, and also even designing new hardware themselves in Microsoft's case... so again, it only works with scale, but once you're at that point I don't see why the install base is relevant at all.
So it kinda depends how much of the inference market is for "extremely successful large scale deployment models" vs "random startup which made a thing". I would bet on the former to be >>50% of inference flops, so I don't really buy Jen-Hsun's argument in general although it does apply to part of the market.
Bondrewd
Veteran
Doesn't really exist?
Phones have had GEMM blobs since Kirin 970 we're still somewhere there where it all began.
