[Beowulf] nVidia revealed as evil

[Lawrence Stewart]

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/03/nvidia_server_gpus/

Of course you cannot use our less expensive hardware for whatever you want! Beacuse it includes proprietary software, we can ex-post-facto forbid you from using the thing you paid for any way you want.

Looks like Stallman was right all along.

-L

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[Tim Cutts]

I am henceforth renaming my datacentre the “magical informatics cupboard”

Tim

On 03/01/2018, 15:58, "Beowulf on behalf of Lawrence Stewart" <beowulf-***@beowulf.org on behalf of ***@serissa.com> wrote:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/03/nvidia_server_gpus/

Of course you cannot use our less expensive hardware for whatever you want! Beacuse it includes proprietary software, we can ex-post-facto forbid you from using the thing you paid for any way you want.

Looks like Stallman was right all along.

-L

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[John Hearns via Beowulf]

Tim, I hear that just before Christmas the Sanger had a wardrobe
installed, filled with fur coats. Also a supply of Turkish Delight.

I am henceforth renaming my datacentre the “magical informatics cupboard”
Tim
On 03/01/2018, 15:58, "Beowulf on behalf of Lawrence Stewart" <
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/03/nvidia_server_gpus/
Of course you cannot use our less expensive hardware for whatever you
want! Beacuse it includes proprietary software, we can ex-post-facto
forbid you from using the thing you paid for any way you want.
Looks like Stallman was right all along.
-L
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[Lux, Jim (337K)]

That will solve the cluster cooling situation, at least for a while. One just has to run appropriate ducting.

From: Beowulf <beowulf-***@beowulf.org> on behalf of "***@beowulf.org" <***@beowulf.org>
Reply-To: John Hearns <***@googlemail.com>
Date: Saturday, January 6, 2018 at 1:13 AM
To: Tim Cutts <***@sanger.ac.uk>
Cc: Lawrence Stewart <***@serissa.com>, "***@beowulf.org" <***@beowulf.org>
Subject: Re: [Beowulf] nVidia revealed as evil

Tim, I hear that just before Christmas the Sanger had a wardrobe installed, filled with fur coats. Also a supply of Turkish Delight.

On 3 January 2018 at 17:17, Tim Cutts <***@sanger.ac.uk<mailto:***@sanger.ac.uk>> wrote:
I am henceforth renaming my datacentre the “magical informatics cupboard”

Tim

On 03/01/2018, 15:58, "Beowulf on behalf of Lawrence Stewart" <beowulf-***@beowulf.org<mailto:beowulf-***@beowulf.org> on behalf of ***@serissa.com<mailto:***@serissa.com>> wrote:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/03/nvidia_server_gpus/

Of course you cannot use our less expensive hardware for whatever you want! Beacuse it includes proprietary software, we can ex-post-facto forbid you from using the thing you paid for any way you want.

Looks like Stallman was right all along.

-L

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[Douglas Eadline]

My first response was to chuckle. As you know, the entire concept of
Beowulf clusters was based largely on using hardware that was
not supposed to be used. "You can't use desktop x86 and Ethernet
for supercomputing!" (as it was called at the time)

We also know Intel decided to fuse off the processors so they
could reduce features for the desktop and thereby charge more
for "server processors" And, this fact has been the basis
for my construction of high performance desk-side clusters. Same
basic guts, slower memory, but much cheaper. And in many
cases similar performance.

NVidia did the same with the ratio of SP vs DP, and ECC but
deep learning (DL) has no need for DP (or even SP) so a $700
video card is a bargain for DL type stuff.

BTW, I find it interesting one of the most popular codes run
on Nvidia GPUs is Amber (MD). It has been optimized to use
SP when it can and many Amber users turn off ECC because it
slows down the GPU which translates to runs really well on
Nvidia video cards.

I'm actually building a dual 1080ti box to run Amber for one
of my customers this month. Fortunately it won't go in
a data center but in the lab. So when the Nvidia police
investigate the students can quickly switch over to GTA.


--
Doug

Post by Lawrence Stewart
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/03/nvidia_server_gpus/
Of course you cannot use our less expensive hardware for whatever you
want! Beacuse it includes proprietary software, we can ex-post-facto
forbid you from using the thing you paid for any way you want.
Looks like Stallman was right all along.
-L
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To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit
http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
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MailScanner: Clean

[Prentice Bisbal]

Post by Douglas Eadline
I'm actually building a dual 1080ti box to run Amber for one
of my customers this month. Fortunately it won't go in
a data center but in the lab. So when the Nvidia police
investigate the students can quickly switch over to GTA.

I can see it now - chem labs all over the country are going to have
their thermostats a set lot lower, and have a lot of PCs sitting in the
fume hoods. There's no way you could consider a chem lab a data center.

Prentice
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[Ryan Novosielski]

On Jan 3, 2018, at 10:57, Lawrence Stewart <***@serissa.com<mailto:***@serissa.com>> wrote:

Of course you cannot use our less expensive hardware for whatever you want! Beacuse it includes proprietary software, we can ex-post-facto forbid you from using the thing you paid for any way you want.

Looks like Stallman was right all along.

There has been a conversation going on on the AMBER mailing list for some time, related to this and specifically to the Volta card in some way, since AMBER performs best on the consumer grade stuff and doesn’t require the enterprise class features (I guess the reason for the performance difference is that the next gen consumer cards come out first?).

Anyhow, I spoke to an NVIDIA rep about it at SC17 and he kind of said “we are happy you’re buying whatever chip of ours). I said, sure, maybe, but I understand you’re putting the screws to the systems vendors so how are we supposed to buy them. Didn’t get a real concrete answer.

[Gerald Henriksen]

There has been a conversation going on on the AMBER mailing list for some time, related to this and specifically to the Volta card in some way, since AMBER performs best on the consumer grade stuff and doesn’t require the enterprise class features (I guess the reason for the performance difference is that the next gen consumer cards come out first?).

Actually, the consumer cards (at least for the last generation or so)
have been released last.

Volta has not yet been released in a consumer form - the cheapest
available so far is the Titan V (direct from Nvidia only) at $3k I
believe. Speculation is that consumer Volta may come out this year,
but there is no pressure on Nvidia given AMD's troubles in the GPU
market.

The big difference is that of course most of the work is being done on
consumer hardware because that's what the developers and researchers
can afford. Secondarily, the new feature Volta offers is still to
recent to be properly supported (and some software may get no benefit
from it) because affordable hardware isn't yet available to allow
developer access to the new Tensor cores that Volta offers.

Anyhow, I spoke to an NVIDIA rep about it at SC17 and he kind of said “we are happy you’re buying whatever chip of ours). I said, sure, maybe, but I understand you’re putting the screws to the systems vendors so how are we supposed to buy them. Didn’t get a real concrete answer.

I would think if Nvidia isn't careful this could provide an opening
for AMD.
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[C Bergström]

Post by Ryan Novosielski

Post by Ryan Novosielski
There has been a conversation going on on the AMBER mailing list for some

time, related to this and specifically to the Volta card in some way, since
AMBER performs best on the consumer grade stuff and doesn’t require the
enterprise class features (I guess the reason for the performance
difference is that the next gen consumer cards come out first?).
Actually, the consumer cards (at least for the last generation or so)
have been released last.
Volta has not yet been released in a consumer form - the cheapest
available so far is the Titan V (direct from Nvidia only) at $3k I
believe. Speculation is that consumer Volta may come out this year,
but there is no pressure on Nvidia given AMD's troubles in the GPU
market.
The big difference is that of course most of the work is being done on
consumer hardware because that's what the developers and researchers
can afford. Secondarily, the new feature Volta offers is still to
recent to be properly supported (and some software may get no benefit
from it) because affordable hardware isn't yet available to allow
developer access to the new Tensor cores that Volta offers.

Post by Ryan Novosielski
Anyhow, I spoke to an NVIDIA rep about it at SC17 and he kind of said “we

are happy you’re buying whatever chip of ours). I said, sure, maybe, but I
understand you’re putting the screws to the systems vendors so how are we
supposed to buy them. Didn’t get a real concrete answer.
I would think if Nvidia isn't careful this could provide an opening
for AMD.

In the past few years there have been several times where AMD has much
better hardware and they still didn't captilize on it. The problem is not
hardware, the problem is software and mindshare. The mindshare aspect I
doubt will change regardless of whatever licensing agreement updates. I
super wish AMD would really take marketshare, but it's just not going to
happen.

[INKozin via Beowulf]

Indeed, it was the reverse until recently but P100 is compute
capability 6.0, the latest GTX cards are 6.1 but V100 is already 7.
Performance-wise P100 is reasonably close to commodity cards on the
Tensorflow benchmarks (especially on 1 or 2 cards).
I don't have figures at hand but currently V100 is not too far from
them either as far as Deep Learning tasks are concerned.
This may change when TF moves to CUDA 9 and cuDNN 7 in the next release.

Post by Gerald Henriksen

There has been a conversation going on on the AMBER mailing list for some time, related to this and specifically to the Volta card in some way, since AMBER performs best on the consumer grade stuff and doesn’t require the enterprise class features (I guess the reason for the performance difference is that the next gen consumer cards come out first?).

Actually, the consumer cards (at least for the last generation or so)
have been released last.
Volta has not yet been released in a consumer form - the cheapest
available so far is the Titan V (direct from Nvidia only) at $3k I
believe. Speculation is that consumer Volta may come out this year,
but there is no pressure on Nvidia given AMD's troubles in the GPU
market.
The big difference is that of course most of the work is being done on
consumer hardware because that's what the developers and researchers
can afford. Secondarily, the new feature Volta offers is still to
recent to be properly supported (and some software may get no benefit
from it) because affordable hardware isn't yet available to allow
developer access to the new Tensor cores that Volta offers.

Anyhow, I spoke to an NVIDIA rep about it at SC17 and he kind of said “we are happy you’re buying whatever chip of ours). I said, sure, maybe, but I understand you’re putting the screws to the systems vendors so how are we supposed to buy them. Didn’t get a real concrete answer.

I would think if Nvidia isn't careful this could provide an opening
for AMD.
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