> In the past this strategy backfired for Intel (INTC) and the same may be the fate of Nvidia.
It sure as shit didn't backfire for Intel - they settled with AMD for $1,000,000,000.
For this price they completely hobbled AMD's ability to sell the Athlon 64, which hobbled profits (both directly and in terms of long-term branch image), which ultimately hobbled R&D.
AMD never fully recovered - and sold their foundries in order to survive.
Intel, on the other hand, got full control over the pricing of pretty much the entire x86 market for over a decade - it was well worth what they settled for.
The cost of rebates to HP and Dell far exceeded the fine as they made up the majority of those companeis revenue at one point. The fines were an absolute bargain especially since Intel hasn't even paid the EU one yet.
GPU companies seem to be notoriously closed and in general secretive about their products; nVidia is only one of the more prominent current examples, but AMD/ATI wasn't that nice in the past either. AFAIK Intel was the first to release detailed specs on its GPUs.
Ideally, one should be able to go to their websites and download full documentation (and drivers with source) on any of their products, as well as actually order the bare GPUs chips. Instead, thanks to their desire to control the entire manufacturing and distribution chain, it's a convoluted NDA-filled process. Personally, I don't really get it; why would a company put all these barriers in place to would-be customers of their products, and thus restrict their revenue? I'm almost willing to bet that there would be many more buying and using their GPUs if they left the market more open.
Microchip is one prominent example of the "other way" --- full documentation for their microcontrollers, and even direct ordering from the website. They are very successful. Unfortunately no GPU manufacturer seems to be doing this.
NVidia and ATI/AMD experienced more than a decade as a duopoly where everyone who wanted a powerful graphics chip bought one from one of those two companies. Their only big growth opportunities were to expand the number of gamers. Open specs don't help much with that.
In the meantime, computer graphics has long been a patent minefield, and Hollywood has been pressuring the chip makers to play along with their DRM schemes. Both of those are strong incentives to not be fully open.
I was rather hoping one day GPU could be used as simple as CPU, and Drivers is barely needed. The problem with today's graphics pipeline is the amount of code and work required in Drivers. In the past have many GPU vendors, most of them could not get their drivers working right or performance enough. And Nvidia and AMD has no incentive of opening up, because their years of work in the drivers set are a barrier of entry for anyone who wants to step in to make a decent GPU.
May be Intel's forthcoming GPU will be a little more opened? May be Apple's has a Metal GPU in the making for Mac?
Between this and the "no GeForce usage in datacenters" thing, I'm really starting to dislike NVidia.
I was hoping AMD would be able to be more competitive with them on both the gaming and deep learning fronts, but manufacturers already seem to be going along with this which could hurt AMD even more.
NVidia has been pretty crappy for a while now, they've made some exceptional products but they've also been complete dicks to gamers at the same time (see: GameWorks, along with their general history of implementing driver hacks to improve performance in games while reducing correctness).
I was really hoping AMD could be more competitive this generation too, I had only used AMD GPU's since 2011 when I built my first gaming system from scratch (as opposed to the cobbled up upgrades I had when I was still in middle/high-school). My R9 290 was looking long in the tooth, Vega failed to impress and the RX 580 was barely an upgrade (more VRAM, lower power, and due to cryptomining horrendously overpriced) - I ended up getting an ASUS Strix 1080Ti.
All of us should hope that AMD at least catches up with Navi, the current dominance of NVidia in the GPU market (both for gaming and the datacenter) is bad for everyone - even if you're loyal to them for some reason no real competition doesn't give them much reason to keep innovating.
As long as AMD can make a card that is ballpark competative with nVidia on price/performance, I'll buy AMD. nVidia drivers, at least in my experience, have been pretty awful for awhile now. I hot-swap displays daily on a 7970 rig with no issues. I am terrified to swap the hdmi or dvi cables on my GTX 980 because it will completely screw up the display config and I'll spend an hour fixing it. Both rigs are due for upgrades, and we'll be going with AMD for both. nVidia just isn't good enough on any level for me to support this kind of tactic.
>However, OEM computer manufacturers are a whole different story altogether. This is where AMD might get hurt by GPP. You see, GPP doesn't only apply to AIB manufacturers, it also applies to OEMs such as Dell, Apple, Lenovo or HP.
Perhaps in theory (emphasis on the perhaps, IANAL and neither is the author), but not in practice. Nvidia has a great deal of power over ATI, Asus etc. They have no power over Dell, much less Apple. Nvidia needs Dell and Apple far, far more than Dell or Apple needs Nvidia (they don't).
Nvidia and AMD are selling, if not identical products, then near enough for government work. If Dell decided to drop Nvidia from all their product lines, the impact on Dell would be negligible at worst, but it would be a catastrophe for Nvidia (while AMD would be making out like Scrooge McDuck). Apple? Nvidia sends Apple the corporate equivalent of drunken post-breakup apology voicemails (releasing Mac drivers for cards that aren't offered on Macs).
Nvidia's ability to enforce branding guidelines on Dell is nil. If Dell decided they'd rather brand "Nvidia" cards as "Dell GraphicsMaster 6000 SUX," Nvidia would have to roll with it.
Site seems to only be readable on mobile if you force PC mode display. Otherwise if you try to read pass the abstract the article gets replaced with a message to download their app.
It's also 8 pages so they can show a different ad on each page. The content might be OK, but it's the same slimy tactic that Facebook listicle sites use to boost "page views" and ad views. To me, this massively devalues the content.
Well I for one will certainly avoid any product brand that is now part of the GPP. It is great getting discounts from things like Intel but like the age old saying, if it's too good to be true it probably is.
And this definitely got exposed with the recent serious vulnerabilities in all modern Intel x86 CPUs. In the attempt to get ever faster and make ever more sales, they had to lower quality.
Pretty much the same path with Nvidia in my opinion.
This seems like no big deal. Nvidia creates a preferred partner co-branding program, and insists that an OEM’s half of the branding effort be Nvidia-specific, presumably so Nvidia isn’t spending marketing dollars promoting OEM brands that include AMD GPUs.
This program goes beyond branding efforts, according to the report[1] the partner program includes:
- high-effort engineering engagements
- early tech engagement
- launch partner status
- game bundling
- sales rebate programs
- social media and PR support
- marketing reports
- Marketing Development Funds (MDF)
Conditionally including MDF as part of this program is behavior similar to what caused the government action against Intel by the FTC:
"The FTC settlement applies to Central Processing Units, Graphics Processing Units and chipsets and prohibits Intel from using threats, bundled prices, or other offers to exclude or hamper competition or otherwise unreasonably inhibit the sale of competitive CPUs or GPUs. The settlement also prohibits Intel from deceiving computer manufacturers about the performance of non-Intel CPUs or GPUs."[2]
[+] [-] yarg|8 years ago|reply
It sure as shit didn't backfire for Intel - they settled with AMD for $1,000,000,000.
For this price they completely hobbled AMD's ability to sell the Athlon 64, which hobbled profits (both directly and in terms of long-term branch image), which ultimately hobbled R&D.
AMD never fully recovered - and sold their foundries in order to survive. Intel, on the other hand, got full control over the pricing of pretty much the entire x86 market for over a decade - it was well worth what they settled for.
[+] [-] rasz|8 years ago|reply
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-06/intel-get...
[+] [-] PaulKeeble|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] userbinator|8 years ago|reply
Ideally, one should be able to go to their websites and download full documentation (and drivers with source) on any of their products, as well as actually order the bare GPUs chips. Instead, thanks to their desire to control the entire manufacturing and distribution chain, it's a convoluted NDA-filled process. Personally, I don't really get it; why would a company put all these barriers in place to would-be customers of their products, and thus restrict their revenue? I'm almost willing to bet that there would be many more buying and using their GPUs if they left the market more open.
Microchip is one prominent example of the "other way" --- full documentation for their microcontrollers, and even direct ordering from the website. They are very successful. Unfortunately no GPU manufacturer seems to be doing this.
[+] [-] wtallis|8 years ago|reply
In the meantime, computer graphics has long been a patent minefield, and Hollywood has been pressuring the chip makers to play along with their DRM schemes. Both of those are strong incentives to not be fully open.
[+] [-] zaarn|8 years ago|reply
Nvidia still deploys a binary blob (which might work with your kernel or not)
[+] [-] ksec|8 years ago|reply
May be Intel's forthcoming GPU will be a little more opened? May be Apple's has a Metal GPU in the making for Mac?
[+] [-] suresk|8 years ago|reply
I was hoping AMD would be able to be more competitive with them on both the gaming and deep learning fronts, but manufacturers already seem to be going along with this which could hurt AMD even more.
[+] [-] snuxoll|8 years ago|reply
I was really hoping AMD could be more competitive this generation too, I had only used AMD GPU's since 2011 when I built my first gaming system from scratch (as opposed to the cobbled up upgrades I had when I was still in middle/high-school). My R9 290 was looking long in the tooth, Vega failed to impress and the RX 580 was barely an upgrade (more VRAM, lower power, and due to cryptomining horrendously overpriced) - I ended up getting an ASUS Strix 1080Ti.
All of us should hope that AMD at least catches up with Navi, the current dominance of NVidia in the GPU market (both for gaming and the datacenter) is bad for everyone - even if you're loyal to them for some reason no real competition doesn't give them much reason to keep innovating.
[+] [-] Greg-J|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] namlem|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jakeogh|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] smitherfield|8 years ago|reply
Perhaps in theory (emphasis on the perhaps, IANAL and neither is the author), but not in practice. Nvidia has a great deal of power over ATI, Asus etc. They have no power over Dell, much less Apple. Nvidia needs Dell and Apple far, far more than Dell or Apple needs Nvidia (they don't).
Nvidia and AMD are selling, if not identical products, then near enough for government work. If Dell decided to drop Nvidia from all their product lines, the impact on Dell would be negligible at worst, but it would be a catastrophe for Nvidia (while AMD would be making out like Scrooge McDuck). Apple? Nvidia sends Apple the corporate equivalent of drunken post-breakup apology voicemails (releasing Mac drivers for cards that aren't offered on Macs).
Nvidia's ability to enforce branding guidelines on Dell is nil. If Dell decided they'd rather brand "Nvidia" cards as "Dell GraphicsMaster 6000 SUX," Nvidia would have to roll with it.
[+] [-] JarlUlvi|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Larrikin|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seanp2k2|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asdsa5325|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 1123581321|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] madez|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jakeogh|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zaarn|8 years ago|reply
I will no longer recommend or buy Nvidia hardware for anything and I hope reviewers will start to not review NV hardware over this.
It's a real dick move.
[+] [-] asdsa5325|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] snvzz|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yalogin|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sir-alien|8 years ago|reply
And this definitely got exposed with the recent serious vulnerabilities in all modern Intel x86 CPUs. In the attempt to get ever faster and make ever more sales, they had to lower quality.
Pretty much the same path with Nvidia in my opinion.
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] twoodfin|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nrb|8 years ago|reply
- high-effort engineering engagements
- early tech engagement
- launch partner status
- game bundling
- sales rebate programs
- social media and PR support
- marketing reports
- Marketing Development Funds (MDF)
Conditionally including MDF as part of this program is behavior similar to what caused the government action against Intel by the FTC:
"The FTC settlement applies to Central Processing Units, Graphics Processing Units and chipsets and prohibits Intel from using threats, bundled prices, or other offers to exclude or hamper competition or otherwise unreasonably inhibit the sale of competitive CPUs or GPUs. The settlement also prohibits Intel from deceiving computer manufacturers about the performance of non-Intel CPUs or GPUs."[2]
1: https://www.hardocp.com/article/2018/03/08/geforce_partner_p...
2: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2010/08/ftc-s...
[+] [-] wmf|8 years ago|reply