NVIDIA

Ars Technica system guide: Falling prices are more exciting than new parts

AMD, Ars System Guide, Features, intel, NVIDIA, Tech / Blake Jones / September 7, 2024

AMD's Ryzen 7700X makes enough sense to feature in our higher-end gaming build. — Enlarge / AMD’s Ryzen 7700X makes enough sense to feature in our higher-end gaming build.

Andrew Cunningham

It’s been a while since our last system guide, and a few new products—most notably AMD’s Ryzen 9000 series CPUs—have been released since then. But there haven’t been many notable graphics card launches, and new ones are still rumored to be a few months off as both Nvidia and AMD prioritize their money-printing AI accelerators.

But that doesn’t make it a bad time to buy a PC, especially if you’re looking for some cost-efficient builds. Prices of CPUs and GPUs have both fallen a fair bit since we did our last build guide a year or so ago, which means all of our builds are either cheaper than they were before or we can squeeze out a little more performance than before at similar prices.

We have six builds across four broad tiers—a budget office desktop, a budget 1080p gaming PC, a mainstream 1440p-to-4K gaming PC, and a price-conscious workstation build with a powerful CPU and lots of room for future expandability.

You won’t find a high-end “god box” this time around, though; for a money-is-no-object high-end build, it’s probably worth waiting for Intel’s upcoming Arrow Lake desktop processors, AMD’s expected Ryzen 9000X3D series, and whatever Nvidia’s next-generation GPU launch is. All three of those things are expected either later this year or early next.

We have a couple of different iterations of the more expensive builds, and we also suggest multiple alternate components that can make more sense for certain types of builds based on your needs. The fun of PC building is how flexible and customizable it is—whether you want to buy what we recommend and put it together or want to treat these configurations as starting points, hopefully, they give you some idea of what your money can get you right now.

Notes on component selection

Part of the fun of building a PC is making it look the way you want. We’ve selected cases that will physically fit the motherboards and other parts we’re recommending and which we think will be good stylistic fits for each system. But there are many cases out there, and our picks aren’t the only options available.

As for power supplies, we’re looking for 80 Plus certified power supplies from established brands with positive user reviews on retail sites (or positive professional reviews, though these can be somewhat hard to come by for any given PSU these days). If you have a preferred brand, by all means, go with what works for you. The same goes for RAM—we’ll recommend capacities and speeds, and we’ll link to kits from brands that have worked well for us in the past, but that doesn’t mean they’re better than the many other RAM kits with equivalent specs.

For SSDs, we mostly stick to drives from known brands like Samsung, Crucial, or Western Digital, though going with a lesser-known brand can save you a bit of money. All of our builds also include built-in Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, so you don’t need to worry about running Ethernet wires and can easily connect to Bluetooth gamepads, keyboards, mice, headsets, and other accessories.

We also haven’t priced in peripherals, like webcams, monitors, keyboards, or mice, as we’re assuming most people will re-use what they already have or buy those components separately. If you’re feeling adventurous, you could even make your own DIY keyboard! If you need more guidance, Kimber Streams’ Wirecutter keyboard guides are exhaustive and educational.

Finally, we won’t be including the cost of a Windows license in our cost estimates. You can pay a lot of different prices for Windows—$139 for an official retail license from Microsoft, $120 for an “OEM” license for system builders, or anywhere between $15 and $40 for a product key from shady gray market product key resale sites. Windows 10 keys will also work to activate Windows 11, though Microsoft stopped letting old Windows 7 and Windows 8 keys activate new Windows 10 and 11 installs relatively recently. You could even install Linux, given recent advancements to game compatibility layers!

Ars Technica system guide: Falling prices are more exciting than new parts Read More »

Nvidia’s AI chips are cheaper to rent in China than US

AI, Biz & IT, NVIDIA, nvidia ai, syndication / Mike M. / September 6, 2024

secondhand channels —

Supply of processors helps Chinese startups advance AI technology despite US restrictions.

Ryan McMorrow and Eleanor Olcott, Financial Times – Sep 6, 2024 6: 31 pm UTC

The cost of renting cloud services using Nvidia’s leading artificial intelligence chips is lower in China than in the US, a sign that the advanced processors are easily reaching the Chinese market despite Washington’s export restrictions.

Four small-scale Chinese cloud providers charge local tech groups roughly $6 an hour to use a server with eight Nvidia A100 processors in a base configuration, companies and customers told the Financial Times. Small cloud vendors in the US charge about $10 an hour for the same setup.

The low prices, according to people in the AI and cloud industry, are an indication of plentiful supply of Nvidia chips in China and the circumvention of US measures designed to prevent access to cutting-edge technologies.

The A100 and H100, which is also readily available, are among Nvidia’s most powerful AI accelerators and are used to train the large language models that power AI applications. The Silicon Valley company has been banned from shipping the A100 to China since autumn 2022 and has never been allowed to sell the H100 in the country.

Chip resellers and tech startups said the products were relatively easy to procure. Inventories of the A100 and H100 are openly advertised for sale on Chinese social media and ecommerce sites such as Xiaohongshu and Alibaba’s Taobao, as well as in electronics markets, at slight markups to pricing abroad.

China’s larger cloud operators such as Alibaba and ByteDance, known for their reliability and security, charge double to quadruple the price of smaller local vendors for similar Nvidia A100 servers, according to pricing from the two operators and customers.

After discounts, both Chinese tech giants offer packages for prices comparable to Amazon Web Services, which charges $15 to $32 an hour. Alibaba and ByteDance did not respond to requests for comment.

“The big players have to think about compliance, so they are at a disadvantage. They don’t want to use smuggled chips,” said a Chinese startup founder. “Smaller vendors are less concerned.”

He estimated there were more than 100,000 Nvidia H100 processors in the country based on their widespread availability in the market. The Nvidia chips are each roughly the size of a book, making them relatively easy for smugglers to ferry across borders, undermining Washington’s efforts to limit China’s AI progress.

“We bought our H100s from a company that smuggled them in from Japan,” said a startup founder in the automation field who paid about 500,000 yuan ($70,000) for two cards this year. “They etched off the serial numbers.”

Nvidia said it sold its processors “primarily to well-known partners … who work with us to ensure that all sales comply with US export control rules”.

“Our pre-owned products are available through many second-hand channels,” the company added. “Although we cannot track products after they are sold, if we determine that any customer is violating US export controls, we will take appropriate action.”

The head of a small Chinese cloud vendor said low domestic costs helped offset the higher prices that providers paid for smuggled Nvidia processors. “Engineers are cheap, power is cheap, and competition is fierce,” he said.

In Shenzhen’s Huaqiangbei electronics market, salespeople speaking to the FT quoted the equivalent of $23,000–$30,000 for Nvidia’s H100 plug-in cards. Online sellers quote the equivalent of $31,000–$33,000.

Nvidia charges customers $20,000–$23,000 for H100 chips after recently cutting prices, according to Dylan Patel of SemiAnalysis.

One data center vendor in China said servers made by Silicon Valley’s Supermicro and fitted with eight H100 chips hit a peak selling price of 3.2 million yuan after the Biden administration tightened export restrictions in October. He said prices had since fallen to 2.5 million yuan as supply constraints eased.

Several people involved in the trade said merchants in Malaysia, Japan, and Indonesia often shipped Supermicro servers or Nvidia processors to Hong Kong before bringing them across the border to Shenzhen.

The black market trade depends on difficult-to-counter workarounds to Washington’s export regulations, experts said.

For example, while subsidiaries of Chinese companies are banned from buying advanced AI chips outside the country, their executives could establish new companies in countries such as Japan or Malaysia to make the purchases.

“It’s hard to completely enforce export controls beyond the US border,” said an American sanctions expert. “That’s why the regulations create obligations for the shipper to look into end users and [the] commerce [department] adds companies believed to be flouting the rules to the [banned] entity list.”

Additional reporting by Michael Acton in San Francisco.

Nvidia’s AI chips are cheaper to rent in China than US Read More »

DOJ subpoenas Nvidia in deepening AI antitrust probe, report says

AI chips, antitrust, Antitrust law, Artificial Intelligence, competition law, GPUs, Jensen Huang, monopoly, NVIDIA, Policy, run:ai / Mike M. / September 4, 2024

The Department of Justice is reportedly deepening its probe into Nvidia. Officials have moved on from merely questioning competitors to subpoenaing Nvidia and other tech companies for evidence that could substantiate allegations that Nvidia is abusing its “dominant position in AI computing,” Bloomberg reported.

When news of the DOJ’s probe into the trillion-dollar company was first reported in June, Fast Company reported that scrutiny was intensifying merely because Nvidia was estimated to control “as much as 90 percent of the market for chips” capable of powering AI models. Experts told Fast Company that the DOJ probe might even be good for Nvidia’s business, noting that the market barely moved when the probe was first announced.

But the market’s confidence seemed to be shaken a little more on Tuesday, when Nvidia lost a “record-setting $279 billion” in market value following Bloomberg’s report. Nvidia’s losses became “the biggest single-day market-cap decline on record,” TheStreet reported.

People close to the DOJ’s investigation told Bloomberg that the DOJ’s “legally binding requests” require competitors “to provide information” on Nvidia’s suspected anticompetitive behaviors as a “dominant provider of AI processors.”

One concern is that Nvidia may be giving “preferential supply and pricing to customers who use its technology exclusively or buy its complete systems,” sources told Bloomberg. The DOJ is also reportedly probing Nvidia’s acquisition of RunAI—suspecting the deal may lock RunAI customers into using Nvidia chips.

Bloomberg’s report builds on a report last month from The Information that said that Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) and other Nvidia rivals were questioned by the DOJ—as well as third parties who could shed light on whether Nvidia potentially abused its market dominance in AI chips to pressure customers into buying more products.

According to Bloomberg’s sources, the DOJ is worried that “Nvidia is making it harder to switch to other suppliers and penalizes buyers that don’t exclusively use its artificial intelligence chips.”

In a statement to Bloomberg, Nvidia insisted that “Nvidia wins on merit, as reflected in our benchmark results and value to customers, who can choose whatever solution is best for them.” Additionally, Bloomberg noted that following a chip shortage in 2022, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has said that his company strives to prevent stockpiling of Nvidia’s coveted AI chips by prioritizing customers “who can make use of his products in ready-to-go data centers.”

Potential threats to Nvidia’s dominance

Despite the slump in shares, Nvidia’s market dominance seems unlikely to wane any time soon after its stock more than doubled this year. In an SEC filing this year, Nvidia bragged that its “accelerated computing ecosystem is bringing AI to every enterprise” with an “ecosystem” spanning “nearly 5 million developers and 40,000 companies.” Nvidia specifically highlighted that “more than 1,600 generative AI companies are building on Nvidia,” and according to Bloomberg, Nvidia will close out 2024 with more profits than the total sales of its closest competitor, AMD.

After the DOJ’s most recent big win, which successfully proved that Google has a monopoly on search, the DOJ appears intent on getting ahead of any tech companies’ ambitions to seize monopoly power and essentially become the Google of the AI industry. In June, DOJ antitrust chief Jonathan Kanter confirmed to the Financial Times that the DOJ is examining “monopoly choke points and the competitive landscape” in AI beyond just scrutinizing Nvidia.

According to Kanter, the DOJ is scrutinizing all aspects of the AI industry—”everything from computing power and the data used to train large language models, to cloud service providers, engineering talent and access to essential hardware such as graphics processing unit chips.” But in particular, the DOJ appears concerned that GPUs like Nvidia’s advanced AI chips remain a “scarce resource.” Kanter told the Financial Times that an “intervention” in “real time” to block a potential monopoly could be “the most meaningful intervention” and the least “invasive” as the AI industry grows.

DOJ subpoenas Nvidia in deepening AI antitrust probe, report says Read More »

Nvidia is ditching dedicated G-Sync modules to push back against FreeSync’s ubiquity

freesync, g-sync, gaming, GeForce, NVIDIA, Tech / Ryan Harris / August 20, 2024

sync or swim —

But G-Sync will still require specific G-Sync-capable MediaTek scaler chips.

Andrew Cunningham – Aug 20, 2024 7: 09 pm UTC

Back in 2013, Nvidia introduced a new technology called G-Sync to eliminate screen tearing and stuttering effects and reduce input lag when playing PC games. The company accomplished this by tying your display’s refresh rate to the actual frame rate of the game you were playing, and similar variable refresh-rate (VRR) technology has become a mainstay even in budget monitors and TVs today.

The issue for Nvidia is that G-Sync isn’t what has been driving most of that adoption. G-Sync has always required extra dedicated hardware inside of displays, increasing the costs for both users and monitor manufacturers. The VRR technology in most low-end to mid-range screens these days is usually some version of the royalty-free AMD FreeSync or the similar VESA Adaptive-Sync standard, both of which provide G-Sync’s most important features without requiring extra hardware. Nvidia more or less acknowledged that the free-to-use, cheap-to-implement VRR technologies had won in 2019 when it announced its “G-Sync Compatible” certification tier for FreeSync monitors. The list of G-Sync Compatible screens now vastly outnumbers the list of G-Sync and G-Sync Ultimate screens.

Today, Nvidia is announcing a change that’s meant to keep G-Sync alive as its own separate technology while eliminating the requirement for expensive additional hardware. Nvidia says it’s partnering with chipmaker MediaTek to build G-Sync capabilities directly into scaler chips that MediaTek is creating for upcoming monitors. G-Sync modules ordinarily replace these scaler chips, but they’re entirely separate boards with expensive FPGA chips and dedicated RAM.

These new MediaTek scalers will support all the same features that current dedicated G-Sync modules do. Nvidia says that three G-Sync monitors with MediaTek scaler chips inside will launch “later this year”: the Asus ROG Swift PG27AQNR, the Acer Predator XB273U F5, and the AOC AGON PRO AG276QSG2. These are all 27-inch 1440p displays with maximum refresh rates of 360 Hz.

As of this writing, none of these companies has announced pricing for these displays—the current Asus PG27AQN has a traditional G-Sync module and a 360 Hz refresh rate and currently goes for around $800, so we’d hope for the new version to be significantly cheaper to make good on Nvidia’s claim that the MediaTek chips will reduce costs (or, if they do reduce costs, whether monitor makers are willing to pass those savings on to consumers).

For most people most of the time, there won’t be an appreciable difference between a “true” G-Sync monitor and one that uses FreeSync or Adaptive-Sync, but there are still a few fringe benefits. G-Sync monitors support a refresh rate between 1 and the maximum refresh rate of the monitor, whereas FreeSync and Adaptive-Sync stop working on most displays when the frame rate drops below 40 or 48 frames per second. All G-Sync monitors also support “variable overdrive” technology to help eliminate display ghosting, and the new MediaTek-powered displays will support the recent “G-Sync Pulsar” feature to reduce blur.

Nvidia is ditching dedicated G-Sync modules to push back against FreeSync’s ubiquity Read More »

AMD signs $4.9 billion deal to challenge Nvidia’s AI infrastructure lead

AI, AMD, data centers, NVIDIA, syndication, Tech / Ryan Harris / August 19, 2024

chip wars —

Company hopes acquisition of ZT Systems will accelerate adoption of its data center chips.

Michael Acton, Financial Times – Aug 19, 2024 8: 32 pm UTC

Visitors walk past the AMD booth at the 2024 Mobile World Congress

AMD has agreed to buy artificial intelligence infrastructure group ZT Systems in a $4.9 billion cash and stock transaction, extending a run of AI investments by the chip company as it seeks to challenge market leader Nvidia.

The California-based group said the acquisition would help accelerate the adoption of its Instinct line of AI data center chips, which compete with Nvidia’s popular graphics processing units (GPUs).

ZT Systems, a private company founded three decades ago, builds custom computing infrastructure for the biggest AI “hyperscalers.” While the company does not disclose its customers, the hyperscalers include the likes of Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon.

The deal marks AMD’s biggest acquisition since it bought Xilinx for $35 billion in 2022.

“It brings a thousand world-class design engineers into our team, it allows us to develop silicon and systems in parallel and, most importantly, get the newest AI infrastructure up and running in data centers as fast as possible,” AMD’s chief executive Lisa Su told the Financial Times.

“It really helps us deploy our technology much faster because this is what our customers are telling us [they need],” Su added.

The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2025, subject to regulatory approval, after which New Jersey-based ZT Systems will be folded into AMD’s data center business group. The $4.9bn valuation includes up to $400mn contingent on “certain post-closing milestones.”

Citi and Latham & Watkins are advising AMD, while ZT Systems has retained Goldman Sachs and Paul, Weiss.

The move comes as AMD seeks to break Nvidia’s stranglehold on the AI data center chip market, which earlier this year saw Nvidia temporarily become the world’s most valuable company as big tech companies pour billions of dollars into its chips to train and deploy powerful new AI models.

Part of Nvidia’s success stems from its “systems” approach to the AI chip market, offering end-to-end computing infrastructure that includes pre-packaged server racks, networking equipment, and software tools to make it easier for developers to build AI applications on its chips.

AMD’s acquisition shows the chipmaker building out its own “systems” offering. The company rolled out its MI300 line of AI chips last year, and says it will launch its next-generation MI350 chip in 2025 to compete with Nvidia’s new Blackwell line of GPUs.

In May, Microsoft was one of the first AI hyperscalers to adopt the MI300, building it into its Azure cloud platform to run AI models such as OpenAI’s GPT-4. AMD’s quarterly revenue for the chips surpassed $1 billion for the first time in the three months to June 30.

But while AMD has feted the MI300 as its fastest-ever product ramp, its data center revenue still represented a fraction of the $22.6 billion that Nvidia’s data center business raked in for the quarter to the end of April.

In March, ZT Systems announced a partnership with Nvidia to build custom AI infrastructure using its Blackwell chips. “I think we certainly believe ZT as part of AMD will significantly accelerate the adoption of AMD AI solutions,” Su said, but “we have customer commitments and we are certainly going to honour those”.

Su added that she expected regulators’ review of the deal to focus on the US and Europe.

In addition to increasing its research and development spending, AMD says it has invested more than $1 billion over the past year to expand its AI hardware and software ecosystem.

In July the company announced it was acquiring Finnish AI start-up Silo AI for $665 million, the largest acquisition of a privately held AI startup in Europe in a decade.

AMD signs $4.9 billion deal to challenge Nvidia’s AI infrastructure lead Read More »

Your 10-year-old graphics card can run Dragon Age: The Veilguard

dragon age 4, gaming, NVIDIA / Ari B / August 19, 2024

Still kicking —

2014’s Nvidia GTX 970 is still a “minimum requirements” workhorse.

Kyle Orland – Aug 19, 2024 3: 57 pm UTC

At this rate, it might be the only graphics card you'll ever need? — Enlarge / At this rate, it might be the only graphics card you’ll ever need?

When Dragon Age: Inquisition came out nearly 10 years ago, PC players could have invested $329 (~$435 in today’s dollars) in a brand-new GTX 970 graphics card to make the game look as good as possible on their high-end gaming rig. Surprisingly enough, that very same 2014 graphics card will still be able to run follow-up Dragon Age: The Veilguard (previously known as Dreadwolf) when it launches on October 31. If you’re using AMD cards, an even older Radeon R9 that you purchased back in 2013 will be able to run the game.

Veilguard‘s minimum specs are just the latest to show the workmanlike endurance of the humble GTX 970, which is currently available used on Newegg for as low as $140. Relatively recent big-budget PC releases like Baldur’s Gate 3 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 both use the old card (or the less powerful follow-up variant, the GTX 960) as their “minimum requirement” benchmark.

Not every big-budget PC game these days is so forgiving with its minimum specs, though. When Cyberpunk 2077 and Doom: Eternal launched in 2020, they both asked players to be sporting at least a GTX 1060, which had come out around four years prior.

For a bit of context, the GTX 970 was used as the “recommended” baseline spec for the mid-range “Oculus Ready” PCs needed to power the then-new Rift VR headset when it launched in 2016. Today, a $500 Meta Quest 3 headset gives you much better graphical performance in a self-contained portable package, no gaming PC required.

Veilguard players sticking with a GTX 970 shouldn’t expect to get the best graphical experience, of course. EA suggests an RTX 2070 (circa 2018) or a Radeon RX 5700Xt (circa 2019) to run the game at “recommended” specs. And you’ll need at least 16 GB of RAM and 100 GB of storage space.

Since work on Veilguard began in earnest in 2015, the game has suffered a string of high-profile staff departures: Creative Director Mike Laidlaw left in 2017; Executive Producer Mark Darrah and BioWare General Manager Casey Hudson left in late 2020; Senior Creative Director Matt Goldman left in late 2021; replacement Executive Producer Christian Daley left in early 2022; and producer Mac Walters left in early 2023.

The full requirements for Dragon Age: The Veilguard are as follows.

Minimum Requirements

OS: Windows 10/11 64-bit

Processor: Intel Core i5-8400 / AMD Ryzen 3 3300X(see notes)

Memory: 16GB

Graphics: Nvidia GTX 970/1650 / AMD Radeon R9 290X

DirectX: Version 12

Storage: 100GB available space

Additional Notes: SSD preferred, HDD supported; AMD CPUs on Windows 11 require AGESA V2 1.2.0.7

Recommended Requirements

OS: Windows 10/11 64-bit

Processor: Intel Core i9-9900K / AMD Ryzen 7 3700X (see notes)

Memory: 16GB

Graphics: Nvidia RTX 2070 / AMD Radeon RX 5700XT

DirectX: Version 12

Storage: 100GB SSD available space

Additional Notes: SSD required; AMD CPUs on Windows 11 require AGESA V2 1.2.0.7

Your 10-year-old graphics card can run Dragon Age: The Veilguard Read More »

US probes Nvidia’s acquisition of Israeli AI startup

AI, Justice Department, NVIDIA, Policy, run:ai, syndication / Ryan Harris / August 2, 2024

“monopoly choke points” —

Justice Department has increased scrutiny of the chipmaker’s power in the emerging sector.

Stefania Palma, Financial Times – Aug 2, 2024 5: 03 pm UTC

The US Department of Justice is investigating Nvidia’s acquisition of Run:ai, an Israeli artificial intelligence startup, for potential antitrust violations, said a person familiar with discussions the government agency has had with third parties.

The DoJ has asked market participants about the competitive impact of the transaction, which Nvidia announced in April. The price was not disclosed but a report from TechCrunch estimated it at $700 million.

The scope of the probe remains unclear, the person said. But the DoJ has inquired about matters including whether the deal could quash emerging competition in the up-and-coming sector and entrench Nvidia’s dominant market position.

Nvidia on Thursday said the company “wins on merit” and “scrupulously adher[es] to all laws.”

“We’ll continue to support aspiring innovators in every industry and market and are happy to provide any information regulators need,” it added.

Run:ai did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The DoJ declined to comment.

The investigation comes as US regulators and enforcers have heightened scrutiny of anti-competitive behavior in AI, particularly where it dovetails with big tech groups such as Nvidia.

Jonathan Kanter, head of the DoJ’s antitrust division, told the Financial Times in June that he was examining “monopoly choke points” in areas including the data used to train large language models as well as access to essential hardware such as graphics processing unit chips. He added that the GPUs needed to train LLMs had become a “scarce resource.”

Nvidia dominates sales of the most advanced GPUs. Run:ai, which had an existing collaboration with the tech giant, has developed a platform that optimizes the use of GPUs.

As part of the probe, which was first reported by Politico, the DoJ is seeking information on how Nvidia decides the allocation of its chips, the person said.

Government lawyers are also inquiring about Nvidia’s software platform, Cuda, which enables chips originally designed for graphics to speed up AI applications and is seen by industry figures as one of Nvidia’s most critical tools.

The DoJ and the US Federal Trade Commission, a competition regulator, in June reached an agreement that divided antitrust oversight of critical AI players. The DoJ will spearhead probes into Nvidia, while the FTC will oversee the assessment of Microsoft and OpenAI, the startup behind ChatGPT.

US probes Nvidia’s acquisition of Israeli AI startup Read More »

AI’s future in grave danger from Nvidia’s chokehold on chips, groups warn

AI chips, ai industry, Antitrust law, Artificial Intelligence, department of justice, intel, Jensen Huang, monopoly, NVIDIA, Policy / Ari B / August 1, 2024

Controlling “the world’s computing destiny” —

Anti-monopoly groups want DOJ to probe Nvidia’s AI chip bundling, alleged price-fixing.

Ashley Belanger – Aug 1, 2024 6: 14 pm UTC

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has joined progressive groups—including Demand Progress, Open Markets Institute, and the Tech Oversight Project—pressuring the US Department of Justice to investigate Nvidia’s dominance in the AI chip market due to alleged antitrust concerns, Reuters reported.

In a letter to the DOJ’s chief antitrust enforcer, Jonathan Kanter, groups demanding more Big Tech oversight raised alarms that Nvidia’s top rivals apparently “are struggling to gain traction” because “Nvidia’s near-absolute dominance of the market is difficult to counter” and “funders are wary of backing its rivals.”

Nvidia is currently “the world’s most valuable public company,” their letter said, worth more than $3 trillion after taking near-total control of the high-performance AI chip market. Particularly “astonishing,” the letter said, was Nvidia’s dominance in the market for GPU accelerator chips, which are at the heart of today’s leading AI. Groups urged Kanter to probe Nvidia’s business practices to ensure that rivals aren’t permanently blocked from competing.

According to the advocacy groups that strongly oppose Big Tech monopolies, Nvidia “now holds an 80 percent overall global market share in GPU chips and a 98 percent share in the data center market.” This “puts it in a position to crowd out competitors and set global pricing and the terms of trade,” the letter warned.

Earlier this year, inside sources reported that the DOJ and the Federal Trade Commission reached a deal where the DOJ would probe Nvidia’s alleged anti-competitive behavior in the booming AI industry, and the FTC would probe OpenAI and Microsoft. But there has been no official Nvidia probe announced, prompting progressive groups to push harder for the DOJ to recognize what they view as a “dire danger to the open market” that “well deserves DOJ scrutiny.”

Ultimately, the advocacy groups told Kanter that they fear Nvidia wielding “control over the world’s computing destiny,” noting that Nvidia’s cloud computing data centers don’t just power “Big Tech’s consumer products” but also “underpin every aspect of contemporary society, including the financial system, logistics, healthcare, and defense.”

They claimed that Nvidia is “leveraging” its “scarce chips” to force customers to buy its “chips, networking, and programming software as a package.” Such bundling and “price-fixing,” their letter warned, appear to be “the same kinds of anti-competitive tactics that the courts, in response to actions brought by the Department of Justice against other companies, have found to be illegal” and could perhaps “stifle innovation.”

Although data from TechInsights suggested that Nvidia’s chip shortage and cost actually helped companies like AMD and Intel sell chips in 2023, both Nvidia rivals reported losses in market share earlier this year, Yahoo Finance reported.

Perhaps most closely monitoring Nvidia’s dominance, France antitrust authorities launched an investigation into Nvidia last month over antitrust concerns, the letter said, “making it the first enforcer to act against the computer chip maker,” Reuters reported.

Since then, the European Union and the United Kingdom, as well as the US, have heightened scrutiny, but their seeming lag to follow through with an official investigation may only embolden Nvidia, as the company allegedly “believes its market behavior is above the law,” the progressive groups wrote. Suspicious behavior includes allegations that “Nvidia has continued to sell chips to Chinese customers and provide them computing access” despite a “Department of Commerce ban on trading with Chinese companies due to national security and human rights concerns.”

“Its chips have been confirmed to be reaching blacklisted Chinese entities,” their letter warned, citing a Wall Street Journal report.

Nvidia’s dominance apparently impacts everyone involved with AI. According to the letter, Nvidia seemingly “determining who receives inventory from a limited supply, setting premium pricing, and contractually blocking customers from doing business with competitors” is “alarming” the entire AI industry. That includes “both small companies (who find their supply choked off) and the Big Tech AI giants.”

Kanter will likely be receptive to the letter. In June, Fast Company reported that Kanter told an audience at an AI conference that there are “structures and trends in AI that should give us pause.” He further suggested that any technology that “relies on massive amounts of data and computing power” can “give already dominant firms a substantial advantage,” according to Fast Company’s summary of his remarks.

AI’s future in grave danger from Nvidia’s chokehold on chips, groups warn Read More »

Elon Musk claims he is training “the world’s most powerful AI by every metric”

AI, Biz & IT, chatgpt, chatgtp, elon musk, GPUs, grok, H100, large language models, Memphis, Memphis supercluster, NVIDIA, tennessee, Tesla, TVA, WREG, xAI / Blake Jones / July 24, 2024

the biggest, most powerful —

One snag: xAI might not have the electrical power contracts to do it.

Benj Edwards – Jul 24, 2024 4: 19 pm UTC

Enlarge / Elon Musk, chief executive officer of Tesla Inc., during a fireside discussion on artificial intelligence risks with Rishi Sunak, UK prime minister, in London, UK, on Thursday, Nov. 2, 2023.

On Monday, Elon Musk announced the start of training for what he calls “the world’s most powerful AI training cluster” at xAI’s new supercomputer facility in Memphis, Tennessee. The billionaire entrepreneur and CEO of multiple tech companies took to X (formerly Twitter) to share that the so-called “Memphis Supercluster” began operations at approximately 4: 20 am local time that day.

Musk’s xAI team, in collaboration with X and Nvidia, launched the supercomputer cluster featuring 100,000 liquid-cooled H100 GPUs on a single RDMA fabric. This setup, according to Musk, gives xAI “a significant advantage in training the world’s most powerful AI by every metric by December this year.”

Given issues with xAI’s Grok chatbot throughout the year, skeptics would be justified in questioning whether those claims will match reality, especially given Musk’s tendency for grandiose, off-the-cuff remarks on the social media platform he runs.

Power issues

According to a report by News Channel 3 WREG Memphis, the startup of the massive AI training facility marks a milestone for the city. WREG reports that xAI’s investment represents the largest capital investment by a new company in Memphis’s history. However, the project has raised questions among local residents and officials about its impact on the area’s power grid and infrastructure.

WREG reports that Doug McGowen, president of Memphis Light, Gas and Water (MLGW), previously stated that xAI could consume up to 150 megawatts of power at peak times. This substantial power requirement has prompted discussions with the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) regarding the project’s electricity demands and connection to the power system.

The TVA told the local news station, “TVA does not have a contract in place with xAI. We are working with xAI and our partners at MLGW on the details of the proposal and electricity demand needs.”

The local news outlet confirms that MLGW has stated that xAI moved into an existing building with already existing utility services, but the full extent of the company’s power usage and its potential effects on local utilities remain unclear. To address community concerns, WREG reports that MLGW plans to host public forums in the coming days to provide more information about the project and its implications for the city.

For now, Tom’s Hardware reports that Musk is side-stepping power issues by installing a fleet of 14 VoltaGrid natural gas generators that provide supplementary power to the Memphis computer cluster while his company works out an agreement with the local power utility.

As training at the Memphis Supercluster gets underway, all eyes are on xAI and Musk’s ambitious goal of developing the world’s most powerful AI by the end of the year (by which metric, we are uncertain), given the competitive landscape in AI at the moment between OpenAI/Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Anthropic, and Google. If such an AI model emerges from xAI, we’ll be ready to write about it.

This article was updated on July 24, 2024 at 1: 11 pm to mention Musk installing natural gas generators onsite in Memphis.

Elon Musk claims he is training “the world’s most powerful AI by every metric” Read More »

The next Nvidia driver makes even more GPUs “open,” in a specific, quirky way

Biz & IT, CUDA, Linux, Linux kernel, NVIDIA, nvidia drivers, Open Source, Tech / Blake Jones / July 18, 2024

You know open when you see it —

You can’t see inside the firmware, but more open code can translate it for you.

Kevin Purdy – Jul 18, 2024 5: 34 pm UTC

GeForce RTX 4060 cards on display in a case — Getty Images

You have to read the headline on Nvidia’s latest GPU announcement slowly, parsing each clause as it arrives.

“Nvidia transitions fully” sounds like real commitment, a burn-the-boats call. “Towards open-source GPU,” yes, evoking the company’s “first step” announcement a little over two years ago, so this must be progress, right? But, back up a word here, then finish: “GPU kernel modules.”

So, Nvidia has “achieved equivalent or better application performance with our open-source GPU kernel modules,” and added some new capabilities to them. And now most of Nvidia’s modern GPUs will default to using open source GPU kernel modules, starting with driver release R560, with dual GPL and MIT licensing. But Nvidia has moved most of its proprietary functions into a proprietary, closed-source firmware blob. The parts of Nvidia’s GPUs that interact with the broader Linux system are open, but the user-space drivers and firmware are none of your or the OSS community’s business.

Is it better than what existed before? Certainly. AMD and Intel have maintained open source GPU drivers, in both the kernel and user space, for years, though also with proprietary firmware. This brings Nvidia a bit closer to the Linux community and allows for community debugging and contribution. There’s no indication that Nvidia aims to go further with its open source moves, however, and its modules remain outside the main kernel, packaged up for users to install themselves.

Not all GPUs will be able to use the open source drivers: a number of chips from the Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta lines; GPUs from the Turing, Ampere, Ada Lovelace, and Hopper architectures are recommended to switch to the open bits; and Grace Hopper and Blackwell units must do so.

As noted by Hector Martin, a developer on the Asahi Linux distribution, at the time of the first announcement, this shift makes it easier to sandbox closed-source code while using Nvidia hardware. But the net amount of closed-off code is about the same as before.

Nvidia’s blog post has details on how to integrate its open kernel modules onto various systems, including CUDA setups.

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In bid to loosen Nvidia’s grip on AI, AMD to buy Finnish startup for $665M

AI, AMD, Biz & IT, NVIDIA, nvidia ai, syndication / Ryan Harris / July 10, 2024

AI tech stack —

The acquisition is the largest of its kind in Europe in a decade.

Michael Acton and Tim Bradshaw, Financial Times – Jul 10, 2024 5: 19 pm UTC

AMD is to buy Finnish artificial intelligence startup Silo AI for $665 million in one of the largest such takeovers in Europe as the US chipmaker seeks to expand its AI services to compete with market leader Nvidia.

California-based AMD said Silo’s 300-member team would use its software tools to build custom large language models (LLMs), the kind of AI technology that underpins chatbots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. The all-cash acquisition is expected to close in the second half of this year, subject to regulatory approval.

“This agreement helps us both accelerate our customer engagements and deployments while also helping us accelerate our own AI tech stack,” Vamsi Boppana, senior vice president of AMD’s artificial intelligence group, told the Financial Times.

The acquisition is the largest of a privately held AI startup in Europe since Google acquired UK-based DeepMind for around 400 million pounds in 2014, according to data from Dealroom.

The deal comes at a time when buyouts by Silicon Valley companies have come under tougher scrutiny from regulators in Brussels and the UK. Europe-based AI startups, including Mistral, DeepL, and Helsing, have raised hundreds of millions of dollars this year as investors seek out a local champion to rival US-based OpenAI and Anthropic.

Helsinki-based Silo AI, which is among the largest private AI labs in Europe, offers tailored AI models and platforms to enterprise customers. The Finnish company launched an initiative last year to build LLMs in European languages, including Swedish, Icelandic, and Danish.

AMD’s AI technology competes with that of Nvidia, which has taken the lion’s share of the high-performance chip market. Nvidia’s success has propelled its valuation past $3 trillion this year as tech companies push to build the computing infrastructure needed to power the biggest AI models. AMD started to roll out its MI300 chips late last year in a direct challenge to Nvidia’s “Hopper” line of chips.

Peter Sarlin, Silo AI co-founder and chief executive, called the acquisition the “logical next step” as the Finnish group seeks to become a “flagship” AI company.

Silo AI is committed to “open source” AI models, which are available for free and can be customized by anyone. This distinguishes it from the likes of OpenAI and Google, which favor their own proprietary or “closed” models.

The startup previously described its family of open models, called “Poro,” as an important step toward “strengthening European digital sovereignty” and democratizing access to LLMs.

The concentration of the most powerful LLMs into the hands of a few US-based Big Tech companies is meanwhile attracting attention from antitrust regulators in Washington and Brussels.

The Silo deal shows AMD seeking to scale its business quickly and drive customer engagement with its own offering. AMD views Silo, which builds custom models for clients, as a link between its “foundational” AI software and the real-world applications of the technology.

Software has become a new battleground for semiconductor companies as they try to lock in customers to their hardware and generate more predictable revenues, outside the boom-and-bust chip sales cycle.

Nvidia’s success in the AI market stems from its multibillion-dollar investment in Cuda, its proprietary software that allows chips originally designed for processing computer graphics and video games to run a wider range of applications.

Since starting to develop Cuda in 2006, Nvidia has expanded its software platform to include a range of apps and services, largely aimed at corporate customers that lack the in-house resources and skills that Big Tech companies have to build on its technology.

Nvidia now offers more than 600 “pre-trained” models, meaning they are simpler for customers to deploy. The Santa Clara, California-based group last month started rolling out a “microservices” platform, called NIM, which promises to let developers build chatbots and AI “co-pilot” services quickly.

Historically, Nvidia has offered its software free of charge to buyers of its chips, but said this year that it planned to charge for products such as NIM.

AMD is among several companies contributing to the development of an OpenAI-led rival to Cuda, called Triton, which would let AI developers switch more easily between chip providers. Meta, Microsoft, and Intel have also worked on Triton.

In bid to loosen Nvidia’s grip on AI, AMD to buy Finnish startup for $665M Read More »

US agencies to probe AI dominance of Nvidia, Microsoft, and OpenAI

microsoft, microsoft ai, NVIDIA, nvidia ai, openai, Policy / Mike M. / June 6, 2024

AI Antitrust —

DOJ to probe Nvidia while FTC takes lead in investigating Microsoft and OpenAI.

Jon Brodkin – Jun 6, 2024 6: 34 pm UTC

Enlarge / Nvidia logo at Impact 2024 event in Poznan, Poland on May 16, 2024.

Getty Images | NurPhoto

The US Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission reportedly plan investigations into whether Nvidia, Microsoft, and OpenAI are snuffing out competition in artificial intelligence technology.

The agencies struck a deal on how to divide up the investigations, The New York Times reported yesterday. Under this deal, the Justice Department will take the lead role in investigating Nvidia’s behavior while the FTC will take the lead in investigating Microsoft and OpenAI.

The agencies’ agreement “allows them to proceed with antitrust investigations into the dominant roles that Microsoft, OpenAI, and Nvidia play in the artificial intelligence industry, in the strongest sign of how regulatory scrutiny into the powerful technology has escalated,” the NYT wrote.

One potential area of investigation is Nvidia’s chip dominance, “including how the company’s software locks customers into using its chips, as well as how Nvidia distributes those chips to customers,” the report said. An Nvidia spokesperson declined to comment when contacted by Ars today.

High-end GPUs are “scarce,” antitrust chief says

Jonathan Kanter, the assistant attorney general in charge of the DOJ’s antitrust division, discussed the agency’s plans in an interview with the Financial Times this week. Kanter said the DOJ is examining “monopoly choke points and the competitive landscape” in AI.

The DOJ’s examination of the sector encompasses “everything from computing power and the data used to train large language models, to cloud service providers, engineering talent and access to essential hardware such as graphics processing unit chips,” the FT wrote.

Kanter said regulators are worried that AI is “at the high-water mark of competition, not the floor” and want to take action before smaller competitors are shut out of the market. The GPUs needed to train large language models are a “scarce resource,” he was quoted as saying.

“Sometimes the most meaningful intervention is when the intervention is in real time,” Kanter told the Financial Times. “The beauty of that is you can be less invasive.”

Microsoft deal scrutinized

The FTC is scrutinizing Microsoft over a March 2024 move in which it hired the CEO of artificial intelligence startup Inflection and most of the company’s staff and paid Inflection $650 million as part of a licensing deal to resell its technology. The FTC is investigating whether Microsoft structured the deal “to avoid a government antitrust review of the transaction,” The Wall Street Journal reported today.

“Companies are required to report acquisitions valued at more than $119 million to federal antitrust-enforcement agencies, which have the option to investigate a deal’s impact on competition,” the WSJ wrote. The FTC reportedly sent subpoenas to Microsoft and Inflection in an attempt “to determine whether Microsoft crafted a deal that would give it control of Inflection but also dodge FTC review of the transaction.”

Inflection built a large language model and a chatbot called Pi. Former Inflection employees are now working on Microsoft’s Copilot chatbot.

“If the agency finds that Microsoft should have reported and sought government review of its deal with Inflection, the FTC could bring an enforcement action against Microsoft,” the WSJ report said. “Officials could ask a court to fine Microsoft and suspend the transaction while the FTC conducts a full-scale investigation of the deal’s impact on competition.”

Microsoft told the WSJ that it complied with antitrust laws, that Inflection continues to operate independently, and that the deals gave Microsoft “the opportunity to recruit individuals at Inflection AI and build a team capable of accelerating Microsoft Copilot.”

OpenAI

Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI has also faced regulatory scrutiny, particularly in Europe. Microsoft has a profit-sharing agreement with OpenAI.

Microsoft President Brad Smith defended the partnership in comments to the Financial Times this week. “The partnerships that we’re pursuing have demonstrably added competition to the marketplace,” Smith was quoted as saying. “I might argue that Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI has created this new AI market,” and that OpenAI “would not have been able to train or deploy its models” without Microsoft’s help, he said.

We contacted OpenAI today and will update this article if it provides any comment.

In January 2024, the FTC launched an inquiry into AI-related investments and partnerships involving Alphabet, Amazon, Anthropic, Microsoft, and OpenAI.

The FTC also started a separate investigation into OpenAI last year. A civil investigative demand sent to OpenAI focused on potentially unfair or deceptive privacy and data security practices, and “risks of harm to consumers, including reputational harm.” The probe focused partly on “generation of harmful or misleading content.”

US agencies to probe AI dominance of Nvidia, Microsoft, and OpenAI Read More »