China: Nvidia Loses Face and a 10 Million PC Order over Linux Drivers and NRE's(brightsideofnews.com)
brightsideofnews.com
China: Nvidia Loses Face and a 10 Million PC Order over Linux Drivers and NRE's
http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2012/6/21/china-nvidia-loses-face-and-a-10-million-pc-order-over-linux-drivers-and-nres.aspx
12 comments
The Author seems legit, here's a list of his open-source-related writings prior to 2010:
http://www.pcauthority.com.au/Author/146235,nebojsa-novakovi...
http://www.pcauthority.com.au/Author/146235,nebojsa-novakovi...
The chinese are heavily invested in some kind of technology independence. The chip mentioned in this piece is most likely the nationalized homebrew CPU the Godson/Dragon/Loongson:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson
I guess they've gotten to the point where they want to push this CPU onto their school children with their Red Flag Linux distro.
I suspect there's more to the story other than "herp derp nvidia is stupidz!!" Open sourcing their drivers may open them to liablity or patent issues and/or give AMD a nice look into the nvidia internals. For all the grief AMD gets at least they opened their specs and allowed a community driver. The problem is that the OSS advocates want their cake and to eat it too. They don't want to develop all the hard 3D stuff, potentially get in patent issues, empower the competition, etc but expect NVIDIA to do this for them.
3D is a patent minefield. All the more reason to encourage patent reform.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson
I guess they've gotten to the point where they want to push this CPU onto their school children with their Red Flag Linux distro.
I suspect there's more to the story other than "herp derp nvidia is stupidz!!" Open sourcing their drivers may open them to liablity or patent issues and/or give AMD a nice look into the nvidia internals. For all the grief AMD gets at least they opened their specs and allowed a community driver. The problem is that the OSS advocates want their cake and to eat it too. They don't want to develop all the hard 3D stuff, potentially get in patent issues, empower the competition, etc but expect NVIDIA to do this for them.
3D is a patent minefield. All the more reason to encourage patent reform.
[deleted]
Also, there is one thing about the title of this story that I do not understand. Why would a failed negotiation imply that "nvidia is losing face"?
The author clearly means Nvidia losing face with respect to China.
This concept of "losing face" may seem like just a small word or minor loss of reputation to Westerners, but in a sense is more important in China (and to varying extent all over the Far East) than even money.
If the story is true, and the depth of detail leads me to believe it is very likely, then the reputational damage to Nvidia would be high and, more importantly, entrenched (an aspect of face that makes it different from mere temporary reputational loss) due the public service, government angle and the size of the proposal.
This concept of "losing face" may seem like just a small word or minor loss of reputation to Westerners, but in a sense is more important in China (and to varying extent all over the Far East) than even money.
If the story is true, and the depth of detail leads me to believe it is very likely, then the reputational damage to Nvidia would be high and, more importantly, entrenched (an aspect of face that makes it different from mere temporary reputational loss) due the public service, government angle and the size of the proposal.
as far as I can understand the convoluted article, the losing face part refers to Linus' outing
The connection they imply is doubtful. They give no date for the Nvidia negotiation, but (assuming it isn't misrepresented) it must have taken a lot of time (enough that the Chinese could pick something from AMD in the end). And I doubt Linus heard about it, either (the “behind the curtain reason for Linus' frustration” idea must have come from someone unfamiliar with him or the video of the event). The only commonality is that both find Nvidia hard to work with, in different contexts.
My interpretation is that Nvidia caused the Chinese to lose face, and this what will doom them to lose future contracts. I've been living here in China for 6 months now, and the social aspects of business, like face, are really nuanced, but so so important. I don't really understand them yet.
It seems the site is down, so here is the Google cache link: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...
Thanks for posting the link!
EDIT: And I get downvoted for saying thanks... so thanks. EDIT EDIT: And a upvote. Cheers!
EDIT: And I get downvoted for saying thanks... so thanks. EDIT EDIT: And a upvote. Cheers!
Protip - if all you want to post is "thanks" or "cool" or something like that, just upvote and don't post anything, that's what the upvote button is for. The parent poster will know which one the upvotes mean.
Otherwise, your post will tend to get downvoted around here for not saying anything a simple upvote can.
1. http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Otherwise, your post will tend to get downvoted around here for not saying anything a simple upvote can.
1. http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Thanks for the info SkyMarshal!
Thank you for posting the cache link.
China is investing in Linux for one simple reason - they can have someone read the source code.
A (low-level?) war is going on right now between US and China - and the battlefield are the hardware and software that runs the world.
Can't read the code - then we don't trust that you aren't spying on us.
Unfortunately I doubt they will extend the same rights to their citizens.
On the Nvidia side, this is either the dumbest commercial move ever,(#) or they really do have quite a lot to hide in that code.
(#) Really I cannot imagine anyone turning down an order on 10 M PCs. Whats in that code base?
Edit: @virdah - thank you for pointing out the should-have-been obvious.
A (low-level?) war is going on right now between US and China - and the battlefield are the hardware and software that runs the world.
Can't read the code - then we don't trust that you aren't spying on us.
Unfortunately I doubt they will extend the same rights to their citizens.
On the Nvidia side, this is either the dumbest commercial move ever,(#) or they really do have quite a lot to hide in that code.
(#) Really I cannot imagine anyone turning down an order on 10 M PCs. Whats in that code base?
Edit: @virdah - thank you for pointing out the should-have-been obvious.
Well, there's that, and the fact that China is notorious for reverse engineering, and basically just stealing the technology and making their own knock-offs. I don't blame Nvidia for not giving them the source code.
Many experts have shown that hardware specs which are sufficient for writing drivers are entirely useless for making hardware, to someone already versed in the field.
I read/heard/imagined(?) that the reason GPU vendors weren't willing to hand over their source was due to a proportion of their performance being software based. Which then a competitor could also implement.
The other big problem is lawsuit exposure. Given the current state of the patent system it's certain that nVidia drivers infringe on someone's patents.
Closed source drivers make it more difficult for patent owners to check, and launching a lawsuit without evidence of infringement is very expensive.
Closed source drivers make it more difficult for patent owners to check, and launching a lawsuit without evidence of infringement is very expensive.
They claim that their shader compilers/schedulers are part of their performance benefit, yes.
But they don't need to provide that source, just hardware specs. Gallium3d already has shader compilers and schedulers.
But they don't need to provide that source, just hardware specs. Gallium3d already has shader compilers and schedulers.
But these code bases aren't nearly large enough for it to be a problem for a reasonably sized team armed with decent tools to disassemble and analyze them if the goal is to figure out the techniques used. It might be their reason, but if so it's a damn stupid reason.
So where is my WinModem driver?
You must have misread.
If one has enough info about nvidia hardware in order to make a driver for nvidia hardware, the same info is not enough to make your own nvidia hardware clones.
If one has enough info about nvidia hardware in order to make a driver for nvidia hardware, the same info is not enough to make your own nvidia hardware clones.
You sure about that? Read up about ghost-shifts in semiconductor fabs. Bunnie tells a bit of the tale in his story about counterfeit SD cards:
"Very low serial numbers, like very low MAC ID addresses, are a hallmark of the “ghost shift”, i.e. the shift that happens very late at night when a rouge worker enters the factory and runs the production machine off the books"
http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=918
"Very low serial numbers, like very low MAC ID addresses, are a hallmark of the “ghost shift”, i.e. the shift that happens very late at night when a rouge worker enters the factory and runs the production machine off the books"
http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=918
If you can run the hardware manufacturing off the books, I don't see how access to the driver source code would help. You would just ship the official binaries.
The point was that you don't need to know anything about the driver or hardware to make clones. There are other ways.
Which continues to moot the relevant point: Nvidia are withholding necessary software specs which not only aren't useful in reengineering their hardware, but which fail to protect against fully independent attacks (ghost shift manufacture) which at least allow duplication of current physical product if not producing a superior hardware product.
If reverse engineering is a crime, then you can probably say the same thing about the whole Linux community, and how they are "stealing" Microsoft and Apple's innovations.
Who said it was a crime? Just that a company might not want to give away it's source code because they don't want to make it easier for another company to make knock offs.
This has been a big issue for companies dealing with China, you sell your product their for awhile, until they can reverse it (or even hack your servers for info) and make their own.
In this case, the legality wasn't brought up, just the motivations for one company not sharing with another.
This has been a big issue for companies dealing with China, you sell your product their for awhile, until they can reverse it (or even hack your servers for info) and make their own.
In this case, the legality wasn't brought up, just the motivations for one company not sharing with another.
Governments and Universities can already get access to Windows source. I think the difference is that China can write the source for Linux.
When I was in University (some 16 years ago), that was already the case. However, you could only browse the source - some essential pieces were missing that made it impossible to build a working system from that code.
Thus, you still have to trust that code you view is the code you run -- which is almost as bad as trusting documentation.
> I think the difference is that China can write the source for Linux.
I think the key here is that they are able to verify that the code they review is the code the run, by building the system.
And, I'm aware of "reflections on trusting trust", but I'm sure that they have a clean-room bootstrapped C compiler capable enough of bootstrapping tcc or gcc and thus the linux kernel.
Thus, you still have to trust that code you view is the code you run -- which is almost as bad as trusting documentation.
> I think the difference is that China can write the source for Linux.
I think the key here is that they are able to verify that the code they review is the code the run, by building the system.
And, I'm aware of "reflections on trusting trust", but I'm sure that they have a clean-room bootstrapped C compiler capable enough of bootstrapping tcc or gcc and thus the linux kernel.
Some governments have access to that source code, but it gives them no guarantees that what they run is faithful to it, and it doesn't let them replace the usual products with something audited. Even if they can compile something out of that source, I suspect they can't boot or run the whole thing, and they certainly can't distribute it.
Universities are given access to Windows source? I'd never heard of this before. Do they give access to all accredited universities, or is there some other kind of restriction?
> Use of the Windows Research Kernel requires academic affiliation with an accredited institution of higher education and direct involvement in teaching and/or research, such as being academic faculty members, system or lab administrators or instructors, students enrolled in relevant undergraduate or graduate programs, or academic researchers working on faculty sponsored projects.
As I thought.
As I thought.
Microsoft provides Windows and Office source code for Chinese government since 2003 as part of Microsoft Government Security Program.
Does the Chinese government compiles and builds their own version or they trust Microsoft will use the exact same source they have shown?
In Brazil we had some interesting questioning regarding the security of electronic voting systems - in 2002, I was on the team that developed the WinCE version of the electronic ballot - we had the source for the application and some of the device drivers, but we didn't have the sources for the compilers, libraries and operating system. Any of those layers could harbor a known (or unknown) backdoor that could allow tampering with the voting data.
I'm pretty sure my compiler was clean (I installed my development machine from my MSDN subscription CDs before the corporate IT folks could get their hands on it, so I imagine nobody could have sneaked into my house to place the CDs in my backpack)
In Brazil we had some interesting questioning regarding the security of electronic voting systems - in 2002, I was on the team that developed the WinCE version of the electronic ballot - we had the source for the application and some of the device drivers, but we didn't have the sources for the compilers, libraries and operating system. Any of those layers could harbor a known (or unknown) backdoor that could allow tampering with the voting data.
I'm pretty sure my compiler was clean (I installed my development machine from my MSDN subscription CDs before the corporate IT folks could get their hands on it, so I imagine nobody could have sneaked into my house to place the CDs in my backpack)
Can you compile a working system from that source?
I am happy that the Chinese invest this much in Linux. This obviously motivates big hardware makers to release quality/OS drivers for their products, and in the end I benefit from that as well.
I remember the times I had to hack around for days to get some particular piece of hardware to work. That happens less and less, and now most of the stuff I buy just works.
Video cards and capture cards are the big exception for now, they somehow work sometimes, but this is getting better every day, and this news takes us in that direction even more.
I remember the times I had to hack around for days to get some particular piece of hardware to work. That happens less and less, and now most of the stuff I buy just works.
Video cards and capture cards are the big exception for now, they somehow work sometimes, but this is getting better every day, and this news takes us in that direction even more.
I am happy that the Chinese invest this much in Linux. This obviously motivates big hardware makers to release quality/OS drivers for their products, and in the end I benefit from that as well.
I don't see this happening. We're now seeing Chinese SoCs built from western IP cores (e.g. Allwinner) and soon there will be all-Chinese chips. They don't bother to write any English documentation and they just throw barely-working, uncommented drivers over the wall, never bothering to participate in upstream development at all. (Note that this is only marginally worse than traditional western embedded development, so I'm not really criticizing the Chinese electronics industry.)
I don't see this happening. We're now seeing Chinese SoCs built from western IP cores (e.g. Allwinner) and soon there will be all-Chinese chips. They don't bother to write any English documentation and they just throw barely-working, uncommented drivers over the wall, never bothering to participate in upstream development at all. (Note that this is only marginally worse than traditional western embedded development, so I'm not really criticizing the Chinese electronics industry.)
> I am happy that the Chinese invest this much in Linux.
I wonder how much of that investment finds its way back into upstream projects. Really - I don't know one way or the other, although I have a suspicion that they don't really 'get' openness and so probably violate the GPL.
I wonder how much of that investment finds its way back into upstream projects. Really - I don't know one way or the other, although I have a suspicion that they don't really 'get' openness and so probably violate the GPL.
The ultimate incentive to contribute is that maintaining your own separate fork of development (and backporting/merging upstream changes) eventually becomes too challenging for most organizations.
Now, for an organization operating at China scale, it's possible that a fork could be sustained (so, the "China Syndrome" becomes the "China Fork"), but it's likely still not an optimal strategy, and for mundane areas there could still be substantial leak-back.
So long as changes aren't distributed "outside the organization" (quotes applied in context of defining "organization" relative to a Communist state in which nominally all property is State property), legal GPL code release requirements aren't triggered. Though you and what nuclear-tipped army plan on enforcing that against Beijing is of course another matter.
Now, for an organization operating at China scale, it's possible that a fork could be sustained (so, the "China Syndrome" becomes the "China Fork"), but it's likely still not an optimal strategy, and for mundane areas there could still be substantial leak-back.
So long as changes aren't distributed "outside the organization" (quotes applied in context of defining "organization" relative to a Communist state in which nominally all property is State property), legal GPL code release requirements aren't triggered. Though you and what nuclear-tipped army plan on enforcing that against Beijing is of course another matter.
The article mentions that some of the brightest minds of NVIDIA are now working in China on its future generations of CPUs/GPUs. I don't have the full context, but is it possible that we're seeing the first baby steps of a reverse brain drain?
It's been happening for a while now (2009 article)[1] and there are probably earlier reports.
[1] http://techcrunch.com/2009/10/17/beware-the-reverse-brain-dr...
[1] http://techcrunch.com/2009/10/17/beware-the-reverse-brain-dr...
I've seen it. The Chinese government is "buying back" their top people in the US.
IMHO it's a good move by NVIDIA.
The main differentiating factor between NVIDIA and AMD are the drivers. Release the driver source on any platform and NVIDIA loose their competitive edge.
They are leaps and bounds better when it comes to OpenGL support. I can't comment from a DirectX perspective, but they always seem to be pushing the boundaries where AMD play catch up.
This would be worth hundreds of millions so a 10 million order has to be taken in perspective.
The main differentiating factor between NVIDIA and AMD are the drivers. Release the driver source on any platform and NVIDIA loose their competitive edge.
They are leaps and bounds better when it comes to OpenGL support. I can't comment from a DirectX perspective, but they always seem to be pushing the boundaries where AMD play catch up.
This would be worth hundreds of millions so a 10 million order has to be taken in perspective.
Yet, their proprietary drivers are a problem for many clients. If I spend US$ 1000 troubleshooting a multi-GPU number crusher that's money I could have spent in better hardware with drivers that just worked.
This makes is even more mind boggling that AMD isn't opensourcing their own driver.
I'm sure a lot of the current driver problems could be fixed quite fast.
I'm sure a lot of the current driver problems could be fixed quite fast.
[deleted]
Probably a good business move on nVidia's part; doing a lot of extra work for free, for a single sale in the hopes that it leads to a better relationship is typically not profitable.
Furthermore if China wasn't willing to spend $10s of millions more on a $300 million project, one has to wonder how important it was to them.
Furthermore if China wasn't willing to spend $10s of millions more on a $300 million project, one has to wonder how important it was to them.
[deleted]
Summary: China asks nvidia for weird list of cpu support, oy maybe opensource drivers (not clear). Nvidia says no. Article wonders Chinese will knock on amds door.
...who might say the same, given track record.
...who might say the same, given track record.
I haven't tried very hard, but didn't immediately find any other sites with this news that weren't simply linking to or regurgitating this article. Losing or winning a contract this size is something you'd expect a lot of well known news sites to cover.