[modeless]

This is why Nvidia needs competition. I love the performance of their hardware and the quality of their drivers, but I don't love being their customer. They have a long, long history of price discrimination using techniques like this. Back in the day it was "workstation" graphics for CAD programs that they would nerf for consumer cards by downgrading various features of OpenGL.

Different markets, same techniques. It's in the company DNA. That and their aversion to open source drivers and various other bad decisions around open source support that make maintaining a working Linux GPU setup way harder than it should be even to this day.

[daxfohl]

Oh, right, the CAD thing was sketchier. IIRC there wasn't any feature of OpenGL/DirectX that was nerfed, it was just an agreement with CAD companies to reject the GPUs that didn't have the workstation bit fused.

For this performance nerf, IDK, seems fine to me. Software companies do this all the time. Same piece of software but you have to pay to unlock features. I don't see why hardware should be any different.

Granted, even for the CAD nerf, it's a gray area. You pay for features, not for silicon, and NVidia is clear about what you have to pay for what features, so. But I'm a bit more biased on that one because my 10-person HW company had to spring for several of those workstation cards.

[henryfjordan]

That sounds like a classic Anti-trust suit waiting to happen. CAD company and NVIDIA colluding to drive sales exclusively to each other. That's illegal and exploitative.

[brokenmachine]

Solution is for NVIDIA to buy the CAD company, then everything is legal.

[henryfjordan]

Actually probably not, you can't use your position in one market to benefit your position in another. But antitrust law is hardly enforced so yeah probably.

[ksec]

>They have a long, long history of price discrimination using techniques like this.

Had AI and Crypto not been a thing. These so called price discrimination was what kept the company afloat and continue to spend stupid money ( according to many ) on CUDA rather than making gaming better.

And when often people say "X" needs competition. What they really want is just cheaper price for the same thing. Would it be great if Nvidia had more competition? Absolutely, but is Nvidia not making progress and milking everything they have? Absolutely not. They invested even more in CUDA, Large Die Size Correction Tooling, Assisted EDA Design and many more to their arsenal to built their moat.

I also often found when a successful founder is still working at a company, that company is often pushed far harder by its founder than whatever market force is driving them. So we need competition for Intel 2009 - 2021, Microsoft in 2000, Any company who just sit there and no longer improves or failed to execute.

Nvidia? They are doing fine if not better than I could imagine. ( I just wished they spend a little more money to compete in the Mobile and Desktop Consumer SoC space. I guess that is coming soon. )

[musicale]

> What they really want is just cheaper price for the same thing

They'd probably be happy with competitive market pricing, which is unlikely to happen without a competitive market.

Nvidia's gross margins are extraordinary vs. AMD or intel margins (or even "overpriced" Apple.)

There is competition of a sort - for example at the low end with intel ARC and at the high end with AMD Instinct based supercomputers. However, competitors don't seem to be able to match the CUDA software platform, particularly for AI/ML. The deepening CUDA moat is hard for competitors to cross and for customers to escape.

In the cloud space it seems that Nvidia may face more competition with platforms like GCP/Cloud TPU and AWS/Trainium.

[orbital-decay]

Their former competition wasn't any different. I still remember ATI/AMD pencil mods to unlock things they disabled.

[itsthecourier]

they have to do that to server different segments. how would you price a 4090 that can be used for crypto, gaming, ai, cad, video editing if you were to discover that is cheaper to create the same chips for all of them, but the segments are really different, 90% coming from datacenter and 10% from gaming

we're lucky they still do gaming by limiting the datacenter chips

it's like getting a ferrari speed limited for usd20,000 and then I complain I don't get the acceleration of a usd100,000 model. they sold the product cheaper, they cared, they adapted. I'm happy they are still improving year after year for the same dollar value

[dragonwriter]

> they have to do that to server different segments.

No, they don't.

That they are able to price discriminate this way is a sign that they are functionally a monopoly exercising pricing power, otherwise, they would be easily undercut in the market where they charge premium prices by a competitor.

[Xymist]

They just shouldn't do that. If they can afford to sell the Ferrari for $20k, they should do so. To everyone who wants one, for whatever reason.

[jtbayly]

They would not be able to afford to sell them at that price if they sold all of them at that price. (Or at least, I doubt they would.)

[danbruc]

That is why we need competition, to drive the price down towards the costs. And you must be able to provide enough volume to meet demand.

[bilbo0s]

The danger, of course, is that they decide that they don't believe they can sell a single sku at USD20000 and make the same money they're making now. So then, the price goes up 2.5x to 10x depending on how greedy they want to be.

[akoboldfrying]

I disagree, and this line of thinking is positively dangerous.

Just because Ferrari might be capable of making that car for $20k, I don't have a fundamental right to demand it from them any more than I have a fundamental right to demand that you make me a sandwich right now for $5.

> they can afford

Before using the word "they" in a prescriptive sentence, think about whether you could substitute "I" and you would still be happy with it.

[Retric]

The goal isn’t to directly force them, but to create a market competitive enough that the only way to compete is to sell the best product they can with a minimal markup.

I have no issue selling into a competitive market, that’s just how things work for individuals. It’s only at the scale of countries and giant companies that the ability for anti competitive behavior really shows up.

[modeless]

There's no fundamental right. But wishing for competition is certainly reasonable! We should all be rooting for competition to improve the efficiency of our markets.

[Wytwwww]

So company profit margins should be capped? At what level and how would that work exactly?

What about all other stuff? i.e. maybe you or somebody else can "afford" to sell their labour at 10-80% of what they are paid?

[Sabinus]

If NVIDIA had real competition they would do this naturally to gain market share. The GP saying they 'should' do x isn't something we can expect companies to do out of the goodness of their hearts, it's what the market should force them to do.

[Jlagreen]

No, they wouldn't. Nvidia focuses more on premium and margin than on unit share. Nvidia looks at Apple. Apple has 75% of profit share with 25% of unit share of the whole smartphone market. Apple makes 3x more profit than all other smartphone makers combined. Why should Apple reduce pricing in such a situation?

[Wytwwww]

I'm not sure if everything turning into a commodity and no companies having any surpluses would be ideal either. That would probably significantly slow down innovation in some ways.

[dragonwriter]

> So company profit margins should be capped? At what level and how would that work exactly?

That a competitive market drives prices to zero economic profit is a fairly basic result; no active measures besides the existence of competition are necessary for this.

> What about all other stuff?

Yes, this applies in all competitive markets. If it doesn't apply in a market, there is a constraint on competition causing it.

[Wytwwww]

> prices to zero economic profit is a fairly basic result

Yes and that's not necessarily a good thing in all markets. Very low profit margins can result in less innovations and would certainly discourage companies from taking risks (basically by definition)

[tester756]

So, are you going to tell your boss to decrease your salary to the level where it covers just your basic needs and no more?

[brokenmachine]

That is precisely what would happen if there was infinite competition for job openings.

[renewiltord]

Nah, no thanks. I prefer this because I now have some damned fast GPUs in a rig on the cheap. I’m happy to have my $20k acceleration limited Ferrari.

[lofaszvanitt]

It's a protected company...

[caycep]

speaking of driver quality...my pc has been regularly blue screening after the latest release and the transition from the Experience app to the Nvidia app...