NVIDIA cracking down on GeForce driver use in datacenters

Two months ago, news hit the wire that NVIDIA took action to prevent its partners from shipping GeForce consumer cards to clients in the server and HPC markets. The company offers higher-margin Tesla cards for these use cases and doesn't want regular GeForce or TITAN gaming cards to be used for these tasks.

Now there's word about a further crackdown as TechPowerUp reports that NVIDIA recently changed the end-user license agreement (EULA) of the GeForce software to prohibit datacenter deployment.

Curiously, cryptocurrency mining datacenters are exempt from the change:

NVIDIA recently updated the end-user license agreement (EULA) for their GeForce Software. There's one particular statement in the limitations section that caught our eye. And it reads: No Datacenter Deployment. The SOFTWARE is not licensed for datacenter deployment, except that blockchain processing in a datacenter is permitted. It seems that NVIDIA isn't too happy with data centers that utilize GeForce and TITAN graphics cards instead of the more expensive Quadro or Tesla cards. With this prohibition in place, data centers are forced to either invest in NVIDIA's pricier offerings or completely switch over to AMD. Data centers that are using GeForce products for cryptocoin mining are unaffected by this change in the EULA.

The site also offers a translated letter that was issued by Sakura Internet, one of the largest Japanese datacenters. They informed clients that servers with NVIDIA Maxell-based and Pascal-based TITAN X video cards can no longer be offered.