NVLink is currently for intranode communication. Infiniband and ethernet are for internode communication. Though I can imagine NVIDIA wanting to work on some sort of hybrid that allows multiple nodes to be linked together more closely than Infiniband can do. Surely that would be several years out, though, unless they are already well on their way developing it.
I fear for the future of Mellanox open source engagement. They were getting very good at it but NVIDIA is a very closed company. Hopefully the NVIDIA lawyers wont meddle too much.
This is true for some stuff like their drivers, but not true for others. PhysX, for example, is completely open source on github. You just need to sign up for access which doesn't require anything more than a dev account (which is free to sign up for).
This is when average Joes like you and I have should be having an Ah-ha moment.... A datacenter company that none of us has heard of is worth 6.9 billion dollars to a used-to-be-video-card-only manufacturer. Just how much data exists about all of us...
6.9billion is 6900 people all winning a million dollars a piece. a company none of us have heard of is worth more than 6900 millionaires, because it deals in the datacenter biz. Orwell would be proud.
Anyone that deals with servers has heard of Mellanox. They are a pretty big deal. If you buy a Dell server your choices of NICs are Intel, Broadcom and Mellanox.
Maybe so, but 6.9billion is 6,900,000 people all winning a thousand dollars a piece, or 690 people all winning 10 million dollars. Put that way, don't you agree they're corrupting our precious bodily fluids?
don't get carried away.. nobody accused anyone of corrupting anything. I was just trying to put 6.9 billion dollars in perspective for readers.
The Orwell comment was just a statement on the enormous presence of big data in our lives....creating tremendous wealth.... and paid for by a company that use to just make cards so that folks could play Duke Nukem better (exaggeration and simplification is intentional...just making for colorful editorial.. ;p ).
Mellanox has been around for a long time, they are one of the companies behind Fiber Channel which as been around for decades. Before 10G ethernet Fiber Channel was one of the only solutions to fast networking, and it's had a lock on SAN's for a long time to the point that only in the last handful of years could you even have a SAN without something like fiberchannel in between. None of this has anything at all to do with Big Data.
If anything Big Data probably doesn't even use this stuff because they tend to use commodity hardware and just dump it into big pools using software and overwhelming oversupply of hardware to compensate rather than buying expensive products like Mellanox sells.
The stuff Mellanox sells is for someone that needs a really fast SAN or network, stuff any moderately sized company needs so their workers can stay busy while having a sane storage and backup system. Nvidia bought them because they had to, otherwise Intel (who bought the only other company in this field recently), would have bought them and locked Nvidia out of a bunch of potential product categories for their GPU's in the server space. There are a ton of articles explaining this out in the financial press. They didn't plan this, it was a covering action to prevent Intel from buying them.
Did you not see that it's (only) 14% over their current share price? I take it you're not well versed in the way companies are valued. I recommend removing your tin foil hat and looking for a good source on the matter.
If this were some loss-making startup, I'd agree that $6.9B is a huge bet. However, it's a different story when you've got an established, profitable company with a growing market and decent margins.
Hmmm... perhaps this is just another way to edge AMD out of the server stack. This move lets Nvidia partner up with IBM or one of the ARM CPU vendors and offer a full stack solution that currently only Intel could counter.
Is it *really* commodity? Even switches? What other tech might Mellanox have, in development?
It certainly gives Nvidia a respected brand and a channel to push new networking standards and products. Also, to more deeply integrate their PHYs into its chips, if they want to go there.
Don't think AMD was of any concern to anyone here. The danger was Intel would buy them and be gaining a monopoly over infiniband, which would massively disadvantage Nvidia.
Guess so ? They had $7.1B in 'Cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities' on Jan 28th, so if they paid $6.9B in cash I guess that would make sense. Pretty bold move by JHH to spend ~95% of their cash reserves.
Very bold move. If the market holds up all year they should be fine but if we see a large correction which is very possible they will wish they had more cash on hand.
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londedoganet - Monday, March 11, 2019 - link
“paratactically”?ramdas2m - Monday, March 11, 2019 - link
What happens to Nvlink now ?Yojimbo - Monday, March 11, 2019 - link
NVLink is currently for intranode communication. Infiniband and ethernet are for internode communication. Though I can imagine NVIDIA wanting to work on some sort of hybrid that allows multiple nodes to be linked together more closely than Infiniband can do. Surely that would be several years out, though, unless they are already well on their way developing it.magreen - Monday, March 11, 2019 - link
I had no idea that was a word until I looked it up just now.However, it's definitely used wrongly in this article.
The Chill Blueberry - Monday, March 11, 2019 - link
It's my new favorite word.Ryan Smith - Monday, March 11, 2019 - link
Apparently MS Word knew it was a word as well. How it got there from "practically", I have no idea.FreckledTrout - Monday, March 11, 2019 - link
I came, I saw, I bought Mellanox!atomt - Monday, March 11, 2019 - link
I fear for the future of Mellanox open source engagement. They were getting very good at it but NVIDIA is a very closed company. Hopefully the NVIDIA lawyers wont meddle too much.nathanddrews - Monday, March 11, 2019 - link
NVIDIA NetWorks.inighthawki - Monday, March 11, 2019 - link
This is true for some stuff like their drivers, but not true for others. PhysX, for example, is completely open source on github. You just need to sign up for access which doesn't require anything more than a dev account (which is free to sign up for).ksec - Monday, March 11, 2019 - link
Same thought, they were the leader in BSD Drivers. Slightly worry what may come out of it.HardwareDufus - Monday, March 11, 2019 - link
This is when average Joes like you and I have should be having an Ah-ha moment.... A datacenter company that none of us has heard of is worth 6.9 billion dollars to a used-to-be-video-card-only manufacturer. Just how much data exists about all of us...6.9billion is 6900 people all winning a million dollars a piece. a company none of us have heard of is worth more than 6900 millionaires, because it deals in the datacenter biz. Orwell would be proud.
ERJ - Monday, March 11, 2019 - link
Anyone that deals with servers has heard of Mellanox. They are a pretty big deal. If you buy a Dell server your choices of NICs are Intel, Broadcom and Mellanox.magreen - Monday, March 11, 2019 - link
Maybe so, but 6.9billion is 6,900,000 people all winning a thousand dollars a piece, or 690 people all winning 10 million dollars. Put that way, don't you agree they're corrupting our precious bodily fluids?HardwareDufus - Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - link
don't get carried away.. nobody accused anyone of corrupting anything. I was just trying to put 6.9 billion dollars in perspective for readers.The Orwell comment was just a statement on the enormous presence of big data in our lives....creating tremendous wealth.... and paid for by a company that use to just make cards so that folks could play Duke Nukem better (exaggeration and simplification is intentional...just making for colorful editorial.. ;p ).
rahvin - Wednesday, March 13, 2019 - link
Mellanox has been around for a long time, they are one of the companies behind Fiber Channel which as been around for decades. Before 10G ethernet Fiber Channel was one of the only solutions to fast networking, and it's had a lock on SAN's for a long time to the point that only in the last handful of years could you even have a SAN without something like fiberchannel in between. None of this has anything at all to do with Big Data.If anything Big Data probably doesn't even use this stuff because they tend to use commodity hardware and just dump it into big pools using software and overwhelming oversupply of hardware to compensate rather than buying expensive products like Mellanox sells.
The stuff Mellanox sells is for someone that needs a really fast SAN or network, stuff any moderately sized company needs so their workers can stay busy while having a sane storage and backup system. Nvidia bought them because they had to, otherwise Intel (who bought the only other company in this field recently), would have bought them and locked Nvidia out of a bunch of potential product categories for their GPU's in the server space. There are a ton of articles explaining this out in the financial press. They didn't plan this, it was a covering action to prevent Intel from buying them.
mode_13h - Monday, March 11, 2019 - link
Did you not see that it's (only) 14% over their current share price? I take it you're not well versed in the way companies are valued. I recommend removing your tin foil hat and looking for a good source on the matter.If this were some loss-making startup, I'd agree that $6.9B is a huge bet. However, it's a different story when you've got an established, profitable company with a growing market and decent margins.
HardwareDufus - Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - link
relax man. was just saying 6.9billion is allot of money. wasn't calling it a bad investment.MadManMark - Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - link
You shouldn't assume that just because you don't know about something, no one else has. I've known about Mellanox for at least a decade.mode_13h - Monday, March 11, 2019 - link
Hmmm... perhaps this is just another way to edge AMD out of the server stack. This move lets Nvidia partner up with IBM or one of the ARM CPU vendors and offer a full stack solution that currently only Intel could counter.Supercell99 - Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - link
I question the value of this purchase with Commodity 100Gbe why is Mellanox worth $7Bmode_13h - Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - link
Is it *really* commodity? Even switches? What other tech might Mellanox have, in development?It certainly gives Nvidia a respected brand and a channel to push new networking standards and products. Also, to more deeply integrate their PHYs into its chips, if they want to go there.
Irata - Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - link
I would bet their target here is Intel rather than AMD as the latter are still a small player in the server market.Also interesting that nVidia managed to outbid Intel who, too, were interested in acquiring Mellanox.
Dribble - Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - link
Don't think AMD was of any concern to anyone here. The danger was Intel would buy them and be gaining a monopoly over infiniband, which would massively disadvantage Nvidia.MadManMark - Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - link
Nvidia is ALREADY partnered with IBM (along with Mellanox and Xilinx). Has been for many years.Opencg - Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - link
nvidia wants to be in the supercomputer biz. supercomputers use networking. makes senseMadManMark - Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - link
Nvidia ALREADY is in the "supercomputer biz." Their Tesla GPU line is a component in 127 of the top 500 supercomputers today.silverblue - Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - link
Doesn't this leave NVIDIA with about $200M in cash?Haawser - Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - link
Guess so ? They had $7.1B in 'Cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities' on Jan 28th, so if they paid $6.9B in cash I guess that would make sense. Pretty bold move by JHH to spend ~95% of their cash reserves.FreckledTrout - Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - link
Very bold move. If the market holds up all year they should be fine but if we see a large correction which is very possible they will wish they had more cash on hand.MadManMark - Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - link
Most of that cash was still overseas due to tax concerns; by buying an Isreali company I bleive Nvidia avoids that US tax bill completely.magreen - Wednesday, March 13, 2019 - link
Great point on the tax benefit.tuxRoller - Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - link
Time to break it up.mode_13h - Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - link
Nvidia? No way. Many tech companies would be higher on the list, certainly including Intel.