To be honest, the more I inquire about the commercialization of Riva, the more confused I become. I get the feeling that NVIDIA doesn’t know how to market it properly. I contacted the sales team via email, and their response was that they do not sell it directly, but rather through third parties like AWS ([AWS Marketplace: NVIDIA Riva]), with the cheapest version being $60 per instance hour. I even had a video call with a member of the sales team who reiterated the same thing and provided the same link.
Unsatisfied with this, as we are members of NVIDIA Inception, I tried to inquire through Inception thinking they might have a clearer idea. After my email was redirected several times, the inquiry ended up being answered by the person who gave me the first response from the sales team, though a bit more elaborated this time:
Dear Rodrigo -
I appreciate your interest in RIVA. Riva is entirely free for development purposes and can be downloaded from NGC.
When you want to move to commercial deployments, you can purchase NVAIE essentials license, the NVAIE essentials per GPU/yr pricing - $4500 per year. I am attaching the NVIDIA AI Enterprise Licensing Guide covering the entitlement, packaging, and licensing of NVIDIA AI Enterprise. It is intended to be a quick reference to understand the product at a high level, with the corresponding SKU information. Different Software License Model for NVIDIA AI Enterprise Essentials and suggested pricing is covered in Table 7, page 15.
Cloud deployment of NVIDIA AI Enterprise is available on an on-demand basis in the [AWS](https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/prodview-ozgjkov6vq3l6?sr=0-1&ref_=beagle&applicationId=AWSMPContessa), Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure marketplaces. NVIDIA AI Enterprise Essentials in cloud marketplaces is priced at $2/ GPU/ hour on an on-demand/pay-as-you-go basis. Custom pricing can be provided for a committed term and usage via a private offer (for further details, please visit the marketplace pages.
Finally, The NVIDIA Inception Program supports cutting-edge startups in AI startups with go-to-market support, expertise and technology. The program makes it easy to procure and administer NVIDIA solutions, software licensing, and services for qualified startups and helps reduce their total cost. NVIDIA Inception Members can purchase up to 16 1-year subscriptions of NVIDIA AI Enterprise at a reduced price within a 12-month period. For more information on NVIDIA Inception Program eligibility, review the NVIDIA Inception for Startup site.
Please let us know if you have any further questions.
Regards,
A***
I noticed that this time she linked to purchasing a license for NVIDIA Enterprise instead of RIVA, understanding that NVIDIA Enterprise allows the use of RIVA and is cheaper. For me, the cost is still too high for the service it offers, as we are only interested in RIVA, so it still doesn’t make sense.
Another point is that the main advantage of RIVA is load distribution and auto-scaling, and the licensing system of buying a machine through a marketplace doesn’t make sense. I believe none of these licenses makes sense if someone wants to install RIVA in production. I think, for instance, one would use the installation guide on EKS [How to Deploy Riva at Scale on AWS with EKS — NVIDIA Riva]. What license are we supposed to use? Are we supposed to buy our own GPUs to access cluster licenses?
It’s a shame because the product is very useful in terms of auto-scaling and model distribution, but their sales system does not provide any security for using it in a production environment.
I would greatly appreciate it if someone has any news or clarification on this and is willing to share.