#GRIDDays

Virtual GPU Forums General Discussion
1

Hello.

The NVidia #GRIDDays (https://twitter.com/hashtag/GRIDdays) passed last week.
There are some blogs:

Some videos:

Are there any news and/or presentable materials (not protected by NVidia NDA) from this event to share outside NVidia closed community ?

Thanks, M.C>

1 Like
2

Hey M.C,

This was a particularly odd one, I joined 6 weeks ago and when I did with a remit to actually get our feedback and consultation processes sorted I was offered the chance to run the technical content of GRIDdays at very short notice. There were other events happening whose logistics team was shared. We got together a mixture of experts, detractors, people who haven’t yet done much graphical GPU to try and get some feedback and share info… the NDA stuff was necessary to share roadmaps… A lot of the material isn’t NDA though and attendees were invited to go share. Some was really technically detailed and why we did on-site - as it’s info we haven’t been able to share particularly easily… long term we want an open program where anyone from the community (particularly those active on forums) can apply / get involved… this was a strange one-off kickstart event…

A lot of the ppt won’t make a huge amount of sense without discussion - I’m hoping we could do more webinars… at the moment I’m still playing catch up and only got home to the right country yesterday - so it won’t be perfect at the moment (mainly because I have a terrible cold, it’s 5am (jet lag), but bear with us… Tobias attended a session on who and how we involve advisors/experts and he knows I am very keen it’s not (or even perceived to be) some nepotistic clique!

Rachel

4

The idea of getting feedback from the community is a good one, but when it is just a subset of that community and appears outwardly as some kind of exclusive club, it could easily be misconstrued. Of course anything about the technology roadmap is going to be covered by an NDA, but the feedback and NVIDIA response need not be. That feedback process is one of the reasons why these forums exist.

The problem is that a lot of the coverage for #GRIDDays is closer to marketing for upcoming features and technologies. Of course this is one of the upsides as a vendor running this kind of initiative, but you have to try and strike a balance. Most of the community doesn’t actually need convincing that the technology is great; the thing many are waiting for is for NVIDIA to address the GRID 2.0 licencing model.

I caveat all of this with the fact that the event has just finished, so there may be much more info to come!

5

As one of the invited guests, I would like to address the community regarding GRID 2.0, #GRIDdays, and the general outcome of this meeting. First off, to clarify up front, NVIDIA was kind enough to pay for my travel, lodging and meal expenses; I am still under no obligation to blog or write about my experiences, and am doing so now on my own free will.

We had ample opportunities to receive information and hold discussions with key personnel at NVIDIA, however mostly under NDA. Consequently, the most I can say at this point is that NVIDIA has acknowledged these concerns and that there are continuing dialogs. I am as interested as anyone in seeing a positive change on behalf of consumers. My belief is that these discussions will be fruitful, and that one of the primary initial goals of this meeting was to put into motion the means though which better communication and information exchange can be created between GRID customers and NVIDIA. This will take some additional time and effort to institute, and meanwhile, I am encouraged that these first steps have been taken to help form the basis for this advisor program. I was promised and had the opportunity to meet with Jim McHugh, VP and General Manager, a number of technical and marketing managers and staff, and was able to discuss many points as well as receive constructive feedback. I was also provided the opportunity to have a special one-on-one meeting for over an hour with the NVIDIA Senior Business Development Manager, Higher Education, which is an area I am closely tied to.

In short, there will indeed be a lot more to come as this is the beginning of what I believe will be constructive and positive information exchanges between NVIDIA and the user community. Do keep an eye open for future information releases; a number of attendees have already been actively blogging, so take a look at - Archives Page 1 | NVIDIA Blog , nVidia GRID Days - Day 1 — Define Tomorrow™ , NVIDIA GRID Days - Day 2 — Define Tomorrow™ and NVIDIA GRID Days 2016 Recap, Key Takeaways, Technical Deep Dive and Lessons Learned! .

6

As I was one of those that attended GRID days and my blog was mentioned at the top of this page I wanted to add some non technical commentary that as yet I haven’t included in my blog regarding the feedback and community aspects that were taken away from the event.

Some background on myself I have been working with EUC technologies since Presentation Server 4 and now focus my attention mainly on VMware Horizon View solutions, including authoring two books as such I have been working with NVIDIA technologies since the support has been included within these platforms for dedicated and shared GPU and more recently vGPU. I as many of you have been concerned about the GRID 2.0 licensing model since its announcement however have not felt the need to discuss publicly.

When I was given the opportunity to attend GRID Days I of course jumped at the chance, however it was not without personal or business cost for many of us as we weren’t able to work during this time. As such we all clearly wanted to make sure we got the maximum benefit of attendance by gaining a better understanding about the technology but most importantly helping represent the communities we are part by giving our opinions to NVIDIA.

This type of exclusive group is not unusual in the technology industry and certainly does not form some secretive group, if you look at the list of attendees many of us are independent consultants, recognised by differing manufacturers for our community involvement and not being some under cover marketing engine. By attending GRID days there was no obligation to blog about any subject and the blog posts you are seeing at present represent the attendees true technical interest and passion for the demonstrations and presentations we saw.

Onto the community a large part, in fact a majority of why we were at GRID days was to work with NVIDIA around the improvement to their community, licensing, products and more. We had dedicated sessions with most senior managers at NVIDIA looking at everything from the licensing (Including reviewing the opinion of others on this forum), monitoring and management, documentation, webinars and more. From someone that really is an advocate for communities and who has been involved in online communities for over 15 years it was great to see a real keen interest in improving what they were doing coming all the way from the top. Too anyone who wasn’t at these sessions please be aware that NVIDIA is really interested in improving many if not all of the aspects for the better, this forum is a great way to get those messages across and it has certainly been heard and is being acted upon.

There was much NDA content during the 2 days and as such we need to be careful with regard to what we share, however as soon as the NDA’s are lifted expect a barrage of further information, I for one am already planning some collaborative videos in association with NVIDIA that I hope will be useful to many, again NVIDIA haven’t asked me to do this I am doing so for the community and my customers.

To summarise, NVIDIA are very aware and are listening to the opinion and commentary on this forum and blogs, they are actively working on implementing changes directly on this feedback and there are exciting technological advances happening in the future.

Sit back, await the announcements and then let NVIDIA know how they have done, they are listening.

I can be found on Twitter @virtualisedreal or DefineTomorrow.co.uk if you would like to discuss with me further,

7

Thanks for the info. I wish you did not have the NDA’s keeping you from sharing. But understand without your the NDA’s you could not have attended. Here is hoping common sense has been authorized.

8

Thanks Barry, this is very interesting. I’m aware of many of the individuals who attended and have no doubt about their independence. My point is simply that as technologists you all want to talk about the new and exciting stuff you have seen, which is in effect free advertising for NVIDIA.

This isn’t an NVIDIA specific thing - it’s just the way these feedback loops work.

At the end of the day it sort of doesn’t matter, as long as the feedback gets listened to and acted upon.

9

I would add to Barry’s comprehensive post that much of our purpose there was to help improve the information flow, based on our own experiences with everything from product selection, integration and deployment to the critical licensing issues. I can assure you that feedback has been taken very seriously by NVIDIA; the GRID 2.0 thread doesn’t have currently 18,000+ hits for no reason and as you can see, I have been a very strong advocate for changes to NVIDIA’s GRID 2.0 licensing which is why I was involved in these discussions - actually since back in September of last year. The purpose of the meeting was not to sidestep, but rather to deal with these issues.

I have always been a strong advocate for the community and saw this opportunity as a means to have be even more expressive of my perceptions of what the community would like to see nad expects to see. Between the times of watching the showcasing products and some levity, there was also a lot of very serious discussion that transpired. And a lot of that was NVIDIA’s acknowledging much of what we had to say.

As Barry stated above, keep on the lookout for some exciting things to come in the near future. And do note that many NDAs are not so much about leaking technological information, but to prevent financial opportunities from being taken advantage of. This is a standard industry practice. Believe me, we would love to tell you much more, but need to respect that by being allowed to help shape the future of the user community interactions while we need to hold to certain industry standards.

Finally, I do not see this as free advertisement so much as an indication of what the future reality looks like seen through our own eyes. If any of us felt things were stagnating or that our feedback was not registering, we could and would have stated that. Other than the NDAs, there are no strings attached to what we can and do express here and in other blogs and articles. What I firmly believe you are reading from the various participants from #GRIDdays is what I would term a sense of renewed optimism about the directions things are going.

Best regards,

11

Yes, a new community program is being defined and it will be open for applications in the coming month or so. Citrieria will be defined and you will be able to apply and be considered alongside other applicants.

No it was an NDA event.

However, you will be able to attend GTC in Santa Clara 4th - 7th April, or wait for the recordings of those sessions to be published (usually about a month later). A large proportion of the content shared during the first GRID Day will be covered in sessions there.

The NDA content is the reason the attendees have been unable to share completely what they saw, and respecting NDA’s EULA’s etc is a fundamental tenet of acceptance into the program which will be announced soon.

12

Hi, Martin:
I would add to Jason’s remarks that there will be, of course, press releases that come out of GTC way faster (within minutes!) than any of the videos, so it will not be necessary to wait weeks for the recordings to be put on line to get important updates from the conference.
Asking for patience is hard, but at this point, please try. GTC is only three weeks away.
Best regards,

14

Martin,
Let’s just say the majority of the material was under NDA and what wasn’t is pretty much all public, anyway.
Hang in there! :-)
Best regards,

15

Looking at the ‘General Discussion’ section seems to show ehosmer posted something, but it doesn’t show here?

16

Yes, I saw that ehosmer supposedly posted something, too, but cannot see it, either – maybe he used invisible ink?

17

New licensing model and pricing for NVIDIA GRID 2.0: How to buy NVIDIA Virtual GPU Solutions | NVIDIA

More details to follow… I or someone else may end up starting a separate thread on this.