As the US Department of Justice continues mulling an antitrust probe into Nvidia, numerous advocacy groups are urging the Feds on.

A letter [PDF] to assistant attorney general Jonathan Kanter, penned by representatives from ten nonprofit organizations, argues Nvidia should be investigated for abusive monopolistic business practices because the GPU giant is "in a position to crowd out competitors and set global pricing and the terms of trade."

In other words, Nv has potentially too much sway in the market and might use this position to crush rivals, to the detriment of buyers, choice, and innovation.

Four of the signing organizations - the Demand Progress Education Fund, Blue Future, P Street, and the Revolving Door Project - focus on political advocacy on the Left. Five of the orgs say they're focused on promoting antitrust action, with a particular focus on Big Tech; those are the Economic Security Project, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, NextGen Competition, the Open Markets Institute, and the Tech Oversight Project.

Oddly enough, a British group called Fair Vote UK also signed the letter. We've reached out to the org for word on how it's involved.

The group cites reports that say Nvidia has an 80 percent market share in GPUs overall and 98 percent in datacenter GPUs in particular. That datacenter figure may be an exaggeration, especially if you factor in Google's increasingly popular tensor processors. But for PCs, Nvidia's dominance is pretty clear, as Jon Peddie Research pegs the company's DC share at 88 percent as of Q1.

The letter also has some criticisms of Nvidia's CUDA programming environment, which it describes as "aggressively proprietary." Industry probably doesn't disagree, and many big names such as Arm, Intel, and Qualcomm are working on their own open standard alternative to CUDA.

Largely in line with the Biden administration's combative stance against China in an ongoing tech trade war, the orgs also think Nvidia's sales to the Middle Kingdom are (or should be) illegal.

It doesn't seem too likely that the letter - essentially a lobbying effort - will have too much effect on whether the DoJ will investigate Nvidia or not. The Feds may have already made up their minds by now, as the first murmurs of a potential inquiry cropped up in June.

Since then, there have been reports that France is considering its own examination; EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said her department is asking Nvidia some preliminary questions. It's not unusual for tech companies to receive scrutiny across the world all at the same time, and it's possible that either the DoJ will join the antitrust party or even start it.

Unsurprisingly, Nvidia disagrees with the letter's allegations of monopoly abuse.

"The regulatory system is working as intended, encouraging growth and investment in groundbreaking technologies," the firm said in a statement to The Register.

"As Moore’s law was coming to an end, we created an entirely new computing model, and invited researchers and scientists, developers, ecosystem partners, customers, and employees to explore what was once a zero-billion-dollar market with us.

"Regulators need not be concerned, as we scrupulously adhere to all laws and ensure that Nvidia is openly available in every cloud and on-prem for every enterprise. We’ll continue to support aspiring innovators in every industry and market and are happy to provide any information regulators need." ®

https://www.theregister.com//2024/08/01/nvidia_doj/