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It’s Time to Open Up the GPU

gpuopen.com

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Re: It’s Time to Open Up the GPU

#61

Post by JoshTriplett »

Symmetry wrote: post #40
hngiszmo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it beautiful how OpenSource is the joker card of the underdogs? Google played it with Android against Apple, too. In 2007 I did my diploma work based on AMD GPU cause it was better. In 2011/12 AMD was the standard for Bitcoin mining, yielding twice the performance than NVIDIA. Now, buying my laptop I ended buying NVIDIA. What happened to AMD?

AMD is still better for bitcoin mining but that's a matter of integer versus floating point processing power.

> AMD is still better for bitcoin mining

Neither CPUs nor GPUs have any remaining relevance there, given ASIC/FPGA miners.

Re: It’s Time to Open Up the GPU

#62

Post by digi_owl »

gnarbarian wrote: post #33
cs702 wrote: post #21

This is an AMD project motivated by the fact that NVIDIA has become the de facto standard for GPU computation in deep learning and machine learning applications. TensorFlow, Torch, Theano, CNTK, CAFFE, and every other deep learning framework out there works out of the box with NVIDIA hardware via the CUDA stack, but not with AMD hardware, e.g., via the OpenCL stack. Which is a shame, because the entire NVIDIA hardwar…

I wish we could have hardware vendors compete on hardware with completely open software stacks from drivers on up. AMD is much farther down this path than Nvidia is. The downside of this is it gives the hardware manufacturers less flexibility in implementing new features because the APIs are design by committee. On one side we have design by committee (Khronos) giving us tools like OpenCL, Vulkan, and OpenGL on the o…

Every company, perhaps every individual, wants to be a big fix in a small pond, rather than one of many small fish in a large pond.

I seem to recall that back during the industrial revolution, every supplier of screws had their own direction and density of winding. Thus the engineers running various massive projects had to introduced and enforce various standards to get anything done at all.

Re: It’s Time to Open Up the GPU

#63

Post by gnarbarian »

JupiterMoon wrote: post #52
amelius wrote: post #50

Can we please stop calling it a GPU? These auxiliary processors are used for much more than graphics.

Couldn't we just re-purpose the G in GPU to stand for "general" rather than "graphics"?

I think VPU (for vector) is the most descriptive.

Re: It’s Time to Open Up the GPU

#64

Post by yeukhon »

cs702 wrote: post #21

This is an AMD project motivated by the fact that NVIDIA has become the de facto standard for GPU computation in deep learning and machine learning applications. TensorFlow, Torch, Theano, CNTK, CAFFE, and every other deep learning framework out there works out of the box with NVIDIA hardware via the CUDA stack, but not with AMD hardware, e.g., via the OpenCL stack. Which is a shame, because the entire NVIDIA hardwar…

+1 I rarely think closed system is bad, but I think this is one of the few exceptions I'd agree with. I own a powerful Radeon card, so it sucks I can't run CUDA there and none of the machine learning toolkits will work there (even if works, probably poor performance).

Re: It’s Time to Open Up the GPU

#65

Post by cbetz »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #11

First, nullify all the patents ... Seriously, back around the turn of the century I was pretty heavily into graphics and rendering and was frustrated by all the constraints on getting access to documentation. I finally figured out a way to pin down a vendor with all the necessary NDAs and all the necessary agreements so that I could actually get 100% access to the inner workings of the GPU. As long as I read the docu…

I would not be surprised if designing a GPU requires more lawyers than engineers.

I also cannot conceive of many industries where the barriers to entry are higher.

Re: It’s Time to Open Up the GPU

#66

Post by gnarbarian »

digi_owl wrote: post #62
gnarbarian wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish we could have hardware vendors compete on hardware with completely open software stacks from drivers on up. AMD is much farther down this path than Nvidia is. The downside of this is it gives the hardware manufacturers less flexibility in implementing new features because the APIs are design by committee. On one side we have design by committee (Khronos) giving us tools like OpenCL, Vulkan, and OpenGL on the o…

Every company, perhaps every individual, wants to be a big fix in a small pond, rather than one of many small fish in a large pond. I seem to recall that back during the industrial revolution, every supplier of screws had their own direction and density of winding. Thus the engineers running various massive projects had to introduced and enforce various standards to get anything done at all.

Yep. ANSI and ISO emerged because it was mutually beneficial for all. Just like the Khronos group. It's also important that following the standards should be voluntary so innovation can flourish without being hindered by the committee. With the hope that the good ideas will make it back into the open standards.

Re: It’s Time to Open Up the GPU

#67

Post by listic »

dragandj wrote: post #15

I wanted to add my GPU compute library for Clojure to their list of libraries, and there is no option to send them anything. So, it seems that gpuopen site is open for AMD to promote whatever they deem promotable. Not very open for this age in my opinion.

Try to email the author: nicolas.thibieroz@amd.com

Re: It’s Time to Open Up the GPU

#68

Post by dcposch »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #61
Symmetry wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AMD is still better for bitcoin mining but that's a matter of integer versus floating point processing power.

> AMD is still better for bitcoin mining Neither CPUs nor GPUs have any remaining relevance there, given ASIC/FPGA miners.

Even FPGAs and older-process ASICs are unusable for Bitcoin today. The network hashpower just broke 1 exahash/second

Re: It’s Time to Open Up the GPU

#69

Post by Sleaker »

poopchute wrote: post #26
Sleaker wrote: post #12

Doesn't give off the impression of being super open when you have samples say they are only for Radeon cards. This seems almost like a marketing strategy/guise from AMD, and if you go look at other websites for this article it literally says AMD launches GPUopen.com. AMD is only mentioned once in the article.. shady in my opinion and not very 'open' either. When one company continually calls out for 'openness' in a m…

Did you even read the post? The whole thing talks about how this is AMD's new version of mantle which is specifically for gcn cards. It even says who its written by at the bottom, the senior manager of engineering at AMD.

No it doesn't. It puts out that it's making something called gpuopen, which right now is just a brand page with a bunch of fluff and nothing more with links to resources that are already available on AMDs website, but with nearly all of the AMD branding removed.

Re: It’s Time to Open Up the GPU

#70

Post by throwaway2048 »

appleflaxen wrote: post #25
cs702 wrote: post #21

This is an AMD project motivated by the fact that NVIDIA has become the de facto standard for GPU computation in deep learning and machine learning applications. TensorFlow, Torch, Theano, CNTK, CAFFE, and every other deep learning framework out there works out of the box with NVIDIA hardware via the CUDA stack, but not with AMD hardware, e.g., via the OpenCL stack. Which is a shame, because the entire NVIDIA hardwar…

I'm sad to say, but it's true. AMD has been claiming "this is the year we really open up" since at least 2007[1]. Well, I'm happy to hear them recommit, but I don't believe them anymore. Now that they are losing ground in the marketplace on the GPU side with deep learning, and their CPUs can't compete with intel on the performance side, their claims ring hollow. Imagine where we would be if they open sourced their dr…

this is really unfair, they have documented their gpus extensively + provided developers for open drivers. They are currently in the process of integrating all the features from the closed drivers into the open ones.
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