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AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan

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Re: AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan

#21

Post by kuschku »

rhaps0dy wrote: post #16
baldfat wrote: post #6

AMD has been working for years to make them the most Linux friendly GPU option. Sadly the legacy of the Linux community talks like AMD doesn't work in Linux and NVIDIA is the only real choice. Kind of like Windows users complaining about AMD drivers when they haven't been an issue for over five years. I had AMD on my Linux boxes for eight years and I have haven't had an issue for the past six years.

Semi-relatedly and unfortunately, AI research is locked-in to NVIDIA (on Linux) because all the big lienar algebra and autodifferentiation frameworks work only with CUDA.

Not for long. Some of them actually work with AMD now, and with NVIDIA now banning use of GeForce cards for AI research (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15983587), NVIDIA is going to lose that market very quickly.

Re: AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan

#22

Post by orbifold »

lloeki wrote: post #19
rhaps0dy wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Semi-relatedly and unfortunately, AI research is locked-in to NVIDIA (on Linux) because all the big lienar algebra and autodifferentiation frameworks work only with CUDA.

This is totally not my field so it may very well be the stupidest question ever: is there technically anything that prevents implementing CUDA on top of non-NVIDIA hardware?

No there isn't, Google developed a CUDA frontend for clang/llvm which targets PTX (nvidias virtual machine instruction set), in principle someone could come along and implement a different backend for this frontend targeting for example AMDs gpu instruction architecture or something different. The other ingredient missing is a reimplementation of CUDAs runtime libraries.

Re: AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan

#24

Post by bryanlarsen »

lloeki wrote: post #19
rhaps0dy wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Semi-relatedly and unfortunately, AI research is locked-in to NVIDIA (on Linux) because all the big lienar algebra and autodifferentiation frameworks work only with CUDA.

This is totally not my field so it may very well be the stupidest question ever: is there technically anything that prevents implementing CUDA on top of non-NVIDIA hardware?

AMD is working on a tool to convert CUDA code: https://github.com/ROCm-Developer-Tools/HIP

Re: AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan

#25

Post by cjalmeida »

orbifold wrote: post #22
lloeki wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is totally not my field so it may very well be the stupidest question ever: is there technically anything that prevents implementing CUDA on top of non-NVIDIA hardware?

No there isn't, Google developed a CUDA frontend for clang/llvm which targets PTX (nvidias virtual machine instruction set), in principle someone could come along and implement a different backend for this frontend targeting for example AMDs gpu instruction architecture or something different. The other ingredient missing is a reimplementation of CUDAs runtime libraries.

The last part is particularly important. Most deep learning libs rely on things like cuDNN which implement by hand basic operations very efficiently.

The ROCm initiative by AMD already "transpile" most CUDA kernels to being AMD compatible, but it seems performance is not yet comparable in real word benchmarks.

Re: AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan

#26

Post by ubercow13 »

dijit wrote: post #17
baldfat wrote: post #6

AMD has been working for years to make them the most Linux friendly GPU option. Sadly the legacy of the Linux community talks like AMD doesn't work in Linux and NVIDIA is the only real choice. Kind of like Windows users complaining about AMD drivers when they haven't been an issue for over five years. I had AMD on my Linux boxes for eight years and I have haven't had an issue for the past six years.

This does not mirror my experience. I have a machine with amdgpu drivers installed. I specifically installed ubuntu instead of arch or something more exotic because i knew there would be issues. And i was right. I can use the OpenCL now but I can't use x11 because the driver uses old ABIs. My experience with Nvidias binary blobs even on systems like freebsd has been stellar in comparison.

Why are you using the closed source driver?

Re: AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan

#27

Post by rodburns »

lloeki wrote: post #19
rhaps0dy wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Semi-relatedly and unfortunately, AI research is locked-in to NVIDIA (on Linux) because all the big lienar algebra and autodifferentiation frameworks work only with CUDA.

This is totally not my field so it may very well be the stupidest question ever: is there technically anything that prevents implementing CUDA on top of non-NVIDIA hardware?

We are working on an OpenCL based layer that enables AMD GPUs, see these links for more info https://developer.codeplay.com/computecppce/latest/getting-s... https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/issues/22

Re: AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan

#29

Post by snuxoll »

green7ea wrote: post #15
baldfat wrote: post #6

AMD has been working for years to make them the most Linux friendly GPU option. Sadly the legacy of the Linux community talks like AMD doesn't work in Linux and NVIDIA is the only real choice. Kind of like Windows users complaining about AMD drivers when they haven't been an issue for over five years. I had AMD on my Linux boxes for eight years and I have haven't had an issue for the past six years.

I couldn't agree more. I'm a full time Linux user and have recently switched to AMD because of their awesome open source support. My new system is the most responsive and stable Linux experience I've ever had. I just recently build a full AMD system (Ryzen 5, Radeon RX 560) and I couldn't be happier. I've had Intel systems that were fine but couldn't keep up with GPU performance. I've also had nvidia systems that wer…

NVidia has always been more of a pain under Linux for at least the past 5 years, even if AMD wasn't contributing much to the open source drivers code-wise at the time they published hardware specifications for their cards so the mesa and DRM developers could do a halfway decent job. My Radeon R9 290 worked quite well without installing fglrx, as did my Radeon HD 7850.

I'm actually at the point where I need an upgrade for my work laptop, and I am going to seriously push for something that doesn't use NVidia graphics since they're such a pain to deal with under Linux (especially Optimus, holy crap).

Re: AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan

#30

Post by cleeus »

baldfat wrote: post #6

AMD has been working for years to make them the most Linux friendly GPU option. Sadly the legacy of the Linux community talks like AMD doesn't work in Linux and NVIDIA is the only real choice. Kind of like Windows users complaining about AMD drivers when they haven't been an issue for over five years. I had AMD on my Linux boxes for eight years and I have haven't had an issue for the past six years.

I bought an AMD card for my Linux desktop this year, because they have better open source drivers then nVidia :) Before that, I bought nVidia or Intel. It's a good feeling to run without that ugly nvidia-drivers blob.
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