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AMD funded a drop-in CUDA implementation built on ROCm: It's now open-source

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Re: AMD funded a drop-in CUDA implementation built on ROCm: It's now open-source

#71

Post by Zopieux »

sam_goody wrote: post #16

Aside from the latest commit, there has been no activity for almost 3 years (latest code change on Feb 22, 2021). People are criticizing AMD for dropping this, but it makes sense to stop paying for development when the dev has stopped doing the work, no? And if he means that AMD stopped paying 3 years ago - well, that was before dinosaurs and ChatGPT, and alot has changed since then. https://github.com/vosen/ZLUDA/co…

If only this exact concern was addressed explicitly in the first FAQ at the bottom of the README...

https://github.com/vosen/ZLUDA/tree/v3?tab=readme-ov-file#fa...

Re: AMD funded a drop-in CUDA implementation built on ROCm: It's now open-source

#72

Post by captainbland »

giovannibonetti wrote: post #53
jandrese wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AMD's management seems to be only vaguely aware that GPU compute is a thing. All of their efforts in the field feel like afterthoughts. Or maybe they are all just hardware guys who think of software as just a cost center.

Maybe they just can't lure in good software developers with the right skill set, either due to not paying them enough or not having a good work environment in comparison to the other places that could hire them.

I did a cursory glance at Nvidia's and AMD's respective careers pages for software developers at one point - what struck me was they both have similarly high requirements for engineers in fields like GPU compute and AI but Nvidia hires much more widely, geographically speaking, than AMD.

As a total outsider it seems to me that maybe one of AMD's big problems is they just aren't set up to take advantage of the global talent pool in the same way Nvidia is.

Re: AMD funded a drop-in CUDA implementation built on ROCm: It's now open-source

#73

Post by thfuran »

izacus wrote: post #40
jandrese wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the alternative it to ignore one of the biggest developing markets then yeah, maybe they should start trying to catch up. Unless you think GPU compute is a fad that's going to fizzle out?

One of the most important decisions a company can do, is to decide which markets they'll focus in and which they won't. This is even true for megacorps (see: Google and their parade of messups). There's just not enough time to be in all markets all at once. So, again, it's not at all clear that AMD being in the compute GPU game is the automatic win for them in the future. There's plenty of companies that killed thems…

Investing in what other market?

Re: AMD funded a drop-in CUDA implementation built on ROCm: It's now open-source

#75

Post by lambdaone »

It seems to me that AMD are crazy to stop funding this. CUDA-on-ROCm breaks NVIDIA's moat, and would also act as a disincentive for NVIDIA to make breaking changes to CUDA; what more could AMD want?

When you're #1, you can go all-in on your own proprietary stack, knowing that network effects will drive your market share higher and higher for you for free.

When you're #2, you need to follow de-facto standards and work on creating and following truly open ones, and try to compete on actual value, rather than rent-seeking. AMD of all companies should know this.

Re: AMD funded a drop-in CUDA implementation built on ROCm: It's now open-source

#76

Post by newsclues »

jandrese wrote: post #25
btown wrote: post #8

Why would this not be AMD’s top priority among priorities? Someone recently likened the situation to an Iron Age where NVIDIA owns all the iron. And this sounds like AMD knowing about a new source of ore and not even being willing to sink a single engineer’s salary into exploration. My only guess is they have a parallel skunkworks working on the same thing, but in a way that they can keep it closed-source - that this…

AMD's management seems to be only vaguely aware that GPU compute is a thing. All of their efforts in the field feel like afterthoughts. Or maybe they are all just hardware guys who think of software as just a cost center.

They are aware, but it wasn’t until recently that they had the resources to invest in the space. They had to build Zen and start making buckets of money first

Re: AMD funded a drop-in CUDA implementation built on ROCm: It's now open-source

#78

Post by slashdev »

hjabird wrote: post #63
btown wrote: post #8

Why would this not be AMD’s top priority among priorities? Someone recently likened the situation to an Iron Age where NVIDIA owns all the iron. And this sounds like AMD knowing about a new source of ore and not even being willing to sink a single engineer’s salary into exploration. My only guess is they have a parallel skunkworks working on the same thing, but in a way that they can keep it closed-source - that this…

The problem with effectively supporting CUDA is that encourages CUDA adoption all the more strongly. Meanwhile, AMD will always be playing catch-up, forever having to patch issues, work around Nvidia/AMD differences, and accept the performance penalty that comes from having code optimised for another vendor's hardware. AMD needs to encourage developers to use their own ecosystem or an open standard.

With Nvidia controlling 90%+ of the market, this is not a viable option. They'd better lean hard into CUDA support if they want to be relevant.

Re: AMD funded a drop-in CUDA implementation built on ROCm: It's now open-source

#79

Post by atq2119 »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #17

ROCm is not spelled out anywhere in their documentation and the best answers in search come from Github and not AMD official documents "Radeon Open Compute Platform" https://github.com/ROCm/ROCm/issues/1628 And they wonder why they are losing. Branding absolutely matters.

My understanding is that there was some trademark silliness around "open compute", and AMD decided that instead of doing a full rebrand, they would stick to ROCm but pretend that it wasn't ever an acronym.

Re: AMD funded a drop-in CUDA implementation built on ROCm: It's now open-source

#80

Post by imtringued »

bhouston wrote: post #32
fariszr wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the article, AMD seems to have pulled the plug on this as they think it will hinder ROCMv6 adoption, which still btw only supports two consumer cards out of their entire line up[1] 1. https://www.phoronix.com/news/AMD-ROCm-6.0-Released

AMD should have the funds to push both of these initiatives at once. If the ROCM team has political reasons to kill the competition, it is because they are scared it will succeed. I've seen this happen in big companies. But management at AMD should be above petty team politics and fund both because at the company level they do not care which solution wins in the end.

Why would they be worried about people using their product? Some CUDA wrapper on top of ROCM isn't going to get them fired. It doesn't get rid of ROCM's function as a GPGPU driver.
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