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AMD to buy Silo AI for $665M

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Re: AMD to buy Silo AI for $665M

#161

Post by IshKebab »

btown wrote: post #98
SSLy wrote: post #4

My cursory understanding is that Silo is a developer of LLMs that run on top of compute platforms. Isn't the problem with no one using AMD's accelerators the fact that their programming environment is sub-par compared to CUDA, or even Apple's?

The underinvestment in, and abandonment of, a project for a CUDA compatibility layer https://github.com/vosen/ZLUDA?tab=readme-ov-file#faq by AMD a few months ago hints that they no longer see CUDA compatibility as a goal. Perhaps they see Silo as a way to jumpstart bringing ROCm to parity with CUDA's toolkit. It's hard to understand if there's an underlying strategy to how they'll stay relevant from a software persp…

It makes no business sense for them to try to get CUDA compatibility. That would just cement CUDA as the de facto standard, at which point they are locked in to playing catch up forever as nVidia intentionally adds features to break compatibility.

Much more sensible to work on getting rock solid support for their own standards into all the major ML platforms/libraries.

Re: AMD to buy Silo AI for $665M

#162

Post by p_j_w »

blackhawkC17 wrote: post #152
p_j_w wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There’s a reason US salaries for software devs are 2-5x EU salaries for similar roles. When you account for medical costs, rent (especially compared to the localities in the USA that provide these huge salaries), extra vacation time, and for those with children, education and child care, this gap narrows considerably. Rent alone... one can find a reasonable spot in Berlin for ~$1300/mo. Good luck finding more than a…

> When you account for medical costs, rent (especially compared to the localities in the USA that provide these huge salaries), extra vacation time, and for those with children, education and child care, this gap narrows considerably. That's what Europeans generally say to justify or cope with their low salaries, but it's not true. After accounting for all these, an SV, NYC, Seattle, etc., engineer ends up with far m…

>After accounting for all these, an SV, NYC, Seattle, etc., engineer ends up with far more disposable income than their EU counterpart.

I said it narrows the gap, not closes it.

>https://www.statista.com/statistics/725764/oecd-household-di...

Your link is behind a paywall, I can't view that data.

Re: AMD to buy Silo AI for $665M

#163

Post by AlotOfReading »

mindcrime wrote: post #159

I don't know how this specific acquisition is going to work out, but at least we can say one thing. This represents some kind of response to the constant chorus of "AMD don't appreciate the importance of software. AMD should invest more in software. CUDA, CUDA, CUDA" comments that one always hears when AMD is mentioned. Of course there's room to debate the details here: would they have, perhaps, been better off inves…

AMD has also been doing a bunch of hiring for their software teams. I've seen a few colleagues that AMD previously couldn't have afforded accept offers to work on GPU stuff.

Re: AMD to buy Silo AI for $665M

#164

Post by [deleted] »

helloericsf wrote: post #148
xyst wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nvidia also spends a metric shit ton of money to make sure professors use and teach on their platform. I don’t remember any alternatives in uni. Maybe OpenCL but only lightly mentioned

OpenCL was discussed more frequently in classes about a decade ago. However, I haven't heard it mentioned in the last five years or so.

[deleted]

Re: AMD to buy Silo AI for $665M

#165

Post by cityofdelusion »

littlecranky67 wrote: post #34

I've been thinking that NVDA stock is massively overpriced - yes, AI is a hot topic, but their only advantage is the software stack. It is just a matter of time until Intel and AMD realize that they should join hands and do an open-source CUDA alternative for their respecitve GPUs (yes, Intel has competetive GPUs and just like AMD and Nvidia they will try to get a share of the AI chip market share).

Problem is the CUDA advantage is gigantic and it has been known for years in GPGPU processing, way before AI was a meme. AMD has lost countless developers over the year just on hello world style projects. Developers had a solid 6-7 years of living with OpenCL when the green rival had a very mature and nice CUDA sitting there. I’ve been out of that world for a while now, but it was truly painful and turned a lot of devs off programming AMD devices. Now there’s a big moat of entrenched developers that could take decades to displace. It’s like trying to displace C++ with Java 22 — possible, but it’s a slow, slow trudge and everyone still remembers Java 1.4

Re: AMD to buy Silo AI for $665M

#166

Post by Alupis »

talldayo wrote: post #131
storyinmemo wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I'd tell you that they aren't a thing in California.

...as of six months ago.

Anyone could ask you to sign a non-compete. But in California, they have been legally unenforceable for as long as I have been alive.

What was changed is they now cannot make condition of employment based on signing this unenforceable contract.

Re: AMD to buy Silo AI for $665M

#167

Post by cityofdelusion »

mastax wrote: post #24

I’d argue that a factor in CUDA’s success is their army of in-house researchers which use CUDA to do novel things. Sometimes those things get turned into products (OptiX) other times they are essentially DevRel to show off what the hardware can do and documentation for how to do it. Additionally I’m sure they use pre-release hardware and software and give feedback about how to improve it. I don’t know what AMD has in…

The success of CUDA is basically a dual effect of AMD devices being inefficient and bad for years, plus AMD having no answer to CUDA for a solid 7+ years while the foundations of GPGPU were being laid down.

Mindshare shifts slowly.

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