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FP8 is ~100 tflops faster when the kernel name has "cutlass" in it

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Re: FP8 is ~100 tflops faster when the kernel name has "cutlass" in it

#91

Post by RHSeeger »

charcircuit wrote: post #81
RHSeeger wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't reply to the person that replied to you, so > You’re looking as a dev, but the reality is that a consumer cannot see technical debt. The consumer can't _see_ technical debt, but they sure as heck can be impacted by it. - Technical debt means the code base is harder to work with later. So fixes/enhancements take longer to make it into the code (and sometimes never can) - This particular type of technical debt…

>the next developer may us it as an example These hacks are game specific, so another developer wouldn't get them.

The way the API was used incorrectly "worked", and the game didn't see the negative impact of it because it was "fixed away". And then the incorrect usage is used again on another game and doesn't get the "fixed away" benefit. And the same incorrect usage could happen over and over because "it works".

Re: FP8 is ~100 tflops faster when the kernel name has "cutlass" in it

#92

Post by wtetzner »

monkpit wrote: post #75
antonvs wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a gamer, this seems fine to me As a software developer, it almost certainly has a bad effect on the ecosystem long term. "Hacks shit in" is the very definition of technical debt, and that has a cost that someone, somewhere is going to have to pay in some form.

You’re looking as a dev, but the reality is that a consumer cannot see technical debt. If the studio churns out a game, the vendor sprinkles on some optimizations, people play it and move on, then the tech debt just vaporizes into the void. It’s not real at that point.

Just because a consumer can't see technical debt doesn't mean they aren't paying for it. Most game studios continue to re-use code, so it doesn't just "vaporize" into the void.

Re: FP8 is ~100 tflops faster when the kernel name has "cutlass" in it

#93

Post by wtetzner »

mcculley wrote: post #84
atomicnumber3 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was it a scandal at the time? My understanding of how per-game card-driver optimizations work today is: 1. AAAA Game Studio shits out another unoptimized clunker 2. nvidia considers it a reputational risk if games run at 30 FPS on a 5090 3. They go in, look at the perverse ways the game misuses rendering primitives, and then hacks shit in to make whatever bad things they're doing less bad. As a gamer, this seems fine…

I was surprised to see “AAAA”. I didn’t know there were 4 As now. “AAAA Game Studio shits out another unoptimized clunker” seems a paradoxical statement to me. I would have thought “AAAA” meant “highly resourced” game company. Does it just mean high revenue? Lots of players?

AAA/AAAA just means "how much money was spent developing the game". High cost doesn't automatically equal high quality. In fact, it seems after a certain point to mean the opposite.

Re: FP8 is ~100 tflops faster when the kernel name has "cutlass" in it

#94

Post by bigfishrunning »

mcculley wrote: post #84
atomicnumber3 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was it a scandal at the time? My understanding of how per-game card-driver optimizations work today is: 1. AAAA Game Studio shits out another unoptimized clunker 2. nvidia considers it a reputational risk if games run at 30 FPS on a 5090 3. They go in, look at the perverse ways the game misuses rendering primitives, and then hacks shit in to make whatever bad things they're doing less bad. As a gamer, this seems fine…

I was surprised to see “AAAA”. I didn’t know there were 4 As now. “AAAA Game Studio shits out another unoptimized clunker” seems a paradoxical statement to me. I would have thought “AAAA” meant “highly resourced” game company. Does it just mean high revenue? Lots of players?

AAAA isn't a real thing, it's a memey joke based on a press release by a microsoft studio that was closed before ever releasing a single game

Re: FP8 is ~100 tflops faster when the kernel name has "cutlass" in it

#95

Post by [deleted] »

antonvs wrote: post #72
atomicnumber3 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was it a scandal at the time? My understanding of how per-game card-driver optimizations work today is: 1. AAAA Game Studio shits out another unoptimized clunker 2. nvidia considers it a reputational risk if games run at 30 FPS on a 5090 3. They go in, look at the perverse ways the game misuses rendering primitives, and then hacks shit in to make whatever bad things they're doing less bad. As a gamer, this seems fine…

> As a gamer, this seems fine to me As a software developer, it almost certainly has a bad effect on the ecosystem long term. "Hacks shit in" is the very definition of technical debt, and that has a cost that someone, somewhere is going to have to pay in some form.

[deleted]

Re: FP8 is ~100 tflops faster when the kernel name has "cutlass" in it

#96

Post by saagarjha »

irrelative wrote: post #68
saagarjha wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like 5-10% here

Correct, this is the actual headline too. 100 tflops sure seems like it'd be more than that, but here we are. If the headline was "FB8 is ~7% faster when kernel name has 'cutlass' in it...", it wouldn't seem sensational.

I think the interesting part is that it improves performance measurably at all, not the actual number. These people are trying to hit 90+% MFU (though most don't reach it) so this does actually translate to many millions of dollars for them.

Re: FP8 is ~100 tflops faster when the kernel name has "cutlass" in it

#97

Post by saagarjha »

zahlman wrote: post #79
saagarjha wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're the one doing that to the tweet, actually.

What are you talking about? When I view the tweet, the only text I see is: > > fp8 is 100 tflops faster when the kernel name has "cutlass" in it > kms

And it includes a link to show that this is the context it came from.

Re: FP8 is ~100 tflops faster when the kernel name has "cutlass" in it

#98

Post by zahlman »

saagarjha wrote: post #97
zahlman wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about? When I view the tweet, the only text I see is: > > fp8 is 100 tflops faster when the kernel name has "cutlass" in it > kms

And it includes a link to show that this is the context it came from.

And when I look at the link, the part I quoted is the relevant text I see.

In order to get to the part that you're trying to hold me accountable for, I would furthermore have to click onto the commits tab and search through a 93-commit PR.

I thought today I was using a site where trying to think the best of people and propose that someone had taken something out of context, based on the immediately available context having a simpler explanation, would not get me treated like a corporate shill (for a company I don't even care about). Apparently I was wrong.

Re: FP8 is ~100 tflops faster when the kernel name has "cutlass" in it

#99

Post by bialpio »

samus wrote: post #45
giingyui wrote: post #19

And what’s the downside of using that kernel name? It can’t just be that it’s faster and nothing else. Unless they included lots of sleep(x) calls.

There might be optimizations that are only safe for the code that this was an intender for.

Seems like a bad idea to rely on a name for deciding this then, unless it's documented somewhere that using names containing certain substrings may trigger unsafe optimizations...

Re: FP8 is ~100 tflops faster when the kernel name has "cutlass" in it

#100

Post by SideQuark »

antonvs wrote: post #72
atomicnumber3 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was it a scandal at the time? My understanding of how per-game card-driver optimizations work today is: 1. AAAA Game Studio shits out another unoptimized clunker 2. nvidia considers it a reputational risk if games run at 30 FPS on a 5090 3. They go in, look at the perverse ways the game misuses rendering primitives, and then hacks shit in to make whatever bad things they're doing less bad. As a gamer, this seems fine…

> As a gamer, this seems fine to me As a software developer, it almost certainly has a bad effect on the ecosystem long term. "Hacks shit in" is the very definition of technical debt, and that has a cost that someone, somewhere is going to have to pay in some form.

> technical debt, and that has a cost that someone, somewhere is going to have to pay in some form

There is no reason anyone has to pay each and every iota of technical debt. Plenty of things with technical debt hit end of life and no one ever looks in that code again. I suspect most technical debt goes this way - in program, program never updates (or minor updates), then dies.

Your claim would require every piece of technical debt in anything ever (code, buildings, cars, anywhere) has to be removed before the thing goes end of life or goes into a mode where it never is changed. That seems ludicrous to me.

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