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Nvidia announces native GPU programming in Rust

developer.nvidia.com

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Re: Nvidia announces native GPU programming in Rust

#181

Post by jimbob45 »

tombert wrote: post #45
jacobgorm wrote: post #12

I strongly dislike CUDA. Once you have allowed that proprietary cr*p into your C++ codebase, it is very hard to get rid, and you end up with code that is either tied to a single vendor or an #ifdef hell, probably both. The best way to program GPUs is face up to the reality that they are not the same machine as the CPU, write your kernels in separate files, and launch them manually, like in Metal, OpenCL, and D3D12, e…

> I strongly dislike CUDA. Once you have allowed that proprietary cr*p Genuine question...why not just type "crap"? It's not even that much of a curse, but I've never really understood the point of self-censorship. If you don't want to curse then you could just use a non-curse word.

His kids were probably watching him type over his shoulder and he didn’t want to hear, “Daddy, what does crap mean?”

Re: Nvidia announces native GPU programming in Rust

#182

Post by pjmlp »

jacobgorm wrote: post #35
fg137 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Once you have allowed that proprietary cr*p into your C++ codebase People have been doing that all the time for every kind of codebase. It's just part of the business. I don't see how it's worth having any emotions or opinions about it. Seems like you are wasting your energy. Are win32 APIs proprietary? So you decide to use them, use a wrapper/UI framework, or don't develop for Windows. Easy choice. Developing for…

CUDA is not an API, CUDA is a language, so you cannot make that comparison.

CUDA is neither an API, nor a language, it is an ecosystem.

Re: Nvidia announces native GPU programming in Rust

#183

Post by pjmlp »

winwang wrote: post #116
jacobgorm wrote: post #12

I strongly dislike CUDA. Once you have allowed that proprietary cr*p into your C++ codebase, it is very hard to get rid, and you end up with code that is either tied to a single vendor or an #ifdef hell, probably both. The best way to program GPUs is face up to the reality that they are not the same machine as the CPU, write your kernels in separate files, and launch them manually, like in Metal, OpenCL, and D3D12, e…

Having also played with Metal and WebGPU (at least years ago), I would say that CUDA is, amazingly, the best GPGPU API we have. Do I wish we had an open source parallel programming language as good or better than it? Yes. But asymmetrically hating on CUDA like this is how we continue to lag behind it in UX. > The best way to program GPUs is face up to the reality that they are not the same machine as the CPU, write y…

People that attack proprietary APIs always miss the point why most devs outside FOSS circles prefer them.

Turns out when one isn't ideologically against something they aren't willing to put up with a lesser experience just for the cause.

Re: Nvidia announces native GPU programming in Rust

#184

Post by pjmlp »

jacobgorm wrote: post #13
dllu wrote: post #5

Since NVIDIA owns huggingface now and huggingface has the excellent Candle [1] crate for inference on Rust, this seems like a good step towards nice native Rust kernels. [1] https://github.com/huggingface/candle

Nobody cares if kernels are written in Rust. Kernels were meant to be written in C, but if you want to go more high-level try Triton or a similar DSL that nicely abstract tile sizes etc.

That is exactly why OpenCL failed adoption, focusing on C, instead of being polyglot like CUDA.

Re: Nvidia announces native GPU programming in Rust

#185

Post by pjmlp »

cpill wrote: post #30
jacobgorm wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody cares if kernels are written in Rust. Kernels were meant to be written in C, but if you want to go more high-level try Triton or a similar DSL that nicely abstract tile sizes etc.

oh no no no, this is going to break the CPP hold on AI and game dev.

Nah, Rust compiler still needs C++ to be built in first place, and everyone on AI uses LLVM as infrastructure.

Re: Nvidia announces native GPU programming in Rust

#187

Post by pjmlp »

manquer wrote: post #74
keybrd-intrrpt wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> even Nvidia Why "even Nvidia"? They are fully behind using AI for basically everything. What's next? "Damn, even McDonald's is putting out unhealthy food"

I think implication being organizations with 40,000+ employees and even more consultants and contractors plus a lot of budget are also using LLMs to draft public facing content instead of paying for content writers or even just proof readers . It points to friction rather than cost economics. Same reason we are always surprised why multi billion dollar product companies with millions of install base prefer electron i…

Of course, that is the whole point of using AI to replace workers.

Only devs think it isn't coming for them, it is empowering and nothing else will happen, no team reductions, nah how come.

Re: Nvidia announces native GPU programming in Rust

#188

Post by socalgal2 »

preg_match wrote: post #173
fsloth wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CPU on most machines is quite proprietary. I don’t understand this faux purity dogma. Practical computing is not and never has been an abstract pure concept. It’s about making machines built by corporations to do usefull things at scale. There is no ”non proprietary” computing unless you make your own stack.

Yes but there are business costs to using high-level proprietary tools and libraries. If you write your app using win32, you won’t be able to port is very easily. You’re also stuck with whatever bad or bizarre decisions Microsoft made. It’s even worse for CUDA. GPUs are expensive, and now you’re vendor locked. You’re between a rock and a hard place. Either spend millions in engineering time, or millions on price-gaug…

> If you write your app using win32, you won’t be able to port is very easily.

Is this still true? eg, Shopify saying porting is now easy so no need for abstractions.

Re: Nvidia announces native GPU programming in Rust

#189

Post by applfanboysbgon »

QuaternionsBhop wrote: post #157
brainless wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was learning Rust slowly when the LLM enabled coding became good enough. I switched from learning to full on building with Rust. I still learn high level concepts as needed but I will not be able to write Rust on my own at all. And that sounds scary but the way I got over the fear is by realizing there are many things that I do very well but I do not know their internals very well. Driving is an example. I barely u…

There are two types of programmers: the pragmatists who see programming as a chore and would gladly never write a line of code again given the right tools, and the gardeners who don't want their enjoyable and rewarding garden-tending work taken away from them.

The "pragmatists" who get excited developing a prototype for a week before they realize they will never be able to ship something anyone else will use because each trivial change becomes exponentially more difficult for the LLM to implement and completely impossible for the "pragmatist" to reason about, with every new commit liable to break something else.

Still waiting for this revolution of amazing 10x software! It's been 10 months since Everything Changed in November, surely the 10x pragmatists could have leveraged their effective 8 years of development time? Or maybe we'll move the goalposts again and say that actually, Everything Changed with Astra, we'll just need to wait another three months?

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