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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

#131

Post by incrudible »

nindalf wrote: post #34
izacus wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think running after nVidia for this submarket is a good idea for them? The AMD GPU team isn't especially big and the development investment is massive. Moreover, they'll have the opportunity cost for projects they're now dominating in (all game consoles for example). Do you expect them to be able to capitalize on the AI fad so much (and quickly enough!) that it's worth dropping the ball on projects they're…

AMD is betting big on GPUs. They recently released the MI300, which has "2x transistors, 2.4x memory and 1.6x memory bandwidth more than the H100, the top-of-the-line artificial-intelligence chip made by Nvidia" ( https://www.economist.com/business/2024/01/31/could-amd-brea... ). They very much plan to compete in this space, and hope to ship $3.5B of these chips in the next year. Small compared to Nvidia's revenues o…

They are trying to compete in the segment of data center market where the shots are called by bean counters calculating FLOPS per dollar.

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

#132

Post by p_l »

bell-cot wrote: post #120
coldtea wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem with effectively supporting CUDA is that encourages CUDA adoption all the more strongly Worked fine for MS with Excel supporting Lotus 123 and Word supporting WordPerfect's formats when those were dominant...

But MS controlled the underlying OS. Letting them both throw money at the problem, and (by accounts at the time) frequently tweak the OS in ways that made life difficult for Lotus, WordPerfect, Ashton-Tate, etc.

Last I checked, Lotus did themselves by not innovating, and betting on the wrong horse (OS/2) then not doing well on a pivot to Windows.

Meanwhile Excel was gaining features and winning users with them even before Windows was in play.

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

#133

Post by mnau »

RamRodification wrote: post #94
lambdaone wrote: post #75

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…

> and would also act as a disincentive for NVIDIA to make breaking changes to CUDA I don't know about that. You could kinda argue the opposite. "We improved CUDA. Oh it stopped working for you on AMD hardware? Too bad. Buy Nvidia next time"

Also known as OS/2: Redux strategy.

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

#135

Post by monocasa »

jcranmer wrote: post #113
anon291 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't think the courts would force the opening of CUDA? Didn't a court already rule that API cannot be patented. I believe it was a Google case. As long as no implementation was stolen, the API itself is not able to be copyrighted. Here it is: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/04/how-the-supreme-...

> Didn't a court already rule that API cannot be patented. I believe it was a Google case. As long as no implementation was stolen, the API itself is not able to be copyrighted. That is... not accurate in the slightest. Oracle v Google was not about patentability. Software patentability is its own separate minefield, since anyone who looks at the general tenor of SCOTUS cases on the issue should be able to figure out…

To be fair, there were patent claims in Oracle vs. Google too. That's why the appeals went through the CAFC rather than the 9th circuit. Those claims were simply thrown out pretty early. Whether that says something about more generally or was simply a set of weak claims intended for venue shopping is a legitimate discussion to be had though.

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

#136

Post by chuckadams »

panick21_ wrote: post #109
cduzz wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bit of story telling here: IBM and Microsoft made OS/2. The first version worked on 286s and was stable but useless. The second version worked only on 386s and was quite good, and even had wonderful windows 3.x compatibility. "Better windows than windows!" At that point Microsoft wanted out of the deal and they wanted to make their newer version of windows, NT, which they did. IBM now had a competitor to "new" wind…

IBM also made a whole bunch of strategic mistakes beyond that. Most importantly their hardware division didn't give a flying f about OS/2. Even when they had a 'better Windows' they did not actually use it themselves and didn't push it to other vendors. Windows NT wasn't really relevant in that competition for much longer, only XP was finally for end consumers. > where nvidia has the standard that AMD is implementing…

Slapping a price tag of over $300 on OS/2 didn’t do IBM any favors either.

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

#137

Post by teucris »

kgeist wrote: post #98
hjabird wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Intel embraced Amd64 ditching Itanium. Wasn't it a good decision that worked out well? Is it comparable?

In hindsight, yes, but just because a specific technology is leading an industry doesn’t mean it’s going to be the best option. It has to play out long enough for the market to indicate a preference. In this case, for better or worse, it looks like CUDA’s the preference.

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

#138

Post by mnau »

smoldesu wrote: post #124
hd4 wrote: post #60

The interest in this thread tells me there are a lot of people who are not cool with the CUDA monopoly.

Those people should have spoken up when their hardware manufacturers abandoned OpenCL. The industry set itself 5-10 years behind by ignoring open GPGPU compute drivers while Nvidia slowly built their empire. Just look at how long it's taken to re-impliment a fraction of the CUDA featureset on a small handful of hardware. CUDA shouldn't exist. We should have hardware manufacturers working together , using common APIs…

Common API means being replaceable, fungible. There are no margins in that.

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

#139

Post by AndrewKemendo »

slavik81 wrote: post #83
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.

That is intentional. We had to change the name. ROCm is no longer an acronym.

I assume you’re on the team if you’re saying “we”

Can you say why you had to change the name?

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

#140

Post by Keyframe »

alberth wrote: post #102
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…

DirectX vs OpenGL. This brings back memories of late 90s / early 00s of Microsoft pushing hard their proprietary graphic libraries (DirectX) vs open standards (OpenGL). Fast forward 25-years and even today, Microsoft still dominates in PC gaming as a result. There's a bad track record of open standard for GPUs. Even Apple themselves gave up on OpenGL and has their own proprietary offering (Metal).

Let's not forget the Fahrenheit maneuver by Microsoft that left SGI stranding and not forward OpenGL.
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