Kepler, Nvidia's Strong Start on 28 nm • Hacker News Board

Re: Kepler, Nvidia's Strong Start on 28 nm

#61

Post by sigmoid10 » Mon, Nov 27, 2023, 5:33 PM UTC

DiabloD3 wrote: post #58

sigmoid10 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and before that they ruled the bitcoin craze. You literally couldn't buy Nvidia cards for an insanely long time time because the 30 series was so cost effective at mining that everyone and their uncle wanted in on the deal. AMD has some edge in the non high end server niche, but Nvidia rules everything else. In the AI craze AMD is not even an afterthought anymore, as everyone wants Nvidia. Even companies like G…

Its weird people keep repeating that. I've been fortunate enough to meet a fair number of programmers who have moved onto make-AI-go-brrrr jobs, most of what they're handling is AMD hardware. Nvidia strongly missed the boat by continually pushing CUDA lock in, while being on the Khronos steering committee and having made important contributions to OpenGL, OpenCL, Vulkan, and the SPIR-V ecosystem while simultaneously…

I actually work in the field (for quite a few years by now) and basically everyone I know (who knows what they're doing and isn't just getting started) uses Nvidia. AMD drivers for GPGPU compute sucked so bad for so long, noone even bothered to try them anymore. CUDA might be closed source, but it is lightyears ahead in stability and usability. If you want to get things done in AI, you buy Nvidia. Everyone who actually has to make these decisions knows that.

Re: Kepler, Nvidia's Strong Start on 28 nm

#62

Post by DiabloD3 » Thu, Nov 30, 2023, 7:45 AM UTC

sigmoid10 wrote: post #61

DiabloD3 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its weird people keep repeating that. I've been fortunate enough to meet a fair number of programmers who have moved onto make-AI-go-brrrr jobs, most of what they're handling is AMD hardware. Nvidia strongly missed the boat by continually pushing CUDA lock in, while being on the Khronos steering committee and having made important contributions to OpenGL, OpenCL, Vulkan, and the SPIR-V ecosystem while simultaneously…

I actually work in the field (for quite a few years by now) and basically everyone I know (who knows what they're doing and isn't just getting started) uses Nvidia. AMD drivers for GPGPU compute sucked so bad for so long, noone even bothered to try them anymore. CUDA might be closed source, but it is lightyears ahead in stability and usability. If you want to get things done in AI, you buy Nvidia. Everyone who actual…

Still, weird to hear the "everyone who actually has to make these decisions, the ones that know that" continue to make expensive suboptimal choices.

To each their own, I guess.

Re: Kepler, Nvidia's Strong Start on 28 nm

#63

Post by sigmoid10 » Thu, Nov 30, 2023, 10:04 AM UTC

DiabloD3 wrote: post #62

sigmoid10 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually work in the field (for quite a few years by now) and basically everyone I know (who knows what they're doing and isn't just getting started) uses Nvidia. AMD drivers for GPGPU compute sucked so bad for so long, noone even bothered to try them anymore. CUDA might be closed source, but it is lightyears ahead in stability and usability. If you want to get things done in AI, you buy Nvidia. Everyone who actual…

Still, weird to hear the "everyone who actually has to make these decisions, the ones that know that" continue to make expensive suboptimal choices. To each their own, I guess.

They are optimal in the overall sense, because flops per dollar is not everything in the real world. Though I can see why many people outside the field would think so, since that is what manufacturers write in big letters on their marketing brochures.

Re: Kepler, Nvidia's Strong Start on 28 nm

#64

Post by DiabloD3 » Sat, Dec 02, 2023, 9:33 PM UTC

sigmoid10 wrote: post #63

DiabloD3 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still, weird to hear the "everyone who actually has to make these decisions, the ones that know that" continue to make expensive suboptimal choices. To each their own, I guess.

They are optimal in the overall sense, because flops per dollar is not everything in the real world. Though I can see why many people outside the field would think so, since that is what manufacturers write in big letters on their marketing brochures.

You are partially right. Flops isn't everything, its just a major component of your capex and/or opex if you rely on enterprise compute for the majority of what you do (ie, machine learning).

The cost of doing business that isn't flops is the realm of developer time. Nvidia tooling is where developer time goes to die. People who keep claiming Nvidia's tooling is great for developers and easy to use is someone who has a skill mismatch for the industry, or worse, someone trying to sell you something.