It's unbelievable that INTC market cap is only 133B, AMD is only 274B and NVDA is 3,130B. That's 23x INTC and 11x AMD.
On the latest quarter, NVDA’s net profit was 3 times AMDs revenue
I was at AMD in the mid-late 2000s helping design CPU/APU/GPUs
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Re: I was at AMD in the mid-late 2000s helping design CPU/APU/GPUs
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
A common talking point is that CUDA is a formidable moat for Nvidia, but - as someone who has never done AI dev - I'm curious to understand what makes CUDA so sticky. From an outsider perspective it looks like a re-run of DirectX vs. everything else but AI is not like gaming and end users often don't have to run the model themselves. So it seems like the network effects should be less than that for a graphics APIs.
The difference is not just about APIs; CUDA has a single source file model that is dead easy to use whereas last I checked every competitor still had an outdated manual loading process that adds significant friction.
Doesn't SYCL also allow for a single-source-file model these days?
Re: I was at AMD in the mid-late 2000s helping design CPU/APU/GPUs
#73Re: I was at AMD in the mid-late 2000s helping design CPU/APU/GPUs
#74Re: I was at AMD in the mid-late 2000s helping design CPU/APU/GPUs
#75I love this insider view into this interesting point in computing history, especially about AMD. However, I was a little put off by the glorification of nVidia's shady practices and lock-in policies as key to their current leading position. While technically true, I dislike "ends justify the means"-style thinking. All this as the OP glorifies AMD's engineering and grit-based culture to drive through all though tough…
On the other hand, AMD was on the brink of bankruptcy and Lisa Su led them out of it and into a triple-digit share price. Most companies with that much debt and that little revenue would have gone bankrupt.
Lest we forget the Intel IPC advantages over comparable AMD CPUs was due to some shortcuts that exposed major vulnerabilities in Intel CPUs made from ~2011 to 2019. I’d be curious to see how a Spectre and Meltdown-patched Intel CPU fares against its AMD competitor NOW. Some of the performance hits were brutal- 20%+ in some workloads.
Nvidia was pushing AMD out of the GPU market back when GPUs were effectively only used for gaming and while GameWorks was predatory, you can’t really blame them for having the cooler-running, quieter, more energy-efficient GPUs going back to the Maxwell line (GTX 9x0). CUDA didn’t screw AMD until recently… but in 2014, people were picking Nvidia because the GPUs were considerably “better”. AMD had the best bang for buck back then, but you’d have more power consumption and heat output, and the drivers tended to be buggy. The bugs would be fixed, but it really sucked for people trying to play games on release day.
Re: I was at AMD in the mid-late 2000s helping design CPU/APU/GPUs
#76> SUPERIOR PRODUCTS LOSE TO SUPERIOR DISTRIBUTION LOCK-INS & GTM. This takeaway was a little odd to me in the context of 2008. I had been an AMD stalwart in my PCs since about 2000 (Athlon Thunderbird), but IIRC in 2008 Intel had the better processor. Better single core performance, better performance/watt, and I think AMD processors tended to have stability issues around this time. I remember I built a PC in 2009 wi…
Until the later Core 2 Quad CPUs, AMD’s stuff was “technologically” better in the multi core workloads. The problem with that is that multi core workloads were uncommon at the time. This is where the “AMD Fine Wine” meme originated. By the time people had moved on to better things, the greatness of AMD’s technologies became apparent.
Personally, I’ve always liked Intel for stability reasons. Running Intel chipsets and CPUs, I’ve just had fewer issues. I’m an enthusiast, so I do spend more than I should on both Intel and AMD rather frequently… but now, I’m hungry for an Ampere system. My wallet is crying.
Re: I was at AMD in the mid-late 2000s helping design CPU/APU/GPUs
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nvidia was pushing CUDA forward for over a decade before it started getting serious commercial traction. It's not like they blocked anyone else from developing viable GPGPU tech, they were just the only ones pushing it. For like 8 years their drivers on Linux were a nightmare and AMD could have come in and done better.
AMD and Apple tried to push OpenCL but the design of it, a C-like kernel compiled to the GPU with LLVM and managed by the Khronos consortium, tended to lag in absolute performance to CUDA which was able to take advantage of evolutions in GPU design more closely. Nowadays almost nobody cares about OpenCL.
Also apparently the reason behind Apple's cut with Khronos seems to be related to how OpenCL was managed by them.
Re: I was at AMD in the mid-late 2000s helping design CPU/APU/GPUs
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
The obvious issue with both your points is that NVidia's competitors did do as such. AMD has had workable Linux drivers for many years now and there were numerous alternatives to CUDA pushed.
A common talking point is that CUDA is a formidable moat for Nvidia, but - as someone who has never done AI dev - I'm curious to understand what makes CUDA so sticky. From an outsider perspective it looks like a re-run of DirectX vs. everything else but AI is not like gaming and end users often don't have to run the model themselves. So it seems like the network effects should be less than that for a graphics APIs.
Tooling.
Since CUDA 3.0, NVidia has embraced a polyglot stack, with C, C++ and Fortran at the center, and PTX for anyone else.
Followed by changing CUDA memory model to map that of C++11.
Khronos never cared for Fortran, and only designed SPIR, when it became obvious they were too late to the party.
So not only has CUDA first level tooling for C, C++, Fortran, with IDE integration in Visual Studio and Eclipse, graphical GPU debugger with all the goodies of a modern debugger, it also welcomes any compiler toolchain that wants to target PTX.
Java, Haskell, .NET, Julia, Python JITs, .... there are plenty to chose from, without going through "compile to OpenCL C99" alternative.
Finally, the myriad of libraries to chose from.
CUDA is not only for AI, by the way.
Re: I was at AMD in the mid-late 2000s helping design CPU/APU/GPUs
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm quite familiar as I worked for Intel for over a decade as an engineer. It's absolutely true that leadership has fluctuated a lot but the 2003-2010 era had fairly clear cut leaders for each generation. AMD was the choice for just about everything through the Athlon 64 single core era but the Core 2 Duo run had them relegated to superiority in the very bottom end of the market only for a long time. https://www.anan…
Is it possible that maybe your view point is biased against AMD since you worked for for Intel during that time?
Nah, btouellette is correct. AMD only led for a few years around 2003-2005.
Re: I was at AMD in the mid-late 2000s helping design CPU/APU/GPUs
#80I predicted years ago they would make a CPU and you would be able to buy an All-NVidia PC. I think the reason that hasn't happened is because of the failed purchase of ARM. And looking at the market dominance of NVidia, it seems they were right to block that acquisition.