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Rust running on every GPU

rust-gpu.github.io

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Re: Rust running on every GPU

#71

Post by Maken »

a99c43f2d565504 wrote: post #67
90s_dev wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It's only complex because it's new, it will get less complex over time." They said the same thing about browser tech. Still not simpler under the hood.

As far as I understand, there was a similar mess with CPUs some 50 years ago: All computers were different and there was no such thing as portable code. Then problem solvers came up with abstractions like the C programming language, allowing developers to write more or less the same code for different platforms. I suppose GPUs are slowly going through a similar process now that they're useful in many more domains tha…

And yet, we are still using handwritten assembly for hot code paths. All these abstraction layers would need to be porous enough to allow per-device specific code.

Re: Rust running on every GPU

#72

Post by maratc »

rbanffy wrote: post #8

> Though this demo doesn't do so, multiple backends could be compiled into a single binary and platform-specific code paths could then be selected at runtime. That’s kind of the goal, I’d assume: writing generic code and having it run on anything.

> writing generic code and having it run on anything.

That has been already done successfully by Java applets in 1995.

Wait, Java applets were dead by 2005, which leads me to assume that the goal is different.

Re: Rust running on every GPU

#73

Post by tombh »

Voultapher wrote: post #34

Let's count abstraction layers: 1. Domain specific Rust code 2. Backend abstracting over the cust, ash and wgpu crates 3. wgpu and co. abstracting over platforms, drivers and APIs 4. Vulkan, OpenGL, DX12 and Metal abstracting over platforms and drivers 5. Drivers abstracting over vendor specific hardware (one could argue there are more layers in here) 6. Hardware That's a lot of hidden complexity, better hope one nev…

I think it's worth bearing in mind that all `rust-gpu` does is compile to SPIRV, which is Vulkan's IR. So in a sense layers 2. and 3. are optional, or at least parallel layers rather than accumulative.

And it's also worth remembering that all of Rust's tooling can be used for building its shaders; `cargo`, `cargo test`, `cargo clippy`, `rust-analyzer` (Rust's LSP server).

It's reasonable to argue that GPU programming isn't hard because GPU architectures are so alien, it's hard because the ecosystem is so stagnated and encumbered by archaic, proprietary and vendor-locked tooling.

Re: Rust running on every GPU

#74

Post by lukan »

90s_dev wrote: post #61
LegNeato wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The demo is admittedly a rube goldberg machine, but that's because this was the first time it is possible. It will get more integrated over time. And just like normal rust code, you can make it as abstract or concrete as you want. But at least you have the tools to do so. That's one of the nice things about the rust ecosystem, you can drill down and do what you want. There is std::arch, which is platform specific, th…

"It's only complex because it's new, it will get less complex over time." They said the same thing about browser tech. Still not simpler under the hood.

Who said that?

Re: Rust running on every GPU

#75

Post by dahart »

Voultapher wrote: post #34

Let's count abstraction layers: 1. Domain specific Rust code 2. Backend abstracting over the cust, ash and wgpu crates 3. wgpu and co. abstracting over platforms, drivers and APIs 4. Vulkan, OpenGL, DX12 and Metal abstracting over platforms and drivers 5. Drivers abstracting over vendor specific hardware (one could argue there are more layers in here) 6. Hardware That's a lot of hidden complexity, better hope one nev…

Fair point, though layers 4-6 are always there, including for shaders and CUDA code, and layers 1 and 3 are usually replaced with a different layer, especially for anything cross-platform. So this Rust project might be adding a layer of abstraction, but probably only one-ish.

I work on layers 4-6 and I can confirm there’s a lot of hidden complexity in there. I’d say there are more than 3 layers there too. :P

Re: Rust running on every GPU

#76

Post by slashdev »

This is a little crude still, but the fact that this is even possible is mind blowing. This has the potential, if progress continues, to break the vendor-locked nightmare that is GPU software and open up the space to real competition between hardware vendors.

Imagine a world where machine learning models are written in Rust and can run on both Nvidia and AMD.

To get max performance you likely have to break the abstraction and write some vendor-specific code for each, but that's an optimization problem. You still have a portable kernel that runs cross platform.

Re: Rust running on every GPU

#77

Post by turnsout »

90s_dev wrote: post #61
LegNeato wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The demo is admittedly a rube goldberg machine, but that's because this was the first time it is possible. It will get more integrated over time. And just like normal rust code, you can make it as abstract or concrete as you want. But at least you have the tools to do so. That's one of the nice things about the rust ecosystem, you can drill down and do what you want. There is std::arch, which is platform specific, th…

"It's only complex because it's new, it will get less complex over time." They said the same thing about browser tech. Still not simpler under the hood.

Complexity is not inherently bad. Browsers are more or less exactly as complex as they need to be in order to allow users to browse the web with modern features while remaining competitive with other browsers.

This is Tesler's Law [0] at work. If you want to fully abstract away GPU compilation, it probably won't get dramatically simpler than this project.

  [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_conservation_of_complexity

Re: Rust running on every GPU

#78

Post by ducktective »

pjmlp wrote: post #52
diabllicseagull wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

same here. I'm always hesitant to build anything commercial over abstractions, adapter or translation layers that may or may not have sufficient support in the future. sadly in 2025, we are still in desparate need for an open standard that's supported by all vendors and that allows programming for the full feature set of current gpu hardware. the fact that the current situation is the way it is while the company that…

Khronos APIs are the C++ of graphics programming, there is a reason why professional game studios never do political wars on APIs. Decades of exerience building cross platform game engines since the days of raw assembly programming across heterogeneous computer architectures. What matters are game design and IP, that they eventually can turn into physical assets like toys, movies, collection assets. Hardware abstract…

I think you are very experienced in this subject. Can you explain what's wrong with WebGPU? Doesn't it utilize like 80% of the cool features of the modern GPUs? Games and ambitious graphics-hungry applications aside, why aren't we seeing more tech built on top of WebGPU like GUI stacks? Why aren't we seeing browsers and web apps using it?

Do you recommended learning it (considering all the things worth learning nowadays and rise of LLMs)

Re: Rust running on every GPU

#79

Post by ajross »

Voultapher wrote: post #34

Let's count abstraction layers: 1. Domain specific Rust code 2. Backend abstracting over the cust, ash and wgpu crates 3. wgpu and co. abstracting over platforms, drivers and APIs 4. Vulkan, OpenGL, DX12 and Metal abstracting over platforms and drivers 5. Drivers abstracting over vendor specific hardware (one could argue there are more layers in here) 6. Hardware That's a lot of hidden complexity, better hope one nev…

There is absolutely an xkcd 927 feel to this.

But that's not the fault of the new abstraction layers, it's the fault of the GPU industry and its outrageous refusal to coordinate on anything, at all, ever. Every generation of GPU from every vendor has its own toolchain, its own ideas about architecture, its own entirely hidden and undocumented set of quirks, its own secret sauce interfaces available only in its own incompatible development environment...

CPUs weren't like this. People figured out a basic model for programming them back in the 60's and everyone agreed that open docs and collabora-competing toolchains and environments were a good thing. But GPUs never got the memo, and things are a huge mess and remain so.

All the folks up here in the open source community can do is add abstraction layers, which is why we have thirty seven "shading languages" now.

Re: Rust running on every GPU

#80

Post by pjmlp »

a99c43f2d565504 wrote: post #67
90s_dev wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It's only complex because it's new, it will get less complex over time." They said the same thing about browser tech. Still not simpler under the hood.

As far as I understand, there was a similar mess with CPUs some 50 years ago: All computers were different and there was no such thing as portable code. Then problem solvers came up with abstractions like the C programming language, allowing developers to write more or less the same code for different platforms. I suppose GPUs are slowly going through a similar process now that they're useful in many more domains tha…

Computers have been enjoying high level systems languages, a decade predating C.
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