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> looking at it stock recently it seems to be doing much better (especially in last year). Not sure how to interpret that. One interpretation: NVIDIA has been

> looking at it stock recently it seems to be doing much better (especially in last year). Not sure how to interpret that. One interpretation: NVIDIA has been doing a very good job of A) pursuing deep learning and B) talking that up on earnings calls. Even if they're not seeing much money from it right now, investors are excited that they might in the future. This leads some investors and algos to think, "Hey, NVIDIA is doing well, and AMD is nominally in the same business as NVIDIA, so let's buy AMD because it's cheaper and therefore must represent a better value." This drives up the price of AMD stock, which is itself already prone to more volatility because of their lower market cap. However, they are two fundamentally different companies. I hear a lot about founder-led vs non-founder-led businesses, and AMD vs NVIDIA is a good example of non-founder-led vs founder-led atm. Also, they've done a very poor job with their ATI acquisition. The ATI acquisition is why they even have a leg to compete with NVIDIA in the first place, but that train has basically left the station at this point. Intel is in a weird position because their market cap is 10x NVIDIA's, so they need markets where they can make literally 10x more money than for NVIDIA to be interested. Victims of their own success, innovators dilemma, etc. Personally, I think that will hinder them because everything they want to try won't be "big enough" while NVIDIA doesn't suffer from that problem and AMD just has no idea what it's doing besides professional supply chain management. Respect where it's due, Nvidia will win the hardware side of deep learning and fast matrix multiplication for the foreseeable future.

petra 10y ago
Is it really an innovators dillema for Intel ? If they can achieve a big improvement over Nvidia , they can retain their margins. As for the market being small - as long they can run a self sustaining , high-margin business org at it ,and there's. A big possibility of future growth , why not ? It's not like they lack those resources for another big growth opportunity they're trying to get.
- dave_sullivan 10y ago
  > If they can achieve a big improvement over Nvidia , they can retain their margins. That's part of my point--they can't achieve a big improvement over Nvidia. Nvidia hires from the same pool that Intel does. Intel doesn't magically get better engineers. If anything the smarter ones are at Nvidia because it's easier to double the stock price of a $13B company than a $150B company, so more upside potential on stock options, which matters to those seeking long and lucrative careers at bigcos. Salaries are about the same at both companies. So with Nvidia's headstart and the knowledge that a bigger team does not lead to better engineering performance (as per Mythical Man Month), how does Intel magically achieve a "big improvement" over Nvidia? > As for the market being small - as long they can run a self sustaining , high-margin business org at it ,and there's. A big possibility of future growth , why not ? I agree logically, but I don't think Intel is quite there as an organization. Once an organization is being run by committee, it's too easy to throw cold water on an idea to kill it. Why take the risk of backing a new initiative? Also, let's say they were on-board as an organization... See my first point: they can't run a self-sustaining high margin business because there isn't one. There isn't even an especially high margin business for Nvidia; enterprises aren't nearly as stupid or rich as everyone thinks. If anything, Intel has made the classic big company mistake of waiting too long in the first place, then realizing they're losing, then overcompensating via acquisition. Historically, it's not a good strategy. My whole point being: I'm glad to see competition, Nvidia (or quantum computing, etc.) will probably win this.
dharma1 10y ago
Right now the only thing I can see holding AMD back is their lack of vision to drop a bit of cash on a CuDNN equivalent (and the ML framework support for it), especially fast convolution kernels optimised for their hardware. They are waiting for the open source community to do the work for them, but no one is picking it up because it's a lot of work. A couple of good AMD engineers should be able to knock out fast Winograd kernels pretty quick.
- ansible 10y ago
  Their best bet it to increase support for OpenCL rather than invent something new. And then improve / create OpenCL support for TensorFlow and other popular toolkits.
  - dharma1 10y ago
    Yes, that would be OpenCL/SPIR-V. But you still need to put in the work to optimise convolution kernels for specific hardware. TF has openCL support in the works, AFAIK outsourced to Codeplay - https://www.codeplay.com/portal/tensorflow%E2%84%A2-for-opencl%E2%84%A2-using-sycl%E2%84%A2 https://www.codeplay.com/portal/tensorflow%E2%84%A2-for-open... Caffe has an OpenCL branch, works on AMD but about quarter of the speed of equivalent NVidia hardware using CuDNN 4/5, mostly due to unoptimised kernels - https://github.com/BVLC/caffe/tree/opencl https://github.com/BVLC/caffe/tree/opencl

petra 10y ago

Is it really an innovators dillema for Intel ? If they can achieve a big improvement over Nvidia , they can retain their margins. As for the market being small - as long they can run a self sustaining , high-margin business org at it ,and there's. A big possibility of future growth , why not ? It's not like they lack those resources for another big growth opportunity they're trying to get.

dave_sullivan 10y ago
> If they can achieve a big improvement over Nvidia , they can retain their margins. That's part of my point--they can't achieve a big improvement over Nvidia. Nvidia hires from the same pool that Intel does. Intel doesn't magically get better engineers. If anything the smarter ones are at Nvidia because it's easier to double the stock price of a $13B company than a $150B company, so more upside potential on stock options, which matters to those seeking long and lucrative careers at bigcos. Salaries are about the same at both companies. So with Nvidia's headstart and the knowledge that a bigger team does not lead to better engineering performance (as per Mythical Man Month), how does Intel magically achieve a "big improvement" over Nvidia? > As for the market being small - as long they can run a self sustaining , high-margin business org at it ,and there's. A big possibility of future growth , why not ? I agree logically, but I don't think Intel is quite there as an organization. Once an organization is being run by committee, it's too easy to throw cold water on an idea to kill it. Why take the risk of backing a new initiative? Also, let's say they were on-board as an organization... See my first point: they can't run a self-sustaining high margin business because there isn't one. There isn't even an especially high margin business for Nvidia; enterprises aren't nearly as stupid or rich as everyone thinks. If anything, Intel has made the classic big company mistake of waiting too long in the first place, then realizing they're losing, then overcompensating via acquisition. Historically, it's not a good strategy. My whole point being: I'm glad to see competition, Nvidia (or quantum computing, etc.) will probably win this.

dharma1 10y ago

Right now the only thing I can see holding AMD back is their lack of vision to drop a bit of cash on a CuDNN equivalent (and the ML framework support for it), especially fast convolution kernels optimised for their hardware. They are waiting for the open source community to do the work for them, but no one is picking it up because it's a lot of work. A couple of good AMD engineers should be able to knock out fast Winograd kernels pretty quick.

ansible 10y ago
Their best bet it to increase support for OpenCL rather than invent something new. And then improve / create OpenCL support for TensorFlow and other popular toolkits.
- dharma1 10y ago
  Yes, that would be OpenCL/SPIR-V. But you still need to put in the work to optimise convolution kernels for specific hardware. TF has openCL support in the works, AFAIK outsourced to Codeplay - https://www.codeplay.com/portal/tensorflow%E2%84%A2-for-opencl%E2%84%A2-using-sycl%E2%84%A2 https://www.codeplay.com/portal/tensorflow%E2%84%A2-for-open... Caffe has an OpenCL branch, works on AMD but about quarter of the speed of equivalent NVidia hardware using CuDNN 4/5, mostly due to unoptimised kernels - https://github.com/BVLC/caffe/tree/opencl https://github.com/BVLC/caffe/tree/opencl