From what I gather from reading AMD's recent AMA is that the key is getting hardware and software guys [working together](https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives

From what I gather from reading AMD's recent AMA is that the key is getting hardware and software guys [working together](https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2016-December/126808.html https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2016-Decemb...). For AMD the issue is that they can't afford to have hardware guys dedicated to helping optimize the software since they need to build the next and next next generation of hardware. On the other hand, Google surely has the pockets to get man hours and knowledge to (a) figure out what kind of software is needed (b) design from hardware level to meet their software needs. And if you caught any of their talks on [Tensorflow at Google IO](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DknTFbcGVM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DknTFbcGVM), it seems like their goal is to provide ultra-high level APIs like POST/GET, and high level python ones like Tensorflow pre-built and trained models. At that point Google can control the engineering, and as long as you run on their cloud platform you just have to worry about the high-level. I'm definitely not a fan of vendor lock-in, but it seems like a interesting product, and I'm curious to see what Google does in this space.