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A great machine to be sure for high end content creation but Apple is not chasing the deep learning dev market because of the lack of CUDA. That market is bette

A great machine to be sure for high end content creation but Apple is not chasing the deep learning dev market because of the lack of CUDA. That market is better served by Linux boxes with appropriate GPUs for TensorFlow, PyTorch, etc. support.

reilly3000 7y ago
Bingo. Although it looks clear that there is a lot of movement towards broader support of AMD in DL via ROCm: https://rocm-documentation.readthedocs.io/en/latest/Deep_learning/Deep-learning.html https://rocm-documentation.readthedocs.io/en/latest/Deep_lea...
- atemerev 7y ago
  A reference FFT implementation in CUDA: about 150 lines of code. A reference FFT implementation in ROCm: about 1200 lines of much uglier code using advanced C++ idioms. So no, it is not a replacement, again. Elegance matters.
Uehreka 7y ago
Nvidia really has the GPU market under their thumb. It would be one thing if their pitch was "We're not as good as AMD for games, but we've got CUDA for professionals and researchers!". At least that way there could be some sort of segmentation and I could tell people shopping for GPUs to "get the right one for what you want to do!" But that's not the world we live in. Nvidia's pitch is "We make the only hardware that runs the framework used by almost all deep learning research and media creation software, and we're also the only folks operating at our level when it comes to high-end video game graphics, and if our high-end cards are too expensive for you, we have cheaper ones. And when our competitors start to think they can catch up, we'll drop RTX and Tensor Cores on their face." AMD seems stuck on "We have great value middle-to-high-tier video game graphics cards" at best. I have no idea how they can get out from under that rock. They've been turning the CPU market upside down and smashing Intel's once proud "near monopoly" status. Nvidia seems like exactly the kind of prideful company that would be poised to fall, but I have no idea how AMD could make it happen.
- mantoto 7y ago
  Nvidia is still better for games then AMD. Haven't seen the GPU which beats them.
  - mrweasel 7y ago
    Isn’t that only if you ignore price? If you only have a limited budget, then AMD will get you better performance. For absolute maximum performance at any cost AMD has nothing that can beat Nvidia though.
    - LegitShady 7y ago
      so all the high margin business goes to nvidia you're saying...
      - 8draco8 7y ago
        He's saying that performance gain may not be worth huge price tag. It's similar to Backblaze which decided to use consumer grade hard drives for their storage solution rather than pro grade drives because cost increase was not worth it.
        throw0101a 7y ago
        > ... rather than pro grade drives because cost increase was not worth it. Or that it was cheaper to get reliability at another layer of the stack (rather than hardware).
    - TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago
      It depends on your electricity cost however.
- jay_kyburz 7y ago
  Meh, just buy AMD because Nvidia sux. For gaming, the price to framerate comparison is so close anyhow.
yalok 7y ago
Exactly, and to me it’s a deal breaker. Anyone privy on what hold Apple back on supporting Nvidia? The only info I read was due to some earlier bad blood, but I wonder why hurt your users just because of some old scuffles...
- samstave 7y ago
  Lawyers. They probably both each want too much money.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- unicornfinder 7y ago
  I've heard it's down to patent disputes. Wouldn't surprise me.
throaway1990 7y ago
I don't know about the compute capability of GPUs on this Mac Pro, but if one were to write CUDA like programs. HIP is basically the same API as CUDA. For and Engineer or Computation Scientist, I think this is not a bad investment But Yes existing CUDA libraries won't work.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
danpalmer 7y ago
With the new MPX module spec, Nvidia should be able to release cards for this.
- dahauns 7y ago
  The hardware isn't the problem, it's the drivers.
  - danpalmer 7y ago
    Nvidia already produce third party drivers for their Mac cards.
    - sergiomattei 7y ago
      Not for Mojave+, and it’s a bleak outlook.
overcast 7y ago
I'm struggling to think what super high end content studio hasn't moved on by this point? All these tools are available on Windows, and no one still in business was waiting 12 years for a worthy upgrade.

reilly3000 7y ago

Bingo. Although it looks clear that there is a lot of movement towards broader support of AMD in DL via ROCm: https://rocm-documentation.readthedocs.io/en/latest/Deep_learning/Deep-learning.html https://rocm-documentation.readthedocs.io/en/latest/Deep_lea...

atemerev 7y ago
A reference FFT implementation in CUDA: about 150 lines of code. A reference FFT implementation in ROCm: about 1200 lines of much uglier code using advanced C++ idioms. So no, it is not a replacement, again. Elegance matters.

Uehreka 7y ago

Nvidia really has the GPU market under their thumb. It would be one thing if their pitch was "We're not as good as AMD for games, but we've got CUDA for professionals and researchers!". At least that way there could be some sort of segmentation and I could tell people shopping for GPUs to "get the right one for what you want to do!" But that's not the world we live in. Nvidia's pitch is "We make the only hardware that runs the framework used by almost all deep learning research and media creation software, and we're also the only folks operating at our level when it comes to high-end video game graphics, and if our high-end cards are too expensive for you, we have cheaper ones. And when our competitors start to think they can catch up, we'll drop RTX and Tensor Cores on their face." AMD seems stuck on "We have great value middle-to-high-tier video game graphics cards" at best. I have no idea how they can get out from under that rock. They've been turning the CPU market upside down and smashing Intel's once proud "near monopoly" status. Nvidia seems like exactly the kind of prideful company that would be poised to fall, but I have no idea how AMD could make it happen.

mantoto 7y ago
Nvidia is still better for games then AMD. Haven't seen the GPU which beats them.
- mrweasel 7y ago
  Isn’t that only if you ignore price? If you only have a limited budget, then AMD will get you better performance. For absolute maximum performance at any cost AMD has nothing that can beat Nvidia though.
  - LegitShady 7y ago
    so all the high margin business goes to nvidia you're saying...
    - 8draco8 7y ago
      He's saying that performance gain may not be worth huge price tag. It's similar to Backblaze which decided to use consumer grade hard drives for their storage solution rather than pro grade drives because cost increase was not worth it.
      - throw0101a 7y ago
        > ... rather than pro grade drives because cost increase was not worth it. Or that it was cheaper to get reliability at another layer of the stack (rather than hardware).
  - TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago
    It depends on your electricity cost however.
jay_kyburz 7y ago
Meh, just buy AMD because Nvidia sux. For gaming, the price to framerate comparison is so close anyhow.

yalok 7y ago

Exactly, and to me it’s a deal breaker. Anyone privy on what hold Apple back on supporting Nvidia? The only info I read was due to some earlier bad blood, but I wonder why hurt your users just because of some old scuffles...

samstave 7y ago
Lawyers. They probably both each want too much money.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
unicornfinder 7y ago
I've heard it's down to patent disputes. Wouldn't surprise me.

throaway1990 7y ago

I don't know about the compute capability of GPUs on this Mac Pro, but if one were to write CUDA like programs. HIP is basically the same API as CUDA. For and Engineer or Computation Scientist, I think this is not a bad investment But Yes existing CUDA libraries won't work.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

danpalmer 7y ago

With the new MPX module spec, Nvidia should be able to release cards for this.

dahauns 7y ago
The hardware isn't the problem, it's the drivers.
- danpalmer 7y ago
  Nvidia already produce third party drivers for their Mac cards.
  - sergiomattei 7y ago
    Not for Mojave+, and it’s a bleak outlook.

overcast 7y ago

I'm struggling to think what super high end content studio hasn't moved on by this point? All these tools are available on Windows, and no one still in business was waiting 12 years for a worthy upgrade.