3 ms·

>> NVIDIA's main competitive advantage over AMD and Intel is its software stack. AMD could release a 2x powerful GPGPU tomorrow for half the price and most curr

>> NVIDIA's main competitive advantage over AMD and Intel is its software stack. AMD could release a 2x powerful GPGPU tomorrow for half the price and most current NVIDIA users wouldn't care because what good is that if you can't program it? I always wonder why it is so hard for AMD to develop a true competitor to CUDA, but for AMD hardware? Not try to solve GPGPU programming through open standards like OpenCL, just copy the concept of CUDA wholesale. They could still build it on top of LLVM etc and release the whole thing as open-source, but have the freedom to not have to deal with design-by-committee frameworks like OpenCL, so they can ensure focus on GPU programming and nothing else, and only on those platforms where the majority of the demand is. There is not much wrong with OpenCL, it's just not nearly as good/capable/easy-to-use as CUDA if all you are interested in is GPGPU programming. AMD is a big company with a lot of revenue, especially recently, so why would it be so hard to have a team working full-time on creating a direct CUDA knock-off ASAP?

QuixoticQuibit 6y ago
Two thoughts that come to mind: 1. AMD has struggled in the past and even today on being profitable with their GPUs. Makes it difficult to entice an army of knowledgeable devs without consistent cash flow. Granted, the tide is turning with their profitable CPU business and equity has shot up. 2. More importantly I think that, being the underdog, AMD has to have a cheaper, open solution to compete. Why would a customer choose to go with AMD’s nascent and proprietary stack over Nvidia’s well established and nearly ubiquitous proprietary stack? To be clear, I don’t think the problems are insurmountable. AMD won a couple HPC deals recently which should afford them the opportunity to build up their software and invest in a competitive hardware solution.

QuixoticQuibit 6y ago

Two thoughts that come to mind: 1. AMD has struggled in the past and even today on being profitable with their GPUs. Makes it difficult to entice an army of knowledgeable devs without consistent cash flow. Granted, the tide is turning with their profitable CPU business and equity has shot up. 2. More importantly I think that, being the underdog, AMD has to have a cheaper, open solution to compete. Why would a customer choose to go with AMD’s nascent and proprietary stack over Nvidia’s well established and nearly ubiquitous proprietary stack? To be clear, I don’t think the problems are insurmountable. AMD won a couple HPC deals recently which should afford them the opportunity to build up their software and invest in a competitive hardware solution.