4 ms·
CUDA is valuable and seen as a positive, even if it's vendor locked. It's battle tested. Engineers are familiar with it. Support is provided because it's all un
by dannyw 6y ago
CUDA is valuable and seen as a positive, even if it's vendor locked. It's battle tested. Engineers are familiar with it. Support is provided because it's all under one roof. Performance targets, roadmap timeframes, etc can be assured.
The same reason a big institutional consumer will happily pay Microsoft for Windows Enterprise, instead of demanding Microsoft rebuild Windows using open source technologies.
A supercomputer or DC cluster has a fixed lifespan and amortization period, if you can get something in a contract, with everything you want for a price you are happy with, why would you introduce risk to it by demanding open standards for no benefit?
- eecc 6y agoI’m not saying CUDA is not valuable. Heck, proprietary has a ton of value... see how Intel owes much of its position to its compiler (the FORTRAN one in particular) suite. Of course you don’t get to dominate a field to such an extent without some redeeming positive quality. What I’m arguing - or more appropriately, what I’m wondering - is why on Earth aren’t consumer consortiums not insisting on open-standard platforms. I get how you want to eek every drop of performance out of your tools without making it your only mission (that would be the research you’re using the tool for), but tying yourself to a single proprietary vendor defeats that purpose imho