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AMD has finite resources, like any company, and they’ve been focusing on CPU/datacenter dominance, which to me is both the safer bet and the more-lucrative bet.
by gymbeaux 4y ago
AMD has finite resources, like any company, and they’ve been focusing on CPU/datacenter dominance, which to me is both the safer bet and the more-lucrative bet. It wasn’t that long ago that AMD was on the brink of bankruptcy (~2016), so I appreciate that they’re not trying to divide their attention.
Their attempts at entering the ML space so far have been failures, and they are wise to hold off on really competing with Nvidia until they have the bandwidth to go “all in”. Consciously NOT trying to compete with Nvidia is the reason they didn’t go bankrupt. Their Radeon division minted from 2016-2020 because they focused on a niche Nvidia was neglecting- low-end/eSports (also leveraging their APU expertise to win PS4/Xbox contracts).
I think Nvidia will eventually lose its monopoly on ML/AI stuff as AMD, Apple, Qualcomm, Amazon and Google chip away at their “moat” with their own accelerators/NPUs. As mentioned though, the Nvidia Edge really comes from CUDA and other software, not the hardware. I doubt that Apple, Qualcomm, Amazon or Google will be interested in selling hardware direct to consumers. They want that sweet, sweet cloud money and/or competitive advantages in their phones (like photo processing). I don’t want to be paying AWS $100/mo for a GPU I could pay $600 once for. I do think AMD/RTG will go hard on Nvidia eventually, and it will not matter whether you have an AMD or Nvidia GPU for Tensorflow or spaCy or whatever else.
- cptskippy 4y ago> AMD has finite resources, like any company, and they’ve been focusing on CPU/datacenter dominance, which to me is both the safer bet and the more-lucrative bet. Cloud/datacenter based ML is a huge growth market. Having the same software work on a consumer GPUs and enterprise ML cards is one of Nvidia's competitive advantages.
- lostmsu 4y ago> AMD has finite resources, like any company, and they’ve been focusing on CPU/datacenter dominance Why can't large companies tap the investment market? E.g. they could sell bonds to fund it, borrow, etc.
- vosper 4y agoWell they definitely can, and do. They have made the decision that the reward isn't worth the risk. The idea (not aiming at you here, you didn't say this) that senior leadership at AMD is unaware of NVIDIA's lead in this space, and haven't repeatedly considered whether to invest in competing, is absurd. Likewise the idea that anyone outside of AMD understands better than AMD does what it would take in terms of investment _and opportunity cost_, is also absurd. Senior leadership at AMD isn't dumb. The fact that they're not doing something we want doesn't make them dumb, either. Again, not aiming at you with this little rant :)
- _carbyau_ 4y agoMaybe they are not dumb. But my next GPU will be nVidia because of their decision. Hence I am disappointed at not having a competitive rival. I may not know better. But I know what I like.
- BizarroLand 4y agoCan you guess why they would be putting hardware into the ML workspace field but not backing that up with equivalent software integration?
- lostmsu 4y agoThey may not be dumb, but they may have narrow vision (which I suppose is still dumb). Bad decisions in top tiers of the largest world companies are not unheard of.