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Yes, and all that CUDA software is effectively a moat. ROCm exists but after getting burned badly and repeatedly by OpenCL I'm disinclined to bet on it. At best

Yes, and all that CUDA software is effectively a moat. ROCm exists but after getting burned badly and repeatedly by OpenCL I'm disinclined to bet on it. At best, my winnings would be avoiding the green tax, at worst, I waste months like I did on OpenCL. That said, AMD used to be in a dire financial situation, whereas now they can afford to fix their shit and actually give chase. NVIDIA has turned the thumb screws very far and they can probably turn them considerably further before researchers jump, but far enough to justify 150x? I have doubts.

tombert 3y ago
The fact that I hadn't even heard of ROCm until reading your post indicates they got a long way to go to catch up. I've heard of OpenCL but I don't know anyone who actually uses it. I think Apple has something for GPGPU for Metal with performance shaders or compute shaders, but I also don't know of anyone using it for anything, at least not in ML/AI. It's a little irritating that Nvidia has effectively monopolized the GPGPU market so effectively; a part of me wonders if the best that that AMD could do is just make a CUDA-compatibility layer for AMD cards.
- jjoonathan 3y ago
  If you look at the ROCm API you'll see that it's pretty much exactly that, a CUDA compatibility layer, but an identical API means little if the functionality behind it has different quirks and caveats and that's harder to assess. I am rooting for ROCm but I can't justify betting on it myself and I suspect most of the industry is in the same boat. For now.
atonse 3y ago
My question is, is it feasible for AMD to build an ahead of time compiler that transparently translates CUDA instructions into whatever AMD could have, so things Just Work™? They'd be heavily incentivized to do so. Or even put hardware CUDA translators directly into the cards? Or am I misunderstanding CUDA? I think of it as something like OpenGL/DirectX.

tombert 3y ago

The fact that I hadn't even heard of ROCm until reading your post indicates they got a long way to go to catch up. I've heard of OpenCL but I don't know anyone who actually uses it. I think Apple has something for GPGPU for Metal with performance shaders or compute shaders, but I also don't know of anyone using it for anything, at least not in ML/AI. It's a little irritating that Nvidia has effectively monopolized the GPGPU market so effectively; a part of me wonders if the best that that AMD could do is just make a CUDA-compatibility layer for AMD cards.

jjoonathan 3y ago
If you look at the ROCm API you'll see that it's pretty much exactly that, a CUDA compatibility layer, but an identical API means little if the functionality behind it has different quirks and caveats and that's harder to assess. I am rooting for ROCm but I can't justify betting on it myself and I suspect most of the industry is in the same boat. For now.

atonse 3y ago

My question is, is it feasible for AMD to build an ahead of time compiler that transparently translates CUDA instructions into whatever AMD could have, so things Just Work™? They'd be heavily incentivized to do so. Or even put hardware CUDA translators directly into the cards? Or am I misunderstanding CUDA? I think of it as something like OpenGL/DirectX.