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To beat Nvidia, you have to solve software. The rest is negotiable - weaker hardware can still be attractive with more competitive pricing or efficiency. Nvidi
by smoldesu 3y ago
To beat Nvidia, you have to solve software. The rest is negotiable - weaker hardware can still be attractive with more competitive pricing or efficiency.
Nvidia is definitely on top of their game right now, but only because they've gone all-in betting on ecosystem fragmentation (and keep getting proven right). Sufficient software investment could unseat them handily.
- p1esk 3y agoNvidia is definitely on top of their game right now Nvidia has been on top of their game since at least 2012, when I shopped for ML hardware for the first time. AMD had plenty of time to “solve software” - what happened?
- smoldesu 3y ago> what happened? Key stakeholders in OpenCL started pulling out. The upcoming Khronos spec didn't have the entire industry on board, and both Microsoft and Apple pushed vendor-controlled GPU runtimes on consumer hardware. AMD didn't have the same support they did pre-2010, so a lot of their efforts fell apart. Again, Nvidia's key is that they thrive in this chaos. They want people to make half-assed Metal Performance Shaders and DirectML programs, because it makes their ecosystem seem so strong and intersectional by comparison. If Intel invests hard enough in the right software, that's half of the problem solved.