7 ms·

I know it's not ideal, but I am really rooting for Intel's effort for graphics. From launch nearly a year ago to today, the driver team has been knocking out dr

I know it's not ideal, but I am really rooting for Intel's effort for graphics. From launch nearly a year ago to today, the driver team has been knocking out driver issues and slowly but surely trying to achieve parity with AMD and Nvidia. From what I hear, the team really going for broke on trying to get ML workloads fully supported. When Intel shipped a 16GB card at that price point, you knew that they were really trying, it would be cool if Battlemage (the next gen.) shipped with 32GB for larger models.

Conscat 3y ago
Do you have any thoughts on how OneAPI compares to the Nsight tools?
sergiotapia 3y ago
If anything to get a new competitor to shake things up. It's not good to have a literal family duopoly. Both CEOs are blood relatives.
- speakspokespok 3y ago
  They're distant cousins. Both from the same city, both moved to the US and crushed it, but both families were large and then had lots of kids.
  - newqer 3y ago
    This can be molded into a generational power grab thriller. Think Godfather trilogy, but both Su and Huang are sort of Sith lords. The family started with nothing, multiplied and played the strategic long game to conquer the AI marked to enable Skynet. But Intel are the Jedi hacker good guys.
    - andrewstuart 3y ago
      Yes. This is exactly right.
    - bee_rider 3y ago
      It can be, as long as you are willing to take a slight detour from reality.
- andrewstuart 3y ago
  Lisa Su is CEO not owner of AMD. It's a public company. if you're implying she's not competing with Nvidia cause it's all in the family, well..... that's kinda out there.
meragrin_ 3y ago
> From what I hear, the team really going for broke on trying to get ML workloads fully supported. I've been waiting on AMD to do that. Embarrassingly, it looks like Intel will get there faster than AMD.
- RF_Savage 3y ago
  Maybe Intel has less baggage and can target what they know people actually use?
  - vbezhenar 3y ago
    My opinion is that Intel has excellent software culture compared to other hardware companies. It might be one reason.
    - Dalewyn 3y ago
      I'm a loyal Intel customer because their stuff is, in general, straight up less janky and more practically reliable than AMD's stuff. I agree that Intel knows how to do software in ways that AMD simply doesn't.
- scrlk 3y ago
  I think you'll be in for Another Massive Disappointment (AMD). The software/driver woes in their graphics division have been going on for years at this point with no clear path forward, just some statements about how they plan to fix it in the future (e.g. handling the geohot AMD rant back in June). It's not just ML either - on the gaming side, some people swallow the Nvidia price premium for the better drivers.
  - yaseer 3y ago
    Agreed, Nvidia's dominance is annoying. I made irrational purchasing decisions in the past to support the underdog, likening it to using Firefox. Unfortunately with AMD you just get a worse product. This space sorely needs more competition.
fransje26 3y ago
> trying to achieve parity with AMD and Nvidia Interesting to put AMD and Nvidia at the same level. From experience developing GPGPU applications they are not even close..
- agloe_dreams 3y ago
  I mean, if Nvidia’s GPGPU performance was like 100 “units” and AMD’s was like 40 units….Intel was at 1 Unit. The gap was far larger.
izacus 3y ago
But if Intel "wins", it means yet another instance of corporate consolidation, where a majority market holder of one markets (CPUs) destroys a whole different market (GPUs) by integrating and price dumping their products into the majority/monopoly market. It'll be really hard to compete for AMD Radeon cards and nVidia itself against Intel if they aggresively price dump their GPUs and use typical megacorporation tactics to push out and destroy competition. Why would you want that? Why not root for an independent GPU company? Where does this love for megaconglomerates consolidating whole markets come from?
- ajross 3y ago
  > It'll be really hard to compete for AMD Radeon cards and nVidia itself against Intel if they aggresively price dump their GPUs and use typical megacorporation tactics to push out and destroy competition. AMD's market cap has been higher than Intel's for the last year, and NVIDIA is more than seven times higher. Apple is twice again as big. Surely this logic goes the other way. It's Intel and AMD and ARM Ltd. that are at the mercy of the big players dumping their way to dominance. But obviously that's not happening. The competitive landscape in this industry is just fine. More products means more innovation and lower prices and bigger markets. That's just capitalism 101, really. > Where does this love for megaconglomerates consolidating whole markets come from? Nowhere, because that's just a strawman. I'm sure people here would love to see a GPU startup launch a product. But we're talking about Arc in this thread, and that seems like a good product too.
  - izacus 3y ago
    Why do you think market cap has non-tangential relevancy here?
    - Eisenstein 3y ago
      It is a common metric for the power of a corporation, since it is the amount of money their stock is worth in total. What do you propose instead?
    - ajross 3y ago
cubefox 3y ago
It's a mystery to me why graphics cards have hardwired RAM. For CPUs/motherboards RAM has been extensible for decades.
- alargemoose 3y ago
  Yhe main reason is speed. For example DDR5 has a transfer rate of about 50GB/s. The GDDR6X used in GPUs has a transfer rate of about 1TB/s. Nvidia just announced H200 AI processors have HBM3e memory that they report can go as fast at 10TB/s.
- ElectricalUnion 3y ago
  Speed/signaling issues. To me is a mystery that CPUs/motherboards still have extensible RAM, integrated RAM (if you don't skimp and go for cheap RAM) can be very fast - for example the Steam Deck has quad-channel 5500 MT/s LPDDR5, very console-like.
  - muttled 3y ago
    What is it that make extensible RAM inherently slower? Is it the connectors raised off the boards, adding physical distance to the traces that's the issue?
    - ElectricalUnion 3y ago
      The mechanical connector layout forces sub-optimal signalling paths. You're forced to make everything slower to make things consistent. That being said, a more optimized connector, board layout and form factor could make large-capacity, lower-latency modules possible. Not sure for example if there is anything out there besides the Dell proposed CAMM form factor, and I don't remember that one being specifically promoted as "faster", mostly "smaller".

Conscat 3y ago

Do you have any thoughts on how OneAPI compares to the Nsight tools?

sergiotapia 3y ago

If anything to get a new competitor to shake things up. It's not good to have a literal family duopoly. Both CEOs are blood relatives.

speakspokespok 3y ago
They're distant cousins. Both from the same city, both moved to the US and crushed it, but both families were large and then had lots of kids.
- newqer 3y ago
  This can be molded into a generational power grab thriller. Think Godfather trilogy, but both Su and Huang are sort of Sith lords. The family started with nothing, multiplied and played the strategic long game to conquer the AI marked to enable Skynet. But Intel are the Jedi hacker good guys.
  - andrewstuart 3y ago
    Yes. This is exactly right.
  - bee_rider 3y ago
    It can be, as long as you are willing to take a slight detour from reality.
andrewstuart 3y ago
Lisa Su is CEO not owner of AMD. It's a public company. if you're implying she's not competing with Nvidia cause it's all in the family, well..... that's kinda out there.

meragrin_ 3y ago

> From what I hear, the team really going for broke on trying to get ML workloads fully supported. I've been waiting on AMD to do that. Embarrassingly, it looks like Intel will get there faster than AMD.

RF_Savage 3y ago
Maybe Intel has less baggage and can target what they know people actually use?
- vbezhenar 3y ago
  My opinion is that Intel has excellent software culture compared to other hardware companies. It might be one reason.
  - Dalewyn 3y ago
    I'm a loyal Intel customer because their stuff is, in general, straight up less janky and more practically reliable than AMD's stuff. I agree that Intel knows how to do software in ways that AMD simply doesn't.
scrlk 3y ago
I think you'll be in for Another Massive Disappointment (AMD). The software/driver woes in their graphics division have been going on for years at this point with no clear path forward, just some statements about how they plan to fix it in the future (e.g. handling the geohot AMD rant back in June). It's not just ML either - on the gaming side, some people swallow the Nvidia price premium for the better drivers.
- yaseer 3y ago
  Agreed, Nvidia's dominance is annoying. I made irrational purchasing decisions in the past to support the underdog, likening it to using Firefox. Unfortunately with AMD you just get a worse product. This space sorely needs more competition.

fransje26 3y ago

> trying to achieve parity with AMD and Nvidia Interesting to put AMD and Nvidia at the same level. From experience developing GPGPU applications they are not even close..

agloe_dreams 3y ago
I mean, if Nvidia’s GPGPU performance was like 100 “units” and AMD’s was like 40 units….Intel was at 1 Unit. The gap was far larger.

izacus 3y ago

But if Intel "wins", it means yet another instance of corporate consolidation, where a majority market holder of one markets (CPUs) destroys a whole different market (GPUs) by integrating and price dumping their products into the majority/monopoly market. It'll be really hard to compete for AMD Radeon cards and nVidia itself against Intel if they aggresively price dump their GPUs and use typical megacorporation tactics to push out and destroy competition. Why would you want that? Why not root for an independent GPU company? Where does this love for megaconglomerates consolidating whole markets come from?

ajross 3y ago
> It'll be really hard to compete for AMD Radeon cards and nVidia itself against Intel if they aggresively price dump their GPUs and use typical megacorporation tactics to push out and destroy competition. AMD's market cap has been higher than Intel's for the last year, and NVIDIA is more than seven times higher. Apple is twice again as big. Surely this logic goes the other way. It's Intel and AMD and ARM Ltd. that are at the mercy of the big players dumping their way to dominance. But obviously that's not happening. The competitive landscape in this industry is just fine. More products means more innovation and lower prices and bigger markets. That's just capitalism 101, really. > Where does this love for megaconglomerates consolidating whole markets come from? Nowhere, because that's just a strawman. I'm sure people here would love to see a GPU startup launch a product. But we're talking about Arc in this thread, and that seems like a good product too.
- izacus 3y ago
  Why do you think market cap has non-tangential relevancy here?
  - Eisenstein 3y ago
    It is a common metric for the power of a corporation, since it is the amount of money their stock is worth in total. What do you propose instead?
  - ajross 3y ago

cubefox 3y ago

It's a mystery to me why graphics cards have hardwired RAM. For CPUs/motherboards RAM has been extensible for decades.

alargemoose 3y ago
Yhe main reason is speed. For example DDR5 has a transfer rate of about 50GB/s. The GDDR6X used in GPUs has a transfer rate of about 1TB/s. Nvidia just announced H200 AI processors have HBM3e memory that they report can go as fast at 10TB/s.
ElectricalUnion 3y ago
Speed/signaling issues. To me is a mystery that CPUs/motherboards still have extensible RAM, integrated RAM (if you don't skimp and go for cheap RAM) can be very fast - for example the Steam Deck has quad-channel 5500 MT/s LPDDR5, very console-like.
- muttled 3y ago
  What is it that make extensible RAM inherently slower? Is it the connectors raised off the boards, adding physical distance to the traces that's the issue?
  - ElectricalUnion 3y ago
    The mechanical connector layout forces sub-optimal signalling paths. You're forced to make everything slower to make things consistent. That being said, a more optimized connector, board layout and form factor could make large-capacity, lower-latency modules possible. Not sure for example if there is anything out there besides the Dell proposed CAMM form factor, and I don't remember that one being specifically promoted as "faster", mostly "smaller".