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I don't think AMD will be able to compete with NVidia in the neat future because many scientists developing core libraries in the ML/AI space, are getting free

I don't think AMD will be able to compete with NVidia in the neat future because many scientists developing core libraries in the ML/AI space, are getting free or heavily discounted GPUs from NVidia. If they had to buy GPU's from their own or grant money, and pay the same price as regular consumers, the situation might be a different one. IMHO the way NVidia is infiltrating academics and academia, is highly unethical.

dagw 3y ago
There is an also a lot of bad blood towards AMD in the space. I know several people who spent a lot of time trying to support both Nvidia and AMD GPUs back in the early days only to have AMD stop supporting APIs and making their code useless. Their CUDA code on the other hand just kept working on generation after generation of new Nvidia cards.
DeathArrow 3y ago
Nothing stops AMD to give free cards to developers.
elAhmo 3y ago
It is important to have in mind that Nvidia started investing resources and time in this 10+ years ago, CUDA was introduced in 2007, where none of the current ML/AI flows even existed. And they continued waiting, betting the company a number of times that the market will "show up" for the products they have built. In the past few years that has happened, as reflected on the stock price. Other players are basically a decade behind them and with all of the current hype and AI/ML workflows becoming mainstream, I think it is next to impossible for anyone to catch up.
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
  They built it for bit-coin mining, not some super long term plan for ML/AI.
- qeternity 3y ago
  > Other players are basically a decade behind them I disagree. NVDA aren't in the position they are because they had to work 10 years to get there. They're in that position because it took the market that long to develop, and they were there the whole time. But the main factor is demand. You can't rush that, no matter how early you start. And second mover advantage is a real thing. CUDA is a double edged sword. Everyone has an incentive to break NVDA's dominance, and ultimately their moat will become commoditized especially has dominant architectures like Transformers drive the vast majority of demand. People will simply optimize for that. Can AMD catch up to them quickly on the training / R&D side? Doubtful. Can AMD catch up or even surpass them on the inference side? Absolutely.
grubbs 3y ago
I'm not sure how accurate this is. I work at a university supporting researchers doing all the typical "AI" research. LLMs, CV, etc. All NVIDIA discounts is the A5000 card for EDU. Maybe one other card they aren't interested in (L40?). Most are buying A6000 and up at consumer prices from companies like Exxact and Supermicro. I don't think I've seen a single researcher get a free GPU since the V100 era. (DGX-1) system.
- paulmd 3y ago
  I think this is indeed more of a 2009-2014 thing, and even then it was more "we give you a dozen K40s for your cluster" than "we give you, an individual researcher, a GPU". The stories I've heard of individual researchers asking for free stuff always ended in "no". I don't see anything unethical about seeding universities (as an organization) with hardware tbh. That's just... grants. Even grants often come in the form of "we fund someone who's doing research on something that's related to us/using our hardware+software".

dagw 3y ago

There is an also a lot of bad blood towards AMD in the space. I know several people who spent a lot of time trying to support both Nvidia and AMD GPUs back in the early days only to have AMD stop supporting APIs and making their code useless. Their CUDA code on the other hand just kept working on generation after generation of new Nvidia cards.

DeathArrow 3y ago

Nothing stops AMD to give free cards to developers.

elAhmo 3y ago

It is important to have in mind that Nvidia started investing resources and time in this 10+ years ago, CUDA was introduced in 2007, where none of the current ML/AI flows even existed. And they continued waiting, betting the company a number of times that the market will "show up" for the products they have built. In the past few years that has happened, as reflected on the stock price. Other players are basically a decade behind them and with all of the current hype and AI/ML workflows becoming mainstream, I think it is next to impossible for anyone to catch up.

PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
They built it for bit-coin mining, not some super long term plan for ML/AI.
qeternity 3y ago
> Other players are basically a decade behind them I disagree. NVDA aren't in the position they are because they had to work 10 years to get there. They're in that position because it took the market that long to develop, and they were there the whole time. But the main factor is demand. You can't rush that, no matter how early you start. And second mover advantage is a real thing. CUDA is a double edged sword. Everyone has an incentive to break NVDA's dominance, and ultimately their moat will become commoditized especially has dominant architectures like Transformers drive the vast majority of demand. People will simply optimize for that. Can AMD catch up to them quickly on the training / R&D side? Doubtful. Can AMD catch up or even surpass them on the inference side? Absolutely.

grubbs 3y ago

I'm not sure how accurate this is. I work at a university supporting researchers doing all the typical "AI" research. LLMs, CV, etc. All NVIDIA discounts is the A5000 card for EDU. Maybe one other card they aren't interested in (L40?). Most are buying A6000 and up at consumer prices from companies like Exxact and Supermicro. I don't think I've seen a single researcher get a free GPU since the V100 era. (DGX-1) system.

paulmd 3y ago
I think this is indeed more of a 2009-2014 thing, and even then it was more "we give you a dozen K40s for your cluster" than "we give you, an individual researcher, a GPU". The stories I've heard of individual researchers asking for free stuff always ended in "no". I don't see anything unethical about seeding universities (as an organization) with hardware tbh. That's just... grants. Even grants often come in the form of "we fund someone who's doing research on something that's related to us/using our hardware+software".