What you described would have been a fine strategy. That's not AMD's strategy. To implement your strategy, you either don't ship mass market GPGPU cards, or yo

What you described would have been a fine strategy. That's not AMD's strategy. To implement your strategy, you either don't ship mass market GPGPU cards, or you stick a big "beta / prototype" label on ROCm and make sure people use it only caveat emptor. I've bought plenty of half-baked things because I wanted to tinker with them or help a company along. AMD cards are very competitive for gaming too, which really brings volume much more so than GPGPU, so there's no reason to oversell. AMD's problem is that they're claiming these things work, and they don't. I was fortunate to learn that lesson spending a few hundred bucks. I know people who learned that lesson spending thousands. I wouldn't want to figure out on a data center or a supercomputer whether or not the same lesson applies. If a company is willing to cheaply torch relationships as it figures out a strategy, ship half-baked ill-thought-out software, and make bold, unsubstantiated claims, I'll pick another vendor if at all competitive. AMD is losing mind share, credibility, and branding. That will hurt if they ever have a product ready for the broader market, and it will also hurt (although not as much) with the strategy you described.