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I've been working in this space for ~10 years at this point and have been attempting ROCm since the Vega days (pretty much since initial releases of ROCm ~six y

I've been working in this space for ~10 years at this point and have been attempting ROCm since the Vega days (pretty much since initial releases of ROCm ~six years ago). "Hello world" in torch? On a new install/card/config/even upgrade with a bit of fiddling I can get there (I have it more-or-less down at this point). Actually using something in a real world use case? Hours, days, or give up. Often the third scenario where I end up going back to CUDA because I just need to get something done. Messing around with different driver versions, docker containers, ROCm versions, obscure environment variables, weird random cherry picks/patches and hacks from spelunking a bunch of GH repos/discussions/PRs/blog posts/etc. Feels like it never ends. I talk about it quite a bit and I keep buying AMD hardware and putting time into this because I'm rooting for AMD. However, consider the CEO of Nvidia saying 30% of their cost/spend is on software. He gets it. I'm pretty convinced at this point that AMD just doesn't have software in their DNA, with even die-hard "Team Red" Windows gaming users frequently complaining about the quality of drivers. Drivers. For gaming. On Windows. Enter >80% Nvidia market share in that market and >90% market share in ML. They just don't get it and I'm pretty sure they never will. I expect Intel, Apple, and even new entrants in the field will be the ones to offer viable alternatives to the Nvidia/CUDA monopoly.

ahartmetz 3y ago
For OpenGL and Vulkan drivers on Linux, AMD sort of fell into a good software culture by accident by hiring a bunch of good people that brought the Linux (kernel) / Xorg / Mesa culture with them. I am pretty happy with the results there! Not contradicting you about the other areas, although I do have some hope because things (well... mostly hardware) have already improved in the GPU department under Lisa Su.
- kkielhofner 3y ago
  Su has been CEO of AMD for nearly 10 years. Does not contribute to my confidence. Of course with the AI goldrush they're paying a lot of lip-service to ROCm (pumping stock price?) but a couple of examples: 1) They just added official support to ROCm for the top-end consumer card they released over a year ago. Meanwhile in CUDA land Nvidia back-ported support to CUDA 11.8 well before Ada Lovelace/Hopper even launched. Worked with everything out there day of launch. Even newest CUDA 12 and their drivers support anything with Nvidia stamped on it from the past 6-7 years. Literally everything. 2) Just check their repos, Docker Hub, etc. It's embarrassing for them. They used Python 3.10 for ROCm 5.7 because its basically the bare-minimum/standard for any broader AI, ML, etc project. Oh neat, they released ROCm 6 to support their year old ~ $1000 card! Python 3.9? Ubuntu 20.04? What the hell? Pytorch "hello world" usable but almost nothing else even runs. The further you dig the more clownish it gets.
hackerlight 3y ago
It's a shame because the $ to raster performance ratio is a lot better for AMD. Yet their market share is still so low. You would imagine their execs have to understand the reasons why the market isn't buying AMD? But they still appear to be neglecting the software side. Still no indication of a ML based upscaler to compete with DLSS, for example. And it's not like they lack the funds to throw at this problem.
- jhasse 3y ago
  AMD has a "ML based" upscaler called FSR. What exactly do you mean by "ML based" though? Note that since DLSS 2.0 Nvidia no longer uses a per-game trained neural network.
  - hackerlight 3y ago
    I mean neural net-based. FSR uses traditional algorithms. It's a lot worse than DLSS, although how much worse varies from game to game.
    - jhasse 3y ago
      > It's a lot worse than DLSS, although how much worse varies from game to game. Source? According to this https://www.custompc.com/amd-fsr-2-vs-nvidia-dlss-2-comparison https://www.custompc.com/amd-fsr-2-vs-nvidia-dlss-2-comparis... it's only a bit worse: "However, the results were closer than this might suggest, with both upscaling modes often doing a decent job and delivering very similar levels of image quality. It was just the final 5% where DLSS 2 was that bit better."
      - hackerlight 3y ago
        Keep in mind that there's no objective way to determine how much worse FSR is. If FSR has slight shimmering and DLSS does not, is it "slightly worse" or "much worse"? I think that comes down to one's tolerance for shimmering artefacts, which may vary depending on whether you're playing for 5 minutes in order to compare, or whether you're playing for hours/days. The social sentiment on Reddit r/AMD and elsewhere seems to be that FSR is noticeably worse, and that aligns with my personal experience.

ahartmetz 3y ago

For OpenGL and Vulkan drivers on Linux, AMD sort of fell into a good software culture by accident by hiring a bunch of good people that brought the Linux (kernel) / Xorg / Mesa culture with them. I am pretty happy with the results there! Not contradicting you about the other areas, although I do have some hope because things (well... mostly hardware) have already improved in the GPU department under Lisa Su.

kkielhofner 3y ago
Su has been CEO of AMD for nearly 10 years. Does not contribute to my confidence. Of course with the AI goldrush they're paying a lot of lip-service to ROCm (pumping stock price?) but a couple of examples: 1) They just added official support to ROCm for the top-end consumer card they released over a year ago. Meanwhile in CUDA land Nvidia back-ported support to CUDA 11.8 well before Ada Lovelace/Hopper even launched. Worked with everything out there day of launch. Even newest CUDA 12 and their drivers support anything with Nvidia stamped on it from the past 6-7 years. Literally everything. 2) Just check their repos, Docker Hub, etc. It's embarrassing for them. They used Python 3.10 for ROCm 5.7 because its basically the bare-minimum/standard for any broader AI, ML, etc project. Oh neat, they released ROCm 6 to support their year old ~ $1000 card! Python 3.9? Ubuntu 20.04? What the hell? Pytorch "hello world" usable but almost nothing else even runs. The further you dig the more clownish it gets.

hackerlight 3y ago

It's a shame because the $ to raster performance ratio is a lot better for AMD. Yet their market share is still so low. You would imagine their execs have to understand the reasons why the market isn't buying AMD? But they still appear to be neglecting the software side. Still no indication of a ML based upscaler to compete with DLSS, for example. And it's not like they lack the funds to throw at this problem.

jhasse 3y ago
AMD has a "ML based" upscaler called FSR. What exactly do you mean by "ML based" though? Note that since DLSS 2.0 Nvidia no longer uses a per-game trained neural network.
- hackerlight 3y ago
  I mean neural net-based. FSR uses traditional algorithms. It's a lot worse than DLSS, although how much worse varies from game to game.
  - jhasse 3y ago
    > It's a lot worse than DLSS, although how much worse varies from game to game. Source? According to this https://www.custompc.com/amd-fsr-2-vs-nvidia-dlss-2-comparison https://www.custompc.com/amd-fsr-2-vs-nvidia-dlss-2-comparis... it's only a bit worse: "However, the results were closer than this might suggest, with both upscaling modes often doing a decent job and delivering very similar levels of image quality. It was just the final 5% where DLSS 2 was that bit better."
    - hackerlight 3y ago
      Keep in mind that there's no objective way to determine how much worse FSR is. If FSR has slight shimmering and DLSS does not, is it "slightly worse" or "much worse"? I think that comes down to one's tolerance for shimmering artefacts, which may vary depending on whether you're playing for 5 minutes in order to compare, or whether you're playing for hours/days. The social sentiment on Reddit r/AMD and elsewhere seems to be that FSR is noticeably worse, and that aligns with my personal experience.