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APIs aren't subject to copyright. So unless CUDA is more than an API they're just going to make some lawyers rich and waste everyone's time.

jsheard 3y ago
The API may not be copyrightable, but the widely-used official libraries (cuDNN, cuBLAS, OptiX, etc) are, so in practice I think they can at least say that anything which uses those libraries can't be run on competitors hardware.
- zozbot234 3y ago
  AIUI, these libraries are generally implemented as shared objects that the resulting binary has to link to. So it should be quite possible to reimplement the interface that they expose, moreover something like ROCM has to do that anyway in order to compile HIP source code from scratch. Looks like that's what https://github.com/ROCm/hipDNN/ https://github.com/ROCm/hipDNN/ does.
  - jsheard 3y ago
    Possible, yes, but reimplementing the CUDA runtime and the official libraries and getting them up to par with the originals is a much bigger task than just doing the former and running Nvidias libraries in it. AMD did try to do a complete reimplementation of cuDNN with hipDNN but "last commit 5 years ago" doesn't inspire much confidence in it being competitive with cuDNN proper.
    - imtringued 3y ago
      They don't have any tensor cores so there is not much reason for them to work on this.
laweijfmvo 3y ago
Making lawyers rich to waste time is how super rich companies stifle competition...
- samus 3y ago
  That works against small fishes, but it would be a different story if AMD or Intel take part.
  - laweijfmvo 3y ago
    Then it wastes double the time, and makes double the lawyers rich :D
    - samus 3y ago
      It at least increases the amount of precedence regarding the subject. That would eventually decrease the time such trials take.
colechristensen 3y ago
CUDA (and plenty of things lumped in with it that one would think of as CUDA) are not simply an API. Somewhere in between a programming language and a low level operating system.
bitwize 3y ago
Per the Federal Circuit, APIs are subject to copyright. The Supreme Court just ruled that Google's use of APIs was fair use.
- ddtaylor 3y ago
  You mean the Oracle vs Google case right?

jsheard 3y ago

The API may not be copyrightable, but the widely-used official libraries (cuDNN, cuBLAS, OptiX, etc) are, so in practice I think they can at least say that anything which uses those libraries can't be run on competitors hardware.

zozbot234 3y ago
AIUI, these libraries are generally implemented as shared objects that the resulting binary has to link to. So it should be quite possible to reimplement the interface that they expose, moreover something like ROCM has to do that anyway in order to compile HIP source code from scratch. Looks like that's what https://github.com/ROCm/hipDNN/ https://github.com/ROCm/hipDNN/ does.
- jsheard 3y ago
  Possible, yes, but reimplementing the CUDA runtime and the official libraries and getting them up to par with the originals is a much bigger task than just doing the former and running Nvidias libraries in it. AMD did try to do a complete reimplementation of cuDNN with hipDNN but "last commit 5 years ago" doesn't inspire much confidence in it being competitive with cuDNN proper.
  - imtringued 3y ago
    They don't have any tensor cores so there is not much reason for them to work on this.

laweijfmvo 3y ago

Making lawyers rich to waste time is how super rich companies stifle competition...

samus 3y ago
That works against small fishes, but it would be a different story if AMD or Intel take part.
- laweijfmvo 3y ago
  Then it wastes double the time, and makes double the lawyers rich :D
  - samus 3y ago
    It at least increases the amount of precedence regarding the subject. That would eventually decrease the time such trials take.

colechristensen 3y ago

CUDA (and plenty of things lumped in with it that one would think of as CUDA) are not simply an API. Somewhere in between a programming language and a low level operating system.

bitwize 3y ago

Per the Federal Circuit, APIs are subject to copyright. The Supreme Court just ruled that Google's use of APIs was fair use.

ddtaylor 3y ago
You mean the Oracle vs Google case right?