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Is it weird how the comments here are blaming AMD and not Nvidia? Sure, the obvious argument is that Nvidia has no practical motivation to build an open platfor

Is it weird how the comments here are blaming AMD and not Nvidia? Sure, the obvious argument is that Nvidia has no practical motivation to build an open platform. But there are counterexamples that suggest otherwise (Android). And there is a compelling argument that long term, their proprietary firmware layer will become an insufficient moat to their hardware dominance. Who’s the root cause? The company with the dominant platform that refuses to open it up, or the competitor who can’t catch up because they’re running so far behind? Even if AMD made their own version of CUDA that was better in every way, it still wouldn’t gain adoption because CUDA has become the standard. No matter what they do, they’ll need to have a compatibility layer. And in that case maybe it makes sense for them to invest in the best one that emerges from the community.

lmm 2y ago
> Is it weird how the comments here are blaming AMD and not Nvidia? Nvidia has put in the legwork and are reaping the rewards. They've worked closely with the people who are actually using their stuff, funding development and giving loads of support to researchers, teachers and so on, for probably a decade now. Why should they give all that away? > But there are counterexamples that suggest otherwise (Android). How is Android a counterexample? Google makes no money off of it, nor does anyone else. Google keeps Android open so that Apple can't move everyone onto their ad platform, so it's worth it for them as a strategic move, but Nvidia has no such motive. > Even if AMD made their own version of CUDA that was better in every way, it still wouldn’t gain adoption because CUDA has become the standard. Maybe. But again, that's because NVidia has been putting in the work to make something better for a decade or more. The best time for AMD to start actually trying was 10 years ago; the second-best time is today.
- Zambyte 2y ago
  > Google makes no money off of it, nor does anyone else Google makes no money off of Android? That seems like a really weird claim to make. Do you really think Google would be anywhere near as valuable of a company if iOS had all of the market share that the data vacuum that is Android has? I can't imagine that being the case. Google makes a boatload off of Android, just like AMD would if they supported open GPGPU efforts aggressively.
  - michaelt 2y ago
    Google gave away the software platform - Android - to hardware vendors for free, vendors compete making the hardware into cheap, low-margin commodity items, and google makes boatloads of money from ads, tracking and the app store. nvidia could give away the software platform - CUDA - to hardware vendors for free, making the hardware into cheap, low-margin commodity items. But how would they make boatloads of money when there's nowhere to put ads, tracking or an app store?
  - rjurney 2y ago
    Android is a complement to Google's business, which is when open source works. What would be the complement worth $1 Trillion to NVIDIA to build a truly open platform? There isn't one. That was his point.
    - chatmasta 2y ago
      There’s an entire derivative industry of GPUs, namely GenAI and LLM providers, that could be the “complement” to an open GPU platform. The exact design and interface between such a complement and platform is yet undefined, but I’m sure there are creative approaches to this problem.
      - rjurney 2y ago
        And NVIDIA is playing in that game too. Why would they not play in higher level services as well? They already publish the source to their entire software stack. A comparison to Android is completely useless. Google is a multi-sided platform that does lots of things for free for some people (web users, Android users) so it can charge other people for their data (ad buyers). That isn't the chip business whatsoever. The original comment only makes sense if you know nothing about their respective business models.
        chatmasta 2y ago
        Yes, so when the ground inevitably shifts below their feet (it might happen years from now, but it will happen – open platforms always emerge and eventually proliferate), wouldn’t it be better for them to own that platform? On the other hand, they could always wait for the most viable threat to emerge and then pay a few billion dollars to acquire it and own its direction. Google didn’t invent Android, after all… > Google is a multi-sided platform that does lots of things for free for some people… That isn't the chip business whatsoever. This is a reductionist differentiation that overlooks the similarities between the platforms of “mobile” and “GPU” (and also mischaracterizes the business model of Google, who does in fact make money directly from Android sales, and even moved all the way down the stack to selling hardware). In fact there is even a potentially direct analogy between the two platforms: LLM is the top of the stack with GPU on the bottom, just like Advertising is the top of the stack with Mobile on the bottom. Yes, Google’s top level money printer is advertising, and everything they do (including Android) is about controlling the maximum number of layers below that money printer. But that doesn’t mean there is no benefit to Nvidia doing the same. They might approach it differently, since they currently own the bottom layer whereas Google started from the top layer. But the end result of controlling the whole stack will lead to the same benefits. And you even admit in your comment that Nvidia is investing in these higher levels. My argument is that they are jeopardizing the longevity of these high-level investments due to their reluctance to invest in an open platform at the bottom layer (not even the bottom, but one level above their hardware). This will leave them vulnerable to encroachment by a player that comes from a higher level, like OpenAI for example, who gets to define the open platform before Nvidia ever has a chance to own it.
roenxi 2y ago
> Is it weird how the comments here are blaming AMD and not Nvidia? Not even a little bit. It simply isn't Nvidia's job to provide competitive alternatives to Nvidia. Competing is something AMD must take responsibility for. The only reason CUDA is such a big talking point is because AMD tripped over their own feet supporting accelerated BLAS on AMD GPUs. Realistically it probably is hard to implement (AMD have a lot of competent people on staff) but Nvidia hasn't done anything unfair apart from execute so well that they make all the alternatives look bad.
- jkmcf 2y ago
  I agree with you, but replace NVIDIA with Apple. What would the EU say?
  - LtWorf 2y ago
    I don't think nvidia bans anyone from running code on their devices.
    - padthai 2y ago
      They do from time to time: https://wirelesswire.jp/2017/12/62708/ https://wirelesswire.jp/2017/12/62708/
      - kbolino 2y ago
        This seems to be more about certain devices (consumer-grade GPUs) in certain settings (data centers), though I do question how enforceable it actually is. My guess is that it can only apply when you try to get discounts from bulk-ordering GPUs. Also, was there any followup to this story? It seems a bit unnecessary because nVidia has already neutered consumer cards for many/most data center purposes by not using ECC and by providing so few FP64 units that double precision FLOPS is barely better than CPU SIMD.
        paulmd 2y ago
nemothekid 2y ago
>Is it weird how the comments here are blaming AMD and not Nvidia? It's not. Even as it is, I do not trust HIP or RocM to be a viable alternative to Cuda. George Hotz did plenty of work trying to port various ML architectures to AMD and was met with countless driver bugs. The problem isn't nvidia won't build an open platform - the problem is AMD won't invest in a competitive platform. 99% of ML engineers do not write CUDA. For the vast majority of workloads, there are probably 20 engineers at Meta who write the Cuda backend for Pytorch that every other engineer uses. Meta could hire another 20 engineers to support whatever AMD has (they did, and it's not as robust as CUDA). Even if CUDA was open - do you expect nvidia to also write drivers for AMD? I don't believe 3rd parties will get anywhere writing "compatibility layers" because AMD's own GPU aren't optimized or tested for CUDA-like workloads.
pjmlp 2y ago
Khrons, AMD and Intel have had 15 years to make something out of OpenCL that could rival CUDA. Instead they managed 15 years of disappointment, in a standard stuck in C99, that adopted C++ and a polyglot bytecode too late to matter, never produced an ecosystem of IDE tooling and GPU libraries. Naturally CUDA became the standard, when NVIDIA provided what the GPU community cared about.
whywhywhywhy 2y ago
>Is it weird how the comments here are blaming AMD and not Nvidia? Because it IS AMD/Apple/etcs fault for the position they're in right now. CUDA showed where the world was heading and where the gains in compute would be made well over a decade ago now. They even had OpenCL, didn't put the right amount of effort into it, all the talent found CUDA easier to work with so built there. Then what did AMD, Apple do? Double down and try and make something better and compete? Nah they fragmented and went their own way, AMD with what feels like a fraction of the effort even Apple put in. From the actions of the other teams in the game it's not hard to imagine a world without CUDA being a world where this tech is running at a fraction of it's potential.
immibis 2y ago
It's always been on the straggler to catch up by cheating. That's just how the world works - even in open source. If AMD supported CUDA, it would have a bigger market share. That's a fact. Nvidia doesn't want that. That's a fact. But when Reddit started, it just scraped feeds from Digg, and when Facebook started, it let you link your MySpace credentials and scraped your MySpace account. Adversarial interoperability is nothing new.
cogman10 2y ago
Funnily, who I blame the most for there not being real competition to CUDA is apple. As of late, Apple has been really pushing for vender lock in APIs rather than adopting open standards. The end result is you can get AMD and Intel onboard with some standard which is ultimately torpedoed by apple. (See apple departing from and rejecting everything that comes from the khronos group). With the number of devs that use Apple silicon now-a-days, I have to think that their support for khronos initiatives like SYCL and OpenCL would have significantly accelerated progress and adoption in both. We need an open standard that isn't just AMD specific to be successful in toppling CUDA.
aprilthird2021 2y ago
Because Nvidia has made a compelling product and AMD has not...

lmm 2y ago

> Is it weird how the comments here are blaming AMD and not Nvidia? Nvidia has put in the legwork and are reaping the rewards. They've worked closely with the people who are actually using their stuff, funding development and giving loads of support to researchers, teachers and so on, for probably a decade now. Why should they give all that away? > But there are counterexamples that suggest otherwise (Android). How is Android a counterexample? Google makes no money off of it, nor does anyone else. Google keeps Android open so that Apple can't move everyone onto their ad platform, so it's worth it for them as a strategic move, but Nvidia has no such motive. > Even if AMD made their own version of CUDA that was better in every way, it still wouldn’t gain adoption because CUDA has become the standard. Maybe. But again, that's because NVidia has been putting in the work to make something better for a decade or more. The best time for AMD to start actually trying was 10 years ago; the second-best time is today.

Zambyte 2y ago
> Google makes no money off of it, nor does anyone else Google makes no money off of Android? That seems like a really weird claim to make. Do you really think Google would be anywhere near as valuable of a company if iOS had all of the market share that the data vacuum that is Android has? I can't imagine that being the case. Google makes a boatload off of Android, just like AMD would if they supported open GPGPU efforts aggressively.
- michaelt 2y ago
  Google gave away the software platform - Android - to hardware vendors for free, vendors compete making the hardware into cheap, low-margin commodity items, and google makes boatloads of money from ads, tracking and the app store. nvidia could give away the software platform - CUDA - to hardware vendors for free, making the hardware into cheap, low-margin commodity items. But how would they make boatloads of money when there's nowhere to put ads, tracking or an app store?
- rjurney 2y ago
  Android is a complement to Google's business, which is when open source works. What would be the complement worth $1 Trillion to NVIDIA to build a truly open platform? There isn't one. That was his point.
  - chatmasta 2y ago
    There’s an entire derivative industry of GPUs, namely GenAI and LLM providers, that could be the “complement” to an open GPU platform. The exact design and interface between such a complement and platform is yet undefined, but I’m sure there are creative approaches to this problem.
    - rjurney 2y ago
      And NVIDIA is playing in that game too. Why would they not play in higher level services as well? They already publish the source to their entire software stack. A comparison to Android is completely useless. Google is a multi-sided platform that does lots of things for free for some people (web users, Android users) so it can charge other people for their data (ad buyers). That isn't the chip business whatsoever. The original comment only makes sense if you know nothing about their respective business models.
      - chatmasta 2y ago
        Yes, so when the ground inevitably shifts below their feet (it might happen years from now, but it will happen – open platforms always emerge and eventually proliferate), wouldn’t it be better for them to own that platform? On the other hand, they could always wait for the most viable threat to emerge and then pay a few billion dollars to acquire it and own its direction. Google didn’t invent Android, after all… > Google is a multi-sided platform that does lots of things for free for some people… That isn't the chip business whatsoever. This is a reductionist differentiation that overlooks the similarities between the platforms of “mobile” and “GPU” (and also mischaracterizes the business model of Google, who does in fact make money directly from Android sales, and even moved all the way down the stack to selling hardware). In fact there is even a potentially direct analogy between the two platforms: LLM is the top of the stack with GPU on the bottom, just like Advertising is the top of the stack with Mobile on the bottom. Yes, Google’s top level money printer is advertising, and everything they do (including Android) is about controlling the maximum number of layers below that money printer. But that doesn’t mean there is no benefit to Nvidia doing the same. They might approach it differently, since they currently own the bottom layer whereas Google started from the top layer. But the end result of controlling the whole stack will lead to the same benefits. And you even admit in your comment that Nvidia is investing in these higher levels. My argument is that they are jeopardizing the longevity of these high-level investments due to their reluctance to invest in an open platform at the bottom layer (not even the bottom, but one level above their hardware). This will leave them vulnerable to encroachment by a player that comes from a higher level, like OpenAI for example, who gets to define the open platform before Nvidia ever has a chance to own it.

roenxi 2y ago

> Is it weird how the comments here are blaming AMD and not Nvidia? Not even a little bit. It simply isn't Nvidia's job to provide competitive alternatives to Nvidia. Competing is something AMD must take responsibility for. The only reason CUDA is such a big talking point is because AMD tripped over their own feet supporting accelerated BLAS on AMD GPUs. Realistically it probably is hard to implement (AMD have a lot of competent people on staff) but Nvidia hasn't done anything unfair apart from execute so well that they make all the alternatives look bad.

jkmcf 2y ago
I agree with you, but replace NVIDIA with Apple. What would the EU say?
- LtWorf 2y ago
  I don't think nvidia bans anyone from running code on their devices.
  - padthai 2y ago
    They do from time to time: https://wirelesswire.jp/2017/12/62708/ https://wirelesswire.jp/2017/12/62708/
    - kbolino 2y ago
      This seems to be more about certain devices (consumer-grade GPUs) in certain settings (data centers), though I do question how enforceable it actually is. My guess is that it can only apply when you try to get discounts from bulk-ordering GPUs. Also, was there any followup to this story? It seems a bit unnecessary because nVidia has already neutered consumer cards for many/most data center purposes by not using ECC and by providing so few FP64 units that double precision FLOPS is barely better than CPU SIMD.
      - paulmd 2y ago

nemothekid 2y ago

>Is it weird how the comments here are blaming AMD and not Nvidia? It's not. Even as it is, I do not trust HIP or RocM to be a viable alternative to Cuda. George Hotz did plenty of work trying to port various ML architectures to AMD and was met with countless driver bugs. The problem isn't nvidia won't build an open platform - the problem is AMD won't invest in a competitive platform. 99% of ML engineers do not write CUDA. For the vast majority of workloads, there are probably 20 engineers at Meta who write the Cuda backend for Pytorch that every other engineer uses. Meta could hire another 20 engineers to support whatever AMD has (they did, and it's not as robust as CUDA). Even if CUDA was open - do you expect nvidia to also write drivers for AMD? I don't believe 3rd parties will get anywhere writing "compatibility layers" because AMD's own GPU aren't optimized or tested for CUDA-like workloads.

pjmlp 2y ago

Khrons, AMD and Intel have had 15 years to make something out of OpenCL that could rival CUDA. Instead they managed 15 years of disappointment, in a standard stuck in C99, that adopted C++ and a polyglot bytecode too late to matter, never produced an ecosystem of IDE tooling and GPU libraries. Naturally CUDA became the standard, when NVIDIA provided what the GPU community cared about.

whywhywhywhy 2y ago

>Is it weird how the comments here are blaming AMD and not Nvidia? Because it IS AMD/Apple/etcs fault for the position they're in right now. CUDA showed where the world was heading and where the gains in compute would be made well over a decade ago now. They even had OpenCL, didn't put the right amount of effort into it, all the talent found CUDA easier to work with so built there. Then what did AMD, Apple do? Double down and try and make something better and compete? Nah they fragmented and went their own way, AMD with what feels like a fraction of the effort even Apple put in. From the actions of the other teams in the game it's not hard to imagine a world without CUDA being a world where this tech is running at a fraction of it's potential.

immibis 2y ago

It's always been on the straggler to catch up by cheating. That's just how the world works - even in open source. If AMD supported CUDA, it would have a bigger market share. That's a fact. Nvidia doesn't want that. That's a fact. But when Reddit started, it just scraped feeds from Digg, and when Facebook started, it let you link your MySpace credentials and scraped your MySpace account. Adversarial interoperability is nothing new.

cogman10 2y ago

Funnily, who I blame the most for there not being real competition to CUDA is apple. As of late, Apple has been really pushing for vender lock in APIs rather than adopting open standards. The end result is you can get AMD and Intel onboard with some standard which is ultimately torpedoed by apple. (See apple departing from and rejecting everything that comes from the khronos group). With the number of devs that use Apple silicon now-a-days, I have to think that their support for khronos initiatives like SYCL and OpenCL would have significantly accelerated progress and adoption in both. We need an open standard that isn't just AMD specific to be successful in toppling CUDA.

aprilthird2021 2y ago

Because Nvidia has made a compelling product and AMD has not...