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I don't have the inside baseball but I have seen those weird as hell interviews with Lisa Su where she gets asked point blank about the software problems and in

I don't have the inside baseball but I have seen those weird as hell interviews with Lisa Su where she gets asked point blank about the software problems and instead of "working on it, stay tuned" -- an answer that costs nothing to give -- she deflects into "performance is what matters," which is the kind of denial that rhymes exactly with the problems they are having. No, the horsepower of your F1 racecar doesn't matter if the engine doesn't start and there's a wheel missing! You need to fix those problems before the horsepower can matter! Please tell me you are fixing the starter and the wheel! Hopefully I am reading too much into this. Hopefully she doesn't have any weird hangups over investing in software and it all just takes time to Do It Right after GPGPU got starved in the AMD winter. But if it is a weird hangup then yeah, 100%, ownership needs to get management in line because whiffing a matmul benchmark years into a world where matmul is worth trillions just ain't it.

sangnoir 2y ago
> she deflects into "performance is what matters," which is the kind of denial that rhymes exactly with the problems they are having. It's not a deflection, but a straightforward description of AMDs current top-down market strategy of partnering with big players instead of doubling down to have a great OOBE for consumers & others who don't order GPUs by the pallet. It's an honest reflection if their current core competencies, and the opportunity presented by Nvidia's margins. They are going for a bang-for-buck right now aiming at data center workloads, and the hyperscalers care a lot about perf/$ than raw performance at. Hyperscalers are also more self-sufficient at software: they have entire teams working on PyTorch, Jax, and writing kernels.
- schmidtleonard 2y ago
  That's the excuse used by every big company shitting out software so broken that it needs intensive professional babysitting. I've been on both sides of this shitshow, I've even said those lines before! But I've also been in the trenches making the broken shit work and I know that it's fundamentally an excuse. There's a reason why people pay 80% margin to Nvidia and there's a reason why AMD is worth less than the rounding error when people call NVDA a 3 trillion dollar company. It's not because people can't read a spec sheet, it's because people want their expensive engineers training models not changing diapers on incontinent equipment. I hope AMD pulls through but denial is _not_ the move.
  - sangnoir 2y ago
    What exactly are they in denial about? They are aware that software is not a strength of theirs, so they partner with those who are great at it. Would you say AMD is "shitting the bed" by not building it's own consoles too? You know AMD could build a kick-ass console since they are doing the heavy-lifting for the Playstation, and the XBox[1] , but AMD knows as much as anybody that they don't have the skills to wrangle studio relationships or figure out which games to finance. Instead, they lean hard in their HW skills and get Sony Entertainment/the Xbox division do what they do best. 1.and the Steam Deck, plus half a dozen Deck clones.
    - roenxi 2y ago
      There is probably one employee - either a direct report of Su's or maybe one of her grandchildren in the org chart - who needs to "get it". If they replaced that one manager with someone who sees graphics cards as a tool to accelerate linear algebra then AMD would be participating more effectively in a multi-trillion dollar market. They are so breathtakingly close to the minimum standards of competence on this one. We know from the specs that the cards they produce should be able to perform. This is a case-specific example of failure, it doesn't generalise very well to other markets. AMD is really well positioned for this very specific opportunity of historic proportions and the only thing holding them back is a somewhat continuous stream of unforced failures when writing a high quality compute driver. It seems to be pretty close to one single team of people holding the company back although organisational issues tend to stem from a level or two higher than the team. This could be the most visible case of value destruction by a public company we'll see in our lifetimes. Optimistically speaking maybe they've already found and sacked the individual responsible and we're just waiting for improvement. I'm buying Nvidia until that proves to be so.
    - pjmlp 2y ago
      It would go nowhere, games history is full of great hardware that died because they failed to have a profitable ecosystem. Even Steam Deck is only a success, because it depends on Windows ecosystem, and the moment Microsoft decides it is enough, lets see how long it holds.
- nemothekid 2y ago
  >Hyperscalers are also more self-sufficient at software: they have entire teams working on PyTorch, Jax, and writing kernels. None of this matters because AMD drivers are broken. No one is asking AMD to write a PyTorch backend. The idea that AMD will have twice the silicon performance than nvidia to make up the performance loss for bad software is a pipedream.
  - sangnoir 2y ago
    > None of this matters because AMD drivers are broken Do you honestly think the MI300 has show-stopper driver bugs, or that Meta/Amazon doesn't have a direct line to AMD engineers?
    - nemothekid 2y ago
      >Do you honestly think the MI300 has show-stopper driver bugs Yes >Meta/Amazon doesn't have a direct line to AMD engineers? I don't even think AMD engineers have a direct line to AMD.
      - sangnoir 2y ago
        The fine article says they had the ears of VPs and Principal Engineers, just to help with a benchmark. Meta/Amazon will get white-glove service
  - david-gpu 2y ago
    > None of this matters because AMD drivers are broken How do you know that the problems arise from broken drivers rather than broken hardware? Real world GPU drivers are full of workarounds for hardware bugs.
- Twirrim 2y ago
  Engineers at hyperscalers are struggling through all the bugs too. It's coming at notable opportunity cost for them, at a time when they also want an end to the monopoly. Do they buy AMD and wade through bug after bug, regression after regression, or do they shell out slightly more money for Nvidia GPUs and have it "just work". AMD has to get on top of their software quality issues if they're ever going to succeed in this segment, or they need to be producing chips so much faster than Nvidia that it's worth the extra time investment and pain.
  - sangnoir 2y ago
    > Engineers at hyperscalers are struggling through all the bugs too [citation needed]
    - almostgotcaught 2y ago
      Lolol 100% accurate. Go trawl through PRs to Triton by FB people to the AMD portion of the codebase.
    - Twirrim 2y ago
      Sorry, but NDAs mean I can't say any more.
    - mike_hearn 2y ago
      It's in the article. Meta don't use AMD for training and write their own kernels for inference. You can't train with AMD, full stop, because their software stack is so buggy.
      - sangnoir 2y ago
        > It's in the article The same article also states that AMD provided custom bug-fixes written by Principle Engineers to address bugs in a benchmark - this is software that will only become part of the public release in 2 quarters. I ask again, do you think AMD will not expedite non-public bug-fixes for hyperscalers? > You can't train with AMD, full stop, because their software stack is so buggy. Point 7 from the article: >> The MI300X has a lower total cost of ownership (TCO) compared to the H100/H200, but training performance per TCO is worse on the MI300X on public stable releases of AMD software. This changes if one uses custom development builds of AMD software. I have an inkling that Meta does not obtain MI300 drivers from https://download.amd.com https://download.amd.com
- javier2 2y ago
  The ones buying gpus in pallets _really_ need the software to not be a worry. Software issues would ruin the entire operational life

sangnoir 2y ago

> she deflects into "performance is what matters," which is the kind of denial that rhymes exactly with the problems they are having. It's not a deflection, but a straightforward description of AMDs current top-down market strategy of partnering with big players instead of doubling down to have a great OOBE for consumers & others who don't order GPUs by the pallet. It's an honest reflection if their current core competencies, and the opportunity presented by Nvidia's margins. They are going for a bang-for-buck right now aiming at data center workloads, and the hyperscalers care a lot about perf/$ than raw performance at. Hyperscalers are also more self-sufficient at software: they have entire teams working on PyTorch, Jax, and writing kernels.

schmidtleonard 2y ago
That's the excuse used by every big company shitting out software so broken that it needs intensive professional babysitting. I've been on both sides of this shitshow, I've even said those lines before! But I've also been in the trenches making the broken shit work and I know that it's fundamentally an excuse. There's a reason why people pay 80% margin to Nvidia and there's a reason why AMD is worth less than the rounding error when people call NVDA a 3 trillion dollar company. It's not because people can't read a spec sheet, it's because people want their expensive engineers training models not changing diapers on incontinent equipment. I hope AMD pulls through but denial is _not_ the move.
- sangnoir 2y ago
  What exactly are they in denial about? They are aware that software is not a strength of theirs, so they partner with those who are great at it. Would you say AMD is "shitting the bed" by not building it's own consoles too? You know AMD could build a kick-ass console since they are doing the heavy-lifting for the Playstation, and the XBox[1] , but AMD knows as much as anybody that they don't have the skills to wrangle studio relationships or figure out which games to finance. Instead, they lean hard in their HW skills and get Sony Entertainment/the Xbox division do what they do best. 1.and the Steam Deck, plus half a dozen Deck clones.
  - roenxi 2y ago
    There is probably one employee - either a direct report of Su's or maybe one of her grandchildren in the org chart - who needs to "get it". If they replaced that one manager with someone who sees graphics cards as a tool to accelerate linear algebra then AMD would be participating more effectively in a multi-trillion dollar market. They are so breathtakingly close to the minimum standards of competence on this one. We know from the specs that the cards they produce should be able to perform. This is a case-specific example of failure, it doesn't generalise very well to other markets. AMD is really well positioned for this very specific opportunity of historic proportions and the only thing holding them back is a somewhat continuous stream of unforced failures when writing a high quality compute driver. It seems to be pretty close to one single team of people holding the company back although organisational issues tend to stem from a level or two higher than the team. This could be the most visible case of value destruction by a public company we'll see in our lifetimes. Optimistically speaking maybe they've already found and sacked the individual responsible and we're just waiting for improvement. I'm buying Nvidia until that proves to be so.
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    It would go nowhere, games history is full of great hardware that died because they failed to have a profitable ecosystem. Even Steam Deck is only a success, because it depends on Windows ecosystem, and the moment Microsoft decides it is enough, lets see how long it holds.
nemothekid 2y ago
>Hyperscalers are also more self-sufficient at software: they have entire teams working on PyTorch, Jax, and writing kernels. None of this matters because AMD drivers are broken. No one is asking AMD to write a PyTorch backend. The idea that AMD will have twice the silicon performance than nvidia to make up the performance loss for bad software is a pipedream.
- sangnoir 2y ago
  > None of this matters because AMD drivers are broken Do you honestly think the MI300 has show-stopper driver bugs, or that Meta/Amazon doesn't have a direct line to AMD engineers?
  - nemothekid 2y ago
    >Do you honestly think the MI300 has show-stopper driver bugs Yes >Meta/Amazon doesn't have a direct line to AMD engineers? I don't even think AMD engineers have a direct line to AMD.
    - sangnoir 2y ago
      The fine article says they had the ears of VPs and Principal Engineers, just to help with a benchmark. Meta/Amazon will get white-glove service
- david-gpu 2y ago
  > None of this matters because AMD drivers are broken How do you know that the problems arise from broken drivers rather than broken hardware? Real world GPU drivers are full of workarounds for hardware bugs.
Twirrim 2y ago
Engineers at hyperscalers are struggling through all the bugs too. It's coming at notable opportunity cost for them, at a time when they also want an end to the monopoly. Do they buy AMD and wade through bug after bug, regression after regression, or do they shell out slightly more money for Nvidia GPUs and have it "just work". AMD has to get on top of their software quality issues if they're ever going to succeed in this segment, or they need to be producing chips so much faster than Nvidia that it's worth the extra time investment and pain.
- sangnoir 2y ago
  > Engineers at hyperscalers are struggling through all the bugs too [citation needed]
  - almostgotcaught 2y ago
    Lolol 100% accurate. Go trawl through PRs to Triton by FB people to the AMD portion of the codebase.
  - Twirrim 2y ago
    Sorry, but NDAs mean I can't say any more.
  - mike_hearn 2y ago
    It's in the article. Meta don't use AMD for training and write their own kernels for inference. You can't train with AMD, full stop, because their software stack is so buggy.
    - sangnoir 2y ago
      > It's in the article The same article also states that AMD provided custom bug-fixes written by Principle Engineers to address bugs in a benchmark - this is software that will only become part of the public release in 2 quarters. I ask again, do you think AMD will not expedite non-public bug-fixes for hyperscalers? > You can't train with AMD, full stop, because their software stack is so buggy. Point 7 from the article: >> The MI300X has a lower total cost of ownership (TCO) compared to the H100/H200, but training performance per TCO is worse on the MI300X on public stable releases of AMD software. This changes if one uses custom development builds of AMD software. I have an inkling that Meta does not obtain MI300 drivers from https://download.amd.com https://download.amd.com
javier2 2y ago
The ones buying gpus in pallets _really_ need the software to not be a worry. Software issues would ruin the entire operational life