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Imagine Nvidia not supporting CUDA on any of their cards. Unthinkable.

latchkey 2y ago
Nvidia takes a software first approach and AMD takes a hardware first approach. It is clear that AMD's approach isn't working and they need to change their balance.
- kouteiheika 2y ago
  Hardware first, but then their hardware isn't any better than NVidia's, so I don't see how that's a valid excuse here. (Okay, maybe their super high end unobtanium-level GPUs are better hardware-wise. Don't know, don't care about enterprise-only hardware that is unbuyable by mere mortals.)
  - latchkey 2y ago
    Some of it isn't unbuyable... it is just expensive. https://www.ebay.com/itm/305850340813 https://www.ebay.com/itm/305850340813 But that's why my business exists... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42759191 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42759191
  - whywhywhywhy 2y ago
    It's just not, people like to try and defend AMD out of hatred for Nvidia but the thousands of fumbles over the past 15 years that have led AMD to their current position and Nvidia to their current dominance are not deserving of coddling and excuses. The fact support still isn't there, they've had 2 years since Stable Diffusion to get a serious team up and shipping and they still don't even have enough resources pointed at this to not have to be asking what should be prioritized. The only way to fix their culture/priorities is to stop buying their cards.
- washadjeffmad 2y ago
  I've always described Nvidia as an accelerated compute company that happens to sell hardware. AMD are smart, and they solve big problems in ways that are baffling to many. They're very sensitive to moats and position themselves with products or frameworks to drain them. I consider their primary product "engineering competence as a service", but when no one external picks up the reigns, they don't try very hard to play market maker. I remember when Intel's R&D budget was more than AMD's market cap– they're effective both at and when running lean. The reality here is that people don't have grievances with CUDA and Nvidia aren't doing anything egregious with it. But whether that's due to ROCm's existence... we can only speculate.
  - latchkey 2y ago
    > The reality here is that people don't have grievances with CUDA and Nvidia aren't doing anything egregious with it. Correct. Lots of people also developed specifically for Internet Explorer too. They are a monopoly and if that is important to you, then you'll want alternative solutions to avoid putting all your eggs in one basket. People have short term memory loss and forget that just a few months ago, H100's were impossible to get and the price skyrocketed. Given the "insane demand" of Nvidia compute (and compute in general), these sorts of supply/demand issues will be indefinitely ongoing. How many times will people need to get burned until they start to seek alternatives? Hard to say...
- Eval-Apply 2y ago
  I read a story last year from Techpowerup where they said that AMD is making big changes to the way it approaches technology, shifting its focus from hardware development to emphasizing software experiences, APIs and AI. Roadmap: 3 to 5 years. https://www.techpowerup.com/324171/amd-is-becoming-a-software-company-heres-the-plan https://www.techpowerup.com/324171/amd-is-becoming-a-softwar...

Nvidia takes a software first approach and AMD takes a hardware first approach. It is clear that AMD's approach isn't working and they need to change their balance.

kouteiheika 2y ago
Hardware first, but then their hardware isn't any better than NVidia's, so I don't see how that's a valid excuse here. (Okay, maybe their super high end unobtanium-level GPUs are better hardware-wise. Don't know, don't care about enterprise-only hardware that is unbuyable by mere mortals.)
- latchkey 2y ago
  Some of it isn't unbuyable... it is just expensive. https://www.ebay.com/itm/305850340813 https://www.ebay.com/itm/305850340813 But that's why my business exists... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42759191 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42759191
- whywhywhywhy 2y ago
  It's just not, people like to try and defend AMD out of hatred for Nvidia but the thousands of fumbles over the past 15 years that have led AMD to their current position and Nvidia to their current dominance are not deserving of coddling and excuses. The fact support still isn't there, they've had 2 years since Stable Diffusion to get a serious team up and shipping and they still don't even have enough resources pointed at this to not have to be asking what should be prioritized. The only way to fix their culture/priorities is to stop buying their cards.
washadjeffmad 2y ago
I've always described Nvidia as an accelerated compute company that happens to sell hardware. AMD are smart, and they solve big problems in ways that are baffling to many. They're very sensitive to moats and position themselves with products or frameworks to drain them. I consider their primary product "engineering competence as a service", but when no one external picks up the reigns, they don't try very hard to play market maker. I remember when Intel's R&D budget was more than AMD's market cap– they're effective both at and when running lean. The reality here is that people don't have grievances with CUDA and Nvidia aren't doing anything egregious with it. But whether that's due to ROCm's existence... we can only speculate.
- latchkey 2y ago
  > The reality here is that people don't have grievances with CUDA and Nvidia aren't doing anything egregious with it. Correct. Lots of people also developed specifically for Internet Explorer too. They are a monopoly and if that is important to you, then you'll want alternative solutions to avoid putting all your eggs in one basket. People have short term memory loss and forget that just a few months ago, H100's were impossible to get and the price skyrocketed. Given the "insane demand" of Nvidia compute (and compute in general), these sorts of supply/demand issues will be indefinitely ongoing. How many times will people need to get burned until they start to seek alternatives? Hard to say...
Eval-Apply 2y ago
I read a story last year from Techpowerup where they said that AMD is making big changes to the way it approaches technology, shifting its focus from hardware development to emphasizing software experiences, APIs and AI. Roadmap: 3 to 5 years. https://www.techpowerup.com/324171/amd-is-becoming-a-software-company-heres-the-plan https://www.techpowerup.com/324171/amd-is-becoming-a-softwar...