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I think many people tried making AMD GPU go brrr for the mass of the developers but no one succeeded. I don't get why AMD doesn't solve their own software issu

I think many people tried making AMD GPU go brrr for the mass of the developers but no one succeeded. I don't get why AMD doesn't solve their own software issues. Now they have a lot of money so not having money to pay for developers is not an excuse. And data centers GPUs are not the worst. Using GPU compute for things like running inference at home is a much, much better experience with Nvidia. My 5 years old RTX 3090 is better than any consumer GPU AMD released up to this date, at least for experimenting with ML and AI.

jacobgorm 1y ago
And the developer experience is horrible when working with AMD. They don’t even accept driver crash bug reports.
- donaldihunter 1y ago
  People say that as if the Nvidia experience is better. Nvidia also has a horrible developer experience.
  - kg 1y ago
    YMMV but I reported a crash in Nvidia's vulkan driver and they responded promptly and fixed it.
  - _zoltan_ 1y ago
    Huh? I've been developing against the Nvidia ecosystem for years. Just build a container and you're done. They even provide base containers. Anything specific related to DC level computing?
logicchains 1y ago
> Now they have a lot of money so not having money to pay for developers is not an excuse. NVidia is the exception to the rule when it comes to hardware companies paying competitive salaries for software engineers. I imagine AMD is still permeated by the attitude that software "isn't real work" and doesn't deserve more compensation, and that kind of inertia is very hard to overcome.
- qcnguy 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - sethops1 1y ago
    That "bad leadership" dug AMD out of hole and transformed the company into a behemoth. From under $2 a share to around $250 in eight years. I'll invest in that kind of bad leadership all day everyday.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - happycube 1y ago
      Yup... the first Ryzen/EPYC chips were literally a saving throw. AMD's driver/software woes compared to nVidia make more sense when you realize they barely made it here at all.
    - _zoltan_ 1y ago
      the two statements can be true at the same time: they can still view software developers as second class while having a great hardware vision. what OP is saying is that after a point it doesn't matter how good your HW is if your SW stack is bad.
    - qcnguy 1y ago
      You should compare AMD vs its peers, not its even worse prior state. AMD should by all rights be a strong competitor to NVIDIA with a big chunk of the AI market. They have nearly nothing. The buck should stop at the top, but with AMD it doesn't.
    - KetoManx64 1y ago
      This uses to be impressive, then you look at the gains that Bitcoin investors have and this is quite paltry, especially when you consider that inflation is 8-10%, per year.
  - darkteflon 1y ago
cyberax 1y ago
I recently switched from an NVidia card (5090) to a couple of AMD cards (R9700 32GB) for my inference server. I must say it's been a completely positive experience. The mainline Fedora kernel just worked without any need to mess with the DKMS. I just forwarded /dev/dri/* devices to my containers, and everything worked fine with ROCm. I needed to grab a different image (-rocm instead of -cuda) for Ollama, change the type of whisper build for Storyteller. And that was it! On the host, nvtop works fine to visualize the GPU state, and VAAPI provides accelerated encoding for ffmpeg. Honestly, it's been an absolutely pleasant experience compared to getting NVidia CUDA to work.
Nathanba 1y ago
I just saw that Nvidia even maintains their own fork of Unreal Engine. AMD isn't even competing.
- moomin 1y ago
  nVidia has been deeply involved in the software side, first with gaming, forever. It’s written into their DNA. Even when ATI/AMD could outperform them in raw hardware, nVidia worked well with every last game and worked with individual developers even writing some of their code for them.

jacobgorm 1y ago

And the developer experience is horrible when working with AMD. They don’t even accept driver crash bug reports.

donaldihunter 1y ago
People say that as if the Nvidia experience is better. Nvidia also has a horrible developer experience.
- kg 1y ago
  YMMV but I reported a crash in Nvidia's vulkan driver and they responded promptly and fixed it.
- _zoltan_ 1y ago
  Huh? I've been developing against the Nvidia ecosystem for years. Just build a container and you're done. They even provide base containers. Anything specific related to DC level computing?

logicchains 1y ago

> Now they have a lot of money so not having money to pay for developers is not an excuse. NVidia is the exception to the rule when it comes to hardware companies paying competitive salaries for software engineers. I imagine AMD is still permeated by the attitude that software "isn't real work" and doesn't deserve more compensation, and that kind of inertia is very hard to overcome.

qcnguy 1y ago
[flagged]
- sethops1 1y ago
  That "bad leadership" dug AMD out of hole and transformed the company into a behemoth. From under $2 a share to around $250 in eight years. I'll invest in that kind of bad leadership all day everyday.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - happycube 1y ago
    Yup... the first Ryzen/EPYC chips were literally a saving throw. AMD's driver/software woes compared to nVidia make more sense when you realize they barely made it here at all.
  - _zoltan_ 1y ago
    the two statements can be true at the same time: they can still view software developers as second class while having a great hardware vision. what OP is saying is that after a point it doesn't matter how good your HW is if your SW stack is bad.
  - qcnguy 1y ago
    You should compare AMD vs its peers, not its even worse prior state. AMD should by all rights be a strong competitor to NVIDIA with a big chunk of the AI market. They have nearly nothing. The buck should stop at the top, but with AMD it doesn't.
  - KetoManx64 1y ago
    This uses to be impressive, then you look at the gains that Bitcoin investors have and this is quite paltry, especially when you consider that inflation is 8-10%, per year.
- darkteflon 1y ago

cyberax 1y ago

I recently switched from an NVidia card (5090) to a couple of AMD cards (R9700 32GB) for my inference server. I must say it's been a completely positive experience. The mainline Fedora kernel just worked without any need to mess with the DKMS. I just forwarded /dev/dri/* devices to my containers, and everything worked fine with ROCm. I needed to grab a different image (-rocm instead of -cuda) for Ollama, change the type of whisper build for Storyteller. And that was it! On the host, nvtop works fine to visualize the GPU state, and VAAPI provides accelerated encoding for ffmpeg. Honestly, it's been an absolutely pleasant experience compared to getting NVidia CUDA to work.

Nathanba 1y ago

I just saw that Nvidia even maintains their own fork of Unreal Engine. AMD isn't even competing.

moomin 1y ago
nVidia has been deeply involved in the software side, first with gaming, forever. It’s written into their DNA. Even when ATI/AMD could outperform them in raw hardware, nVidia worked well with every last game and worked with individual developers even writing some of their code for them.