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Wouldn't it funny and sad if a bunch of enthusiasts pulled off what AMD couldn't :)

by esafak 9mo ago

h4kunamata 9mo ago
Many projects turned out to be far better than proprietary because open-source doesn't have to please shareholders. What sucks is that such projects at some point become too big, and make so much noise forcing big techs to buy them and everybody gets fuck all. All it requires to beat proprietary walled garden, is somebody with knowledge and a will to make things happen. Linus with git and Linux is the perfect example of it. Fun fact, BitKeeper said fuck you to the Linux community in 2005, Linus created git within 10 days. BitKeeper make their code opensource in 2016 but by them, nobody knew who they were lol So give it time :)
- throwa356262 9mo ago
  I think it was the other way around. It was the community that told bitkeeper to fuck off. It all ended up good because of one mans genius but let's not rewrite history.
bri3d 9mo ago
The lack of CUDA support on AMD is absolutely not that AMD "couldn't" (although I certainly won't deny that their software has generally been lacking), it's clearly a strategic decision. Supporting CUDA on AMD would only build a bigger moat for NVidia; there's no reason to cede the entire GPU programming environment to a competitor and indeed, this was a good gamble; as time goes on CUDA has become less and less essential or relevant. Also, if you want a practical path towards drop-in replacing CUDA, you want ZLUDA; this project is interesting and kind of cool but the limitation to a C subset and no replacement libraries (BLAS, DNN, etc.) makes it not particularly useful in comparison.
- enlyth 9mo ago
  Even disregarding CUDA, NVidia has had like 80% of the gaming market for years without any signs of this budging any time soon. When it comes to GPUs, AMD just has the vibe of a company that basically shrugged and gave up. It's a shame because some competition would be amazing in this environment.
  - cebert 9mo ago
    What about PlayStation and Xbox? They use AMD graphics and are a substantial user base.
    - ekianjo 9mo ago
      Because AMD has the APU category that mixes x86_64 cores with powerful integrated graphics. Nvidia does not have that.
      - rbanffy 9mo ago
        Nvidia has a sprawling APU family in the Tegra series of ARM APUs, that span machines from the original Jetson boards and the Nintendo Switch all the way to the GB10 that powers the DGX Spark and the robotics-targeted Thor.
        keyringlight 9mo ago
        There has been a rumor that some OEMs will releasing gaming oriented laptops with Nvidia N1X Arm CPU + some form of 5070-5080 ballpark GPU, obviously not on x86 windows so it would be pushing the latest compatibility layer.
        rbanffy 9mo ago
        Aren't their APUs sufficient for a gaming laptop?
        MindSpunk 9mo ago
        The CPUs in their SOCs were not up to snuff for a non-portable game console until very recently. They used (and largely still do I believe) off the shelf ARM Cortex designs. The SOC fabric is their own, but the cores are standard. In performance even the aging Zen2 would demolish the best Tegra you could get at the time. You should note that the Switch, the only major handheld console for the last 10 years, is the only one using a Tegra. And from everything I've heard Nvidia is a garbage hardware partner who you absolutely don't want to base your entire business on because they will screw you. The consoles all use custom AMD SOCs, if you're going to that deep level of partnering you'd want a partner who isn't out to stab you.
- fdefitte 9mo ago
  Agreed on ZLUDA being the practical choice. This project is more impressive as a "build a GPU compiler from scratch" exercise than as something you'd actually use for ML workloads. The custom instruction encoding without LLVM is genuinely cool though, even if the C subset limitation makes it a non-starter for most real CUDA codebases.
  - tgtweak 9mo ago
    ZLUDA doesn't have full coverage though and that means only a subset of cuda codebases can be ported successfully - they've focused on 80/20 coverage for core math. Specifically: CuBLAS (limited/partial scope), cuBLASLt (limited/partial scope), cuDNN (limited/partial scope), cuFFT, cuSPARSE, NVML (very limited/partial scope) Notably Missing: cuSPARSELt, cuSOLVER, cuRAND, cuTENSOR, NPP, nvJPEG, nvCOMP, NCCL, OptiX I'd estimate it's around 20% of CUDA library coverage.
- imtringued 9mo ago
  They've already ceded the entire GPU programming environment to their competitor. CUDA is as relevant as it always has been. The primary competitors are Google's TPU which are programmed using JAX and Cerebras which has an unrivaled hardware advantage. If you insist on an hobbyist accessible underdog, you'd go with Tenstorrent, not AMD. AMD is only interesting if you've already been buying blackwells by the pallet and you're okay with building your own inference engine in-house for a handful of models.
wmf 9mo ago
We have HIP at home.
guerrilla 9mo ago
> couldn't More like wouldn't* most of the time. Well isn't that the case with a few other things? FSR4 on older cards is one example right now. AMD still won't officially support it. I think they will though. Too much negativity around it. Half the posts on r/AMD are people complaining about it.
- DiabloD3 9mo ago
  Because FSR4 is currently slower on RDNA3 due to lack of support of FP8 in hardware, and switching to FP16 makes it almost as slow as native rendering in a lot of cases. They're working the problem, but slandering them over it isn't going to make it come out any faster.
  - guerrilla 9mo ago
    > Because FSR4 is currently slower on RDNA3 due to lack of support of FP8 in hardware, and switching to FP16 makes it almost as slow as native rendering in a lot of cases. It works fine. > They're working the problem, but slandering them over it isn't going to make it come out any faster. You have insider info everyone else doesn't? They haven't said any such thing yet last I checked. If that were true, they should have said that.
    - DiabloD3 9mo ago
      > It works fine. That is incorrect, and the FP8 issue is both the officially stated reason and the reason that the community has independently verified. > You have insider info everyone else doesn't? AMD has been rather open about it.
      - guerrilla 9mo ago
        > That is incorrect, and the FP8 issue is both the officially stated reason and the reason that the community has independently verified. That is incorrect. It works fine. It could be better, but it works. > AMD has been rather open about it. Maybe you're right, but everyone else I've been in contact with (includding r/AMD and r/radeon) and everyone I've watched videos from on this subject say the complete opposite. Google also contradicts you "AMD has not officially released or confirmed plans to bring FSR 4 to older graphics cards. AMD has stated they have 'no updates to share' regarding support for older Radeon." It sounds like you may have imagined that.

Wouldn't it funny and sad if a bunch of enthusiasts pulled off what AMD couldn't :)

by esafak 9mo ago

Wouldn't it funny and sad if a bunch of enthusiasts pulled off what AMD couldn't :)

Many projects turned out to be far better than proprietary because open-source doesn't have to please shareholders. What sucks is that such projects at some point become too big, and make so much noise forcing big techs to buy them and everybody gets fuck all. All it requires to beat proprietary walled garden, is somebody with knowledge and a will to make things happen. Linus with git and Linux is the perfect example of it. Fun fact, BitKeeper said fuck you to the Linux community in 2005, Linus created git within 10 days. BitKeeper make their code opensource in 2016 but by them, nobody knew who they were lol So give it time :)

throwa356262 9mo ago
I think it was the other way around. It was the community that told bitkeeper to fuck off. It all ended up good because of one mans genius but let's not rewrite history.

bri3d 9mo ago

The lack of CUDA support on AMD is absolutely not that AMD "couldn't" (although I certainly won't deny that their software has generally been lacking), it's clearly a strategic decision. Supporting CUDA on AMD would only build a bigger moat for NVidia; there's no reason to cede the entire GPU programming environment to a competitor and indeed, this was a good gamble; as time goes on CUDA has become less and less essential or relevant. Also, if you want a practical path towards drop-in replacing CUDA, you want ZLUDA; this project is interesting and kind of cool but the limitation to a C subset and no replacement libraries (BLAS, DNN, etc.) makes it not particularly useful in comparison.

enlyth 9mo ago
Even disregarding CUDA, NVidia has had like 80% of the gaming market for years without any signs of this budging any time soon. When it comes to GPUs, AMD just has the vibe of a company that basically shrugged and gave up. It's a shame because some competition would be amazing in this environment.
- cebert 9mo ago
  What about PlayStation and Xbox? They use AMD graphics and are a substantial user base.
  - ekianjo 9mo ago
    Because AMD has the APU category that mixes x86_64 cores with powerful integrated graphics. Nvidia does not have that.
    - rbanffy 9mo ago
      Nvidia has a sprawling APU family in the Tegra series of ARM APUs, that span machines from the original Jetson boards and the Nintendo Switch all the way to the GB10 that powers the DGX Spark and the robotics-targeted Thor.
      - keyringlight 9mo ago
        There has been a rumor that some OEMs will releasing gaming oriented laptops with Nvidia N1X Arm CPU + some form of 5070-5080 ballpark GPU, obviously not on x86 windows so it would be pushing the latest compatibility layer.
        rbanffy 9mo ago
        Aren't their APUs sufficient for a gaming laptop?
      - MindSpunk 9mo ago
        The CPUs in their SOCs were not up to snuff for a non-portable game console until very recently. They used (and largely still do I believe) off the shelf ARM Cortex designs. The SOC fabric is their own, but the cores are standard. In performance even the aging Zen2 would demolish the best Tegra you could get at the time. You should note that the Switch, the only major handheld console for the last 10 years, is the only one using a Tegra. And from everything I've heard Nvidia is a garbage hardware partner who you absolutely don't want to base your entire business on because they will screw you. The consoles all use custom AMD SOCs, if you're going to that deep level of partnering you'd want a partner who isn't out to stab you.
fdefitte 9mo ago
Agreed on ZLUDA being the practical choice. This project is more impressive as a "build a GPU compiler from scratch" exercise than as something you'd actually use for ML workloads. The custom instruction encoding without LLVM is genuinely cool though, even if the C subset limitation makes it a non-starter for most real CUDA codebases.
- tgtweak 9mo ago
  ZLUDA doesn't have full coverage though and that means only a subset of cuda codebases can be ported successfully - they've focused on 80/20 coverage for core math. Specifically: CuBLAS (limited/partial scope), cuBLASLt (limited/partial scope), cuDNN (limited/partial scope), cuFFT, cuSPARSE, NVML (very limited/partial scope) Notably Missing: cuSPARSELt, cuSOLVER, cuRAND, cuTENSOR, NPP, nvJPEG, nvCOMP, NCCL, OptiX I'd estimate it's around 20% of CUDA library coverage.
imtringued 9mo ago
They've already ceded the entire GPU programming environment to their competitor. CUDA is as relevant as it always has been. The primary competitors are Google's TPU which are programmed using JAX and Cerebras which has an unrivaled hardware advantage. If you insist on an hobbyist accessible underdog, you'd go with Tenstorrent, not AMD. AMD is only interesting if you've already been buying blackwells by the pallet and you're okay with building your own inference engine in-house for a handful of models.

wmf 9mo ago

We have HIP at home.

guerrilla 9mo ago

> couldn't More like wouldn't* most of the time. Well isn't that the case with a few other things? FSR4 on older cards is one example right now. AMD still won't officially support it. I think they will though. Too much negativity around it. Half the posts on r/AMD are people complaining about it.

DiabloD3 9mo ago
Because FSR4 is currently slower on RDNA3 due to lack of support of FP8 in hardware, and switching to FP16 makes it almost as slow as native rendering in a lot of cases. They're working the problem, but slandering them over it isn't going to make it come out any faster.
- guerrilla 9mo ago
  > Because FSR4 is currently slower on RDNA3 due to lack of support of FP8 in hardware, and switching to FP16 makes it almost as slow as native rendering in a lot of cases. It works fine. > They're working the problem, but slandering them over it isn't going to make it come out any faster. You have insider info everyone else doesn't? They haven't said any such thing yet last I checked. If that were true, they should have said that.
  - DiabloD3 9mo ago
    > It works fine. That is incorrect, and the FP8 issue is both the officially stated reason and the reason that the community has independently verified. > You have insider info everyone else doesn't? AMD has been rather open about it.
    - guerrilla 9mo ago
      > That is incorrect, and the FP8 issue is both the officially stated reason and the reason that the community has independently verified. That is incorrect. It works fine. It could be better, but it works. > AMD has been rather open about it. Maybe you're right, but everyone else I've been in contact with (includding r/AMD and r/radeon) and everyone I've watched videos from on this subject say the complete opposite. Google also contradicts you "AMD has not officially released or confirmed plans to bring FSR 4 to older graphics cards. AMD has stated they have 'no updates to share' regarding support for older Radeon." It sounds like you may have imagined that.