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    AMD funded a drop-in CUDA implementation built on ROCm: It's now open-source

    (www.phoronix.com)
    1045 points mfiguiere | 12 comments | 12 Feb 24 14:00 UTC | HN request time: 0.037s | source | bottom
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    btown ◴[12 Feb 24 14:37 UTC] No.39345221[source]▶
    Why would this not be AMD’s top priority among priorities? Someone recently likened the situation to an Iron Age where NVIDIA owns all the iron. And this sounds like AMD knowing about a new source of ore and not even being willing to sink a single engineer’s salary into exploration.

    My only guess is they have a parallel skunkworks working on the same thing, but in a way that they can keep it closed-source - that this was a hedge they think they no longer need, and they are missing the forest for the trees on the benefits of cross-pollination and open source ethos to their business.

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    hjabird ◴[12 Feb 24 15:26 UTC] No.39345853[source]▶
    The problem with effectively supporting CUDA is that encourages CUDA adoption all the more strongly. Meanwhile, AMD will always be playing catch-up, forever having to patch issues, work around Nvidia/AMD differences, and accept the performance penalty that comes from having code optimised for another vendor's hardware. AMD needs to encourage developers to use their own ecosystem or an open standard.
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    1. jvanderbot ◴[12 Feb 24 17:50 UTC] No.39347964[source]▶
    If you replace CUDA -> x86 and NVIDIA -> Intel, you'll see a familiar story which AMD has already proved it can work through.

    These were precisely the arguments for 'x86 will entrench Intel for all time', and we've seen AMD succeed at that game just fine.

    replies(5): >>39347993 #>>39348224 #>>39348252 #>>39348427 #>>39361222 #
    2. ianlevesque ◴[12 Feb 24 17:52 UTC] No.39347993[source]▶
    And indeed more than succeed, they invented x86_64.
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    3. stcredzero ◴[12 Feb 24 18:07 UTC] No.39348177[source]▶
    And indeed more than succeed, they invented x86_64.

    If AMD invented the analogous to x86_64 for CUDA, this would increase competition and progress in AI by some huge fraction.

    replies(2): >>39348847 #>>39351796 #
    4. samstave ◴[12 Feb 24 18:10 UTC] No.39348224[source]▶
    Transmetta was Intels boogey-man in the 90s.
    5. ethbr1 ◴[12 Feb 24 18:13 UTC] No.39348252[source]▶
    > These were precisely the arguments for 'x86 will entrench Intel for all time', and we've seen AMD succeed at that game just fine.

    ... after a couple decades of legal proceedings and a looming FTC monopoly case convinced Intel to throw in the towel, cross-license, and compete more fairly with AMD.

    https://jolt.law.harvard.edu/digest/intel-and-amd-settlement

    AMD didn't just magically do it on its own.

    6. sangnoir ◴[12 Feb 24 18:27 UTC] No.39348424[source]▶
    x86_64's win was helped by Intel's Itanium misstep. AMD can't bank on Nvidia making a mistake, and Nvidia seems content with incremental changes to CUDA, contrasted with Intel's 32-bit to 64-bit transition. It is highly unlikely that AMD can find and exploit a similar chink in the amor against CUDA.
    replies(1): >>39348767 #
    7. clhodapp ◴[12 Feb 24 18:27 UTC] No.39348427[source]▶
    If that's the model, it sounds like the path would be to burn money to stay right behind NVIDIA and wait for them to become complacent and stumble technically, creating the opportunity to leapfrog them. Keeping up could be very expensive if they don't force something like the mutual licensing requirements around x86.
    8. LamaOfRuin ◴[12 Feb 24 18:55 UTC] No.39348767{3}[source]▶
    If they're content with incremental changes to CUDA then it doesn't cost much to keep updated compatibility and do it as quickly as any users actually adopt changes.
    9. pjmlp ◴[12 Feb 24 19:03 UTC] No.39348847{3}[source]▶
    Only works if NVidia misteps and creates the Itanium version of CUDA.
    replies(1): >>39348980 #
    10. stcredzero ◴[12 Feb 24 19:15 UTC] No.39348980{4}[source]▶
    You don't think someone would welcome the option to have more hardware buying options, even if the "Itanium version" didn't happen?
    11. jvanderbot ◴[12 Feb 24 23:05 UTC] No.39351796{3}[source]▶
    Why "if only". Intel had been around forever when AMD showed up. CUDA isn't unassailable
    12. HarHarVeryFunny ◴[13 Feb 24 18:49 UTC] No.39361222[source]▶
    The difference is that AMD's CPUs are designed to implement the x86 and x86-64 ISA, so there is no loss of performance. In contrast, AMD and NVIDA's GPU instruction sets and architectures are not the same, and to get top performance out of these architectures code needs to be customized for them.

    If you slap a CUDA compatibility layer on top of AMD, then CUDA code optimized for NVIDIA chips would run, but would suffer a performance penalty compared to code that was customized/tuned for AMD, so unless AMD GPUs were sold cheap enough (i.e. with low profit margin) to mitigate this loss of performance you might as well buy NVIDIA in the first place.