ROCm Is AMD’s No. 1 Priority, Exec Says

Metz@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 57 points –
eetimes.com
27

Paywalled.
What is this about anyway ?

Edit : Wow ! Great answers and nice project. Always good to see competition against Nvidia.

I was able to read without subscription or paywall. This is about AMD writing software that is open source and competes directly with Nvidia’s CUDA software framework.

Unable to read the paywalled article, but ROCm is like Nvidia's CUDA for their GOUs. These used to be supported on and off for consumer GPUs, but get aupported mostly only for datacenter ones. Linux used to be supported, but they are bringing ROCm to windows as well.

Probably AMD is planning to improve support for consumer GPUs, since their GPUs are competitive to Nvidia's at a lower price point, given that local LLMs, Image generation and other AIs are in a kind of a booming trend.

Currently, Nvidia has CUDA which is more or less the industry standard, so AMD with their ROCm and Intel with their OpenVino etc are trying to chip away at the monopoly.

weird, it isn't for me. it is about AMDs equivalent of nVidias CUDA. AMD is trying to catch up in the area that they have unfortunately neglected for a very long time and in which nVidia has an (almost) unassailable lead. That means making things like machine learning / AI on their GPUs possible, or more easily and on more cards (especially more consumer cards) available.

Good. For my last GPU is was forced to go with Nvidia since I needed CUDA. ROCm was useless for consumer GPU's back then. Support has gotten better since from what I've seen, so hopefully they continue and my next GPU will be team red again.

It's only a matter of time. Just like physx and any other Nvidia gimmick, AMD will catch up and offer it for a fraction of the price.

They should just let this mess quietly die and join Intel with their attempt at a cross-vendor standard.

AMD has the best valued CPUs on the market for consumer and DC for at least the next few years, years ahead on APUs (Phoenix runs native GPU speeds on die), and just jumped Nvidia to datacenter market with NPUs on their server class chips, making that an INSANELY great value. Also forgot AMD is in all the major game consoles out in the world aside from Switch, so they have that base as well. They're in the best possible position for years to come versus Intel or NVidia.

Now what are you going on about?

He was on about ROCm, not amd performance or market share. But thanks for the fanboy post.

Not a fanboy post at all. The number of devices that AMD has out in the world is just massive. Why they'd "give up" as OP suggested is beyond me.

ROCm is a software that AMD developed and which is universally acknowledged to be quite buggy and far behind its equivalent by Nvidia called CUDA. My comment had nothing to do with AMD's hardware or marketshare.

Everyone, including AMD, would be better off if Intel and AMD were working together on an open and cross-vendor standard to counter Nvidia's CUDA.

Bruh

What an eloquent argument in response.

we are not arguing, you are just going on and on about amd market share when no one was talking about that. what are you on about?

The number of devices in use out in the world is a direct correlation to how useful a project like ROCm or CUDA is/could be. More devices means devs are more likely to utilize a specific language or library for a specific use. ROCm is open source and attempting to gain more ground simply by expanding to more devices which are already out there. My response to OP is just illustrating that fact.

Example: Nvidia got an early foothold in the AI/ML game in the datacenter because they were first to platform traction with the CUDA toolkit and inference libraries. It's horrible to use, but is useful. AMD is now trying to catch up to that by deploying alternative hardware and software that covers most of the same use-case, plus they now have APU and FPGA devices that Nvidia does not. That's the tldr.

Your comment doesn't make sense. ROCm is a buggy mess that despite years of working on it AMD hasn't been able to make work well at all.

Intel's oneAPI on the other hand is cross-vendor and by all appearances so far is good software that has a real shot at beating CUDA if AMD was not shooting itself in its own leg by riding the dead horse that is ROCm.

I work with the entire CUDA toolkit on a daily basis, and it is also a mess. Nvidia is locked in though, and doesn't plan any rework anytime soon (you can refer to their own statements on this). Any widespread alternative forces greater competition, and better products as a result.

I've never met a single engineer who has worked on any of Intel's acceleration toolchains, but they are just now getting new devices into the datacenter, so maybe it will gain in popularity.

lol, and that's the argument OP was making; forget about ROCm and jump onboard with OneAPI

I had to abandon a project recently because AMDs shitty software would refuse to install opencl for one of their integrated graphics chips.

Every time I've tried to use their subpar hardware it's been met by exponentially more shitty subpar software. If I were in any business making decisions with real money I'd avoid AMD like a plague

I have a MacBook in my closet I can't use at all because of an Nvidia integrated GPU. I've had nothing but problems with their shitty software too. Never had a single problem since I switched to AMD, and it was wayyyy cheaper. Your issue sounds like PEBCAK to me.

You know opencl AMD installations have problems if you have previously installed Nvidia software? So it sounds like your experience with AMD may have been soured by NVIDIA actually, and then you went out and gave them more money.

Guy. It was a prepackaged OEM device and the Nvidia install script bugged out on a fresh Ubuntu install. I don't know what to tell you. Quit being a fanboy.