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Comment by Uehreka | Hacker News Reader

> If something new comes along that provides better performance per dollar spent

They won’t be able to do that, their hardware isn’t fast enough.

Nvidia is beating them at hardware performance, AND ALSO has an exclusive SDK (CUDA) that is used by almost all deep learning projects. If AMD can get their cards to run CUDA via ROCm, then they can begin to compete with Nvidia on price (though not performance). Then, and only then, if they can start actually producing cards with equivalent performance (also a big stretch) they can try for an Embrace Extend Extinguish play against CUDA.

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> They won’t be able to do that, their hardware isn’t fast enough.

Well, then I guess CUDA is not really the problem, so being able to run CUDA on AMD hardware wouldn't solve anything.

> try for an Embrace Extend Extinguish play against CUDA

They wouldn't need to go that route. They just need a way to run existing CUDA code on AMD hardware. Once that happens, their customers have the option to save money by writing ROCm or whatever AMD is working on at that time.

Intel has the same software issue as AMD but their hardware is genuinely competitive if a generation behind. Cost and power wise, Intel is there; software? No.

> Well, then I guess CUDA is not really the problem

It is. All the things are the problem. AMD is behind on both hardware and software, for both gaming and compute workloads, and has been for many years. Their competitor has them beat in pretty much every vertical, and the lock-in from CUDA helps ensure that even if AMD can get their act together on the hardware side, existing compute workloads (there are oceans of existing workloads) won’t run on their hardware, so it won’t matter for professional or datacenter usage.

To compete with Nvidia in those verticals, AMD has to fix all of it. Ideally they’d come out with something better than CUDA, but they have not shown an aptitude for being able to do something like that. That’s why people keep telling them to just make a compatibility layer. It’s a sad place to be, but that’s the sad place where AMD is, and they have to play the hand they’ve been dealt.

>so being able to run CUDA on AMD hardware wouldn't solve anything.

It limits Nvidia's profit margin - if Nvidia cards run twice as fast but cost more than twice as much, then people will just buy two AMD cards. Meanwhile, it gives AMD some revenue with which to fund an improved CUDA stack.

>their customers have the option to save money by writing ROCm

CUDA saves money by having a fuckton of pre-written CUDA code and being supported as default basically everywhere.

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