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Historically there was a big patent moat in (Graphics) GPU design. This continues with CUDA, but obviously Intel and AMD could find ways to support eg PyTorch. What we don't know is how much effort that cost them, or why they decided they couldn't make a CUDA API compatible competitor.

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Intel could have beat the pants off Nvidia a long time ago with Arc if they’d bothered to ship usable drivers. But they refuse to, and simply can’t figure it out, so Arc cards remain cheap because they’re so #%£€ing hard to get working well, and everyone is nervous they’ll lay off the driver team again.

AMD has always had software problems too. Hardware companies often devalue software and suck at it.

If you can make them work Arc cards are a massive bargain. On raw compute the silicon is not bad.

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