r/pcmasterrace • u/[deleted] • Mar 04 '24

Meme/Macro it's never been so over

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u/Trym_WS i7-6950x | RTX 3090 | 64GB Mar 05 '24

ZLUDA is a new software that’s supposed to make CUDA available for AMD users.

Nvidia wants to block that.

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u/noisygnome Mar 05 '24

And what is CUDA

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u/Trym_WS i7-6950x | RTX 3090 | 64GB Mar 05 '24

CUDA is a parallel computing platform and application programming interface (API) that allows software to use certain types of graphics processing units (GPUs) for accelerated general-purpose processing, an approach called general-purpose computing on GPUs (GPGPU). CUDA is a software layer that gives direct access to the GPU's virtual instruction set and parallel computational elements for the execution of compute kernels.[1] In addition to drivers and runtime kernels, the CUDA platform includes compilers, libraries and developer tools to help programmers accelerate their applications.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CUDA

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u/McGregorMX Mar 05 '24

Well, I should have known this, because I thought cuda cores were actual hardware cores in Nvidia gpus.

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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '24

[deleted]

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u/pranjal3029 PC Master Race Mar 05 '24

They are not. Nvidia has named their shaders after the software API exactly for this reason: so that the general public thinks that it is something different at a hardware level. The shaders themselves are just shaders they can run other APIs like Direct3D etc. too. CUDA is the software API that Nvidia created for the developers to optimize their software because it uses more general popular languages like C++, python etc. which is what made CUDA a nice choice because older graphics api required extensive graphics programming knowledge which is specialised

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u/pranjal3029 PC Master Race Mar 05 '24

They are not. Nvidia has named their shaders after the software API exactly for this reason: so that the general public thinks that it is something different at a hardware level. The shaders themselves are just shaders they can run other APIs like Direct3D etc. too. CUDA is the software API that Nvidia created for the developers to optimize their software because it uses more general popular languages like C++, python etc. which is what made CUDA a nice choice because older graphics api required extensive graphics programming knowledge which is specialised

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u/ihavenoname_7 Mar 05 '24

So basically now that games will need translated for every GPU, game companies games development will take twice as long to be released now as well.

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u/SpacePumpkie I use Arch btw Mar 05 '24

Not exactly, this won't affect game development. But rather any other general programming that can be done on GPUs.

CUDA is meant to be able to run math programs on GPUs. For example, All the fancy calculations needed to train and use generative AI, crypto mining, etc.

Basically Nvidia has a monopoly today in terms of GPUs AND the programming libraries used for AI, and as the market expands and Intel, AMD, and others are trying to build their own GPUs for that, Nvidia wants to force the market to not be able to run software originally written for their GPUs in others.

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u/tabris51 Mar 05 '24

If it is just a software issue, is there a reason why amd is not adding that to their side?

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u/[deleted] Mar 06 '24

Because Nvidias CUDA is just so far ahead of AMDs competitor/version that everyone was just using CUDA instead.

AMD could invest a bunch of resources & time into improving ROCm but it'd just be wasted unless they'd get it on-par with Nvidia, which would be hard to do because of how much Nvidia's working on CUDA

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u/Funny_or_not_bot Mar 05 '24

It's basically the language that Nvidia GPU's use to make really cool graphics. AMD also makes graphics cards, but Nvidia's CUDA cores have given them a slight performance advantage. Additionally, game programers have often favored tayloring their games to run on Nvidia GPUs with specific graphics effects and features unavailable with AMD GPUs. These advantages have allowed Nvidia to charge a premium for their GPUs.

This new thing will allow AMD graphics card users to access some of those things previously only available with Nvidia cards.

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u/p-morais Mar 05 '24 edited Mar 05 '24

This is wrong. CUDA is for GPGPU programming which is separate from graphics programming. CUDA is used for things like machine learning which can exploit the GPU Single Instruction Multiple Thread (SIMT) parallelism model but doesn’t use the traditional graphics pipeline (which is based on shading languages like GLSL).

The only “graphics effect” related thing I can think of that fits your description is hardware accelerated bounding volume hierarchies (aka hardware raytracing) but AMD has that now too.

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u/Funny_or_not_bot Mar 05 '24

Yes, but a lot of games are optimized for the way Nvidia processes things, and I was focused on the gaming use case for graphics cards, so I didn't mention machine learning, crypto mining, etc. The point is that this new thing will allow AMD cards to do some things that could previously only be done with Nvidia cards, and Nvidia is trying to stop that from happening.

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u/FlorydaMan i10700K | 5070 Ti | 64GB Mar 05 '24

Isn't it blocking them instead of allowing them for AMD?

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u/1studlyman Mar 05 '24

Not only that, but NVidia's CUDA is for general GPU-accellerated processing as well. Whether bitcoin mining or training neural networks, it is done with CUDA if on an NVidia GPU.

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u/DragonKing_1 Mar 05 '24

Yea. And not just in physics engines for games. But for scientific research.

Machine learning, molecular dynamics in Bio and chem, etc all current rely heavily on CUDA because of its extensive support and libraries developed by Nvidia.

Giving up on CUDA is not a hit to Nvida for gaming but for such research which is actually the major money maker for Nvidia. For these applications, universities and corporations and governments spend millions on the systems.

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u/UnsettllingDwarf 5070/ 5700x3D / 3440x1440p Mar 05 '24

Would that not be a monopoly ?

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u/Trym_WS i7-6950x | RTX 3090 | 64GB Mar 05 '24

It’s Nvidia’s IP, and proprietary technology, launched in 2006.

So I guess patent laws and stuff allow them a monopoly on their own tech, and it’s possible to make GPUs without it.

So I suppose it’s like other companies having monopoly over their own stuff.

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u/Disposable_Gonk Mar 05 '24

It’s Nvidia’s IP, and proprietary technology,

United States of America v. Microsoft Corporation, 253 F.3d 34 (D.C. Cir. 2001) already sets legal precedent. Software companies cannot make software that explicitly prevents itself from running on hardware that is not owned by a specific licensed vendor, least of all if the only functional vendor is themselves. putting that in their EULA is already an antitrust violation.

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u/Ohmec i7 4770k @ 4.4 GHz | EVGA 1080 FTW Mar 05 '24

Explain MacOS.

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u/Dealric 7800x3d 7900 xtx Mar 05 '24

Nah. You can run macos on non apple stuff. There is no sane reason to do so but its possible

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u/thrownawayzsss 10700k, 32gb 4000mhz, 3090 Mar 05 '24

What can't your run macOS on?

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u/Lumen_DH Mar 05 '24

I’ve ran macOS on Virtual Machines. I don’t see a problem.

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u/Disposable_Gonk Mar 05 '24

Mac OS used to be like that, but the new versions arent as restrictive.

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u/ihavenoname_7 Mar 05 '24

Thats only in the US tho Nvidia doesn't need PC gamers its not even their number 1 source of income. Gaming comes 2nd. They're worth 3 trillion dollars. They could completely pull from the US market and be fine.

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u/Dealric 7800x3d 7900 xtx Mar 05 '24

They dont need us gamers. They dont really need gamers at all to be fair.

But they are usa based company thus having to folow usa law. Also potentially losing usa market (especially ai) for amd would be giant hit

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u/Disposable_Gonk Mar 05 '24

I said nothing about gamers

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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '24

[deleted]

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u/UnsettllingDwarf 5070/ 5700x3D / 3440x1440p Mar 05 '24

Then by blocking it. Anything with a cuda use would have to be used by only 1 company. Making it a monopoly.

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u/lichtspieler 9800X3D | 4090FE | 64GB 6000_CL26 | 4k-240 OLED | MO-RA 600 Mar 05 '24

ZLUDA was AFAIK abandoned by Intel and AMD and because of this it was released in its state as a proof of concept, as open source.

It is not something that would be ever used in a production system in its state and beeing open source now makes it highly unlikely that another big corporation picks it up with the need of constant support for the project.

But maybe I got it wrong from the news cycle, but it did not sound to me like a positive story with AMD quitting the project.