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0 pointsRussianCow9y ago0 comments

You often don't have a choice because a large amount of GPGPU software is written using CUDA, which is Nvidia-specific.

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NVIDIA does not have a monopoly in the traditional sense. But yes, the have a de facto one because there is no viable competition.

It's like saying MATLAB has a monopoly in academic research because so much of the code is written in it. That is slowly changing and moving over to Python now, which is great. Maybe OpenCL will get there someday, but I don't see it happening any time soon.

make39y ago

this is wrong. No mainstream deep learning library uses openCL, and the non-mainstream ones that do are much much slower. I remember reading up to 10x slower, but I can't seem to find the reference right now.

bgalbraith9y ago

You are correct. My initial response was a pedantic point about the semantic use of monopoly in this context, which isn't helpful.

I would love it if AMD would care more about GPGPU, but they don't, and NVIDIA has little incentive to make their OpenCl drivers equal to their CUDA ones.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

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bgalbraith9y ago

NVIDIA does not have a monopoly in the traditional sense. But yes, the have a de facto one because there is no viable competition.

make39y ago

bgalbraith9y ago

You are correct. My initial response was a pedantic point about the semantic use of monopoly in this context, which isn't helpful.

I would love it if AMD would care more about GPGPU, but they don't, and NVIDIA has little incentive to make their OpenCl drivers equal to their CUDA ones.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse