News AMD announces unified UDNA GPU architecture — bringing RDNA and CDNA together to take on Nvidia's CUDA ecosystem

[Admin]

AMD revealed that it is working on a new UDNA graphics architecture that melds the consumer RDNA and data center CDNA architectures. The intent is to better compete with Nvidia's CUDA ecosystem, though an exact release date hasn't been determined.

AMD announces unified UDNA GPU architecture — bringing RDNA and CDNA together to take on Nvidia's CUDA ecosystem : Read more

 

[Elusive Ruse]

I can’t fault the general message and their strategy in going unified but considering Huynh was evasive when you asked about a clear timeline of implementation; I guess I’ll believe it when I see it.

 

[-Fran-]

So... They're bringing GCN back from the dead? LOL.

Christ...

EDIT: Just to add a bit more to my knee-jerk reaction to the overall information (thanks for the interviews, BTW!) in regards to my comment...

AMD is missing something crucial, which was very succintly pointed out in the article: longevity. It doesn't matter what you call it or market it or tell the world you'd be doing technically. The reason why CUDA is king is longevity and support. AMD needs to stop screwing around with the long term strategy and flip-flopping to much and stick to something for longer than 3 generations. Whatever they create, please do stick to it and support it. Anyone remembers HSA? What about Audio Acceleration? And a few other techs which they put out but didn't get adoption and were dropped, but were good ideas. Just, in very AMD fashion, pushed terribly bad into the market.

Regards.

 

[Pierce2623]

Could Nvidia legally prevent AMD from making their GPUs capable of running CUDA code? If AMD could run CUDA code natively, they’d literally be right back in the game in the workplace.

 

[ET3D]

I can’t fault the general message and their strategy in going unified but considering Huynh was evasive when you asked about a clear timeline of implementation; I guess I’ll believe it when I see it.

Huynh said: "we’re thinking about not just RDNA 5, RDNA 6, RDNA 7, but UDNA 6 and UDNA 7". Which I think is indicative of the time frame. We won't get to see the fruits of this until the RDNA 6 generation at least, so it's a few years down the road. Then again, it's not clear what he means, as it implies that we will have RNDA 6 alongside UDNA 6.

 

[rluker5]

Huynh said: "we’re thinking about not just RDNA 5, RDNA 6, RDNA 7, but UDNA 6 and UDNA 7". Which I think is indicative of the time frame. We won't get to see the fruits of this until the RDNA 6 generation at least, so it's a few years down the road. Then again, it's not clear what he means, as it implies that we will have RNDA 6 alongside UDNA 6.

I kind of saw it as him letting us know that they are considering replacing RDNA6 with UDNA6, or they might do it at RDNA7. That they are weighing their options but don't know for sure when the replacement will occur yet. Since he announced it, they must have a good degree of certainty that they are planning to proceed, but since it seems like a bad idea I will also believe it when I see it.

Maybe it is what AMD needs to do to effectively get tensor type cores in their gaming GPUs to catch up with Nvidia and Intel in this regard.

 

[Makaveli]

I can’t fault the general message and their strategy in going unified but considering Huynh was evasive when you asked about a clear timeline of implementation; I guess I’ll believe it when I see it.

I think RDNA 5 is already in the pipeline so I would assume its GPU's after that gen so maybe that is why he is being vague.

Could Nvidia legally prevent AMD from making their GPUs capable of running CUDA code? If AMD could run CUDA code natively, they’d literally be right back in the game in the workplace.

Native will never happen there are however other options.

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-i...-enables-cuda-applications-to-run-on-amd-gpus

Nvidia CUDA applications can now run on AMD GPUs thanks to ZLUDA

You can now run Nvidia CUDA apps on AMD GPUs, thanks to a drop-in replacement called ZLUDA. It works on both Linux and Windows!

www.xda-developers.com

 

[stuff and nonesense]

Could Nvidia legally prevent AMD from making their GPUs capable of running CUDA code? If AMD could run CUDA code natively, they’d literally be right back in the game in the workplace.

AMD GPUs can run CUDA, AMD pulled the plug on the software project. Technically there is no physical reason AMD couldn’t make the hardware interface CUDA compliant but… Nvidia have the user/license agreement tied down such that CUDA code can only be run on Nvidia hardware… the lawyers would get richer.

 

[jlake3]

Could Nvidia legally prevent AMD from making their GPUs capable of running CUDA code? If AMD could run CUDA code natively, they’d literally be right back in the game in the workplace.

Nvidia’s EULA/ToS and their aggressive enforcement thereof has made it legally risky to sell or use a translation layer in a corporate environment, and AMD (or Intel) coming out with native CUDA support effectively impossible.

 

[-Fran-]

Being devil's advocate: nVidia can license the use of CUDA. They more than likely won't, much like Intel did not want AMD to use X86 (slightly different, but applies here) and both AMD and Intel could just help OpenCL be relevant, but they aren't because they want their own stuff to be relevant, which is hilarious to see (how they fail).

I'd even say Intel has seen more success than AMD on that front with oneAPI. ROCm has seen adoption, but at the end they're just not as good as a common open standard, even if the rely or use OCL heavily (BLAS for instance). Expand OCL IMO, but they won't. Maybe Khronos would be to blame there? Not sure. Just throw money at the problem, I guess.

Regards.

 

[hotaru251]

Could Nvidia legally prevent AMD from making their GPUs capable of running CUDA code?

yes. in fact ZLUDA was able to run cuda on amd gpu...and NVIDIA within i think a month of dev making it public on github updated their terms of use that CUDA can only be used on nvidia hardware.

now this "could" change as France is in legal stance over nvidia for its cuda dominance but that wont play out for yrs and nothing may change.

 

[YSCCC]

just get the PRICE and hopefully performance up and be competitive......

 

[stuff and nonesense]

yes. in fact ZLUDA was able to run cuda on amd gpu...and NVIDIA within i think a month of dev making it public on github updated their terms of use that CUDA can only be used on nvidia hardware.

now this "could" change as France is in legal stance over nvidia for its cuda dominance but that wont play out for yrs and nothing may change.

That’s the project that I was thinking about, it was initially funded by AMD.. they stopped funding it and it was subsequently open sourced.