[bee_rider]

AMD tries to compete in hardware with Intel’s CPUs and Nvidia’s GPUs. They have to slack somewhere, and software seems to be where. It isn’t any surprise that they can’t keep up on every front, but it does mean they can freely bring in partners whose core competency is software and work with them without any caveats.

Not sure why they haven’t managed to execute on that yet, but the partners must be pretty motivated now, right? I’m sure they don’t love doing business at Nvidia’s leisure.

[pjmlp]

Hardware is useless without software to make it show off.

[bobsondugnut]

when was the last time AMD hardware was keeping up with NVIDIA? 2014?

[0cf8612b2e1e]

Been a while since AMD had the top tier offering, but it has been trading blows in the middle tier segment the entire time. If you are just looking for a gamer card (ie not max AI performance), the AMD is typically cheaper and less power hungry than the equivalent Nvidia.

[aurareturn]

It’s trading blows because AMD sells their cards at lower margins in the midrange and Nvidia lets them.

[bee_rider]

But, the fact that Nvidia cards command higher margins also reflects their better software stack, right? Nvidia “lets them” trade blows in the midrange, or, equivalently, Nvidia is receiving the reward of their software investments: even their midrange hardware commands a premium.

[bobsondugnut]

> the AMD is typically cheaper and less power hungry than the equivalent Nvidia

cheaper is true, but less power hungry is absolutely not true, which is kind of my point.

[dralley]

It was true with RDNA 2. RDNA 3 regressed on this a bit, supposedly there was a hardware hiccup that prevented them from hitting frequency and voltage targets that they were hoping to reach.

In any case they're only slightly behind, not crazy far behind like Intel is.

[bee_rider]

The MI300X sounds like it is competitive, haha

[bobsondugnut]

competitive with H100 for inference. a 2 year old product on just one half of the ML story. H200 (and potentially B100) is the appropriate comparison based on their production in volume.