[tgsovlerkhgsel]

AMD has inexplicably decided not to invest in software. Just like car manufacturers don't realize that a shitty infotainment system can keep people from buying the $100k car, AMD doesn't seem to realize that people aren't buying a GPU for ML if their ML framework doesn't run on it...

And this goes down to consumer drivers too. I've sworn to myself that I'm not buying AMD for my next laptop, after endless instability issues with the graphics driver. I don't care how great and cheap and performant and whatever it is when I'm afraid to open Google Maps because it might kernel panic my machine.

[freedomben]

I have AMD in my desktop and my laptop and it has been pretty good under Linux (I use Fedora) the past year or two. AMD definitely was late to the game, and I still don't think they care as much as they should, but they are definitely working on it. I've been easily running GPU accelerated Ollama on my desktop and laptop through ROCm.

AMD is definitely not perfect but I don't think it's fair to say they decided not to invest in software. Better late than never, and I'm hoping AMD learned their lesson.

[tgsovlerkhgsel]

I thought they finally learned their lesson... then they cancelled the funding of ZLUDA... then they seem to have gone back on an agreement and demanded the open sourced version to be taken down.

The years it took them to get their Linux drivers into a usable shape are another issue.

[ramon156]

How long ago was this? I bought an AMD laptop this year and it's been great with both windows and Linux. I can't say the same for my Nvidia pc ...

[tgsovlerkhgsel]

I think it went away either with Ubuntu 23.10 or 24.04 - but I don't know if they actually fixed it or just changed something random that masks the bug for now, only to come back with the next kernel version (I've had that issue before).

Given that the issue (or variants thereof, because there were at least 10 different workarounds to try) was somewhat widely reported, the time it took to get this fixed far exceeded anything I would consider tolerable.

[sangnoir]

> AMD has inexplicably decided not to invest in software

Perhaps they were distracted by dismantling Intel's CPU hegemony? I wouldn't fault them for that, fighting 2 Goliaths simultaneously isn't a sound strategy.

[kbolino]

If that was the case, then they shouldn't have bought ATi.

[wtallis]

AMD's acquisition of ATI was a net detriment to AMD for at least a decade. They ended up with a ton of debt, had to sell off their fabs but still had to use those fabs even after they were uncompetitive, and struggled to field high-end products in either CPU or GPU product lines. They didn't start to reap significant benefits from having both product lines under one corporate umbrella until they started scoring design wins for game console SoCs, and those provided sales volume but not much profit margin.