ZLUDA Takes On Third Life: Open-Source Multi-GPU CUDA Implementation Focused On AI

[Daktyl198]

With Nintendo destroying their emulators left and right, I don't see a bright future for this project unless NVIDIA officially confirms that they're not opposed to its existence.

Nintendo had to pay the developer of Ryujinx to remove his project. They knew they couldn't win a lawsuit against the emulator to remove it, so they bought him out. Legally, the emulator was still in the green. It's not a doomsday scenario for emulation like some people think it is.

Yuzu was sued not because it was an emulator, but because the developers broke every rule that emulator developers abide by to stay legal.

Additionally, APIs can't be copyrighted. Anybody is free to implement APIs as long as you don't use original source code. Google vs Oracle proved this.

[contik32]

Maybe the backer is Tiny Corp.

That's what I thought - the backer must be someone who purchased a lot of AMD GPU hardware but got pissed with HIP

[roastedpeacock]

Best of luck to vosen. However I foresee two potential issues.

1) Considering recent events the climate for developing emulators is more precarious. I am sure NVIDIA knows this if they wanted to snuff out the project despite being outside AMD's sphere of influence.

2) There are already third-party forks of ZLUDA (pre rollback) by others. I understand if vosen working on those would be problematic considering the bulk of it was an internal AMD project that was cleared and the approval was either premature or the legal department got cold feet, either from their own analysis or attention from NVIDIA. It takes a special kind of person to essentially redo their work while having that risk of NVIDIA destroying their sandcastle.

[JustRob]

No mention of X^e/Arc, Adreno, nor Mali, or any of the others; so there's a few companies that may not be the mystery sponsor.

[roastedpeacock]

Nintendo had to pay the developer of Ryujinx to remove his project. They knew they couldn't win a lawsuit against the emulator to remove it, so they bought him out. Legally, the emulator was still in the green. It's not a doomsday scenario for emulation like some people think it is.

As for the theory about the main Ryujinx developer being 'paid off' to discontinue the project, there has been some dissent by others in the scene.

Double whammy if true.

https://x.com/ModernVintageG/status/1841871580806447237

[ET3D]

It's worth reading the original blog post on which this news article is based.

[ssokolow]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_European_Union

Software is copyrightable in the EU, which means you can't distribute copies of algorithms or source code verbatim without permission, what you can't do in some EU countries is enforce software patents (patents are a different thing from copyright). So, it's possible to reverse-engineer software in some EU countries without fear of software patent lawsuits, but you can't copy software or its source code verbatim.

For example, the ZLUDA guy can't copy verbatim any parts of the source code of Nvidia's proprietary drivers, even if he somehow stumbles upon such source-code, ZLUDA is exclusively reverse-engineered code.



The fact that what you are describing is the hypothetical process of patenting a character archetype, but what you are talking about is copyright, hints to me that you have misread something, but I won't go on the basics of copyright law and patent law here (for example how a copyrighted work differs from a patent).

The other responders have said what I'd have said. An algorithm is an idea, like a character archetype. Copyright protects implementations of ideas, like novels that use those character archetypes.

My best guess is that English isn't your first language and you were unaware that, among English programmer vernacular, "not a specific implementation" is literally part of the understood definition of "algorithm".

[Panix]

I give it a year- 2 tops, before the project is dumped. AI/ML is nvidia territory and reading the original blog post - they can't utilize RT. They're going back to code pre-AMD? What is the point of all this? It's funny someone brought up Tiny Corp. This is the company that was trying to use AMD gpus but getting no assistance or support from AMD. So, even when a company is buying a crapload of AMD gpus and using them for your business, AMD provided little to no support and the software/project was full of bugs and problems.

Amd's hardware can't use the software they have and/or it's not supported or it can't be utilized fully. AMD gpus only have a limited use-case and have too many limits and restrictions to be worth using/buying... I don't care if ppl are a gamer - go buy AMD gpus to your heart's content then. ML/AI/productivity - that's where the $$ is - whether you like it or not - and that's the only reason that guy is continuing the project - because of that demand. However, he'll need a lot of luck (since it's Nvidia 'territory' - ppl in that line of work or working in that field buy nvidia).

[DiamondAngle]

Regardless of if zluda is legal (it is) zluda is a bad idea.

Gpu compute code is not performance portable, cuda is not even really performance portable across NVIDIA generations.
By restricting yourself to executing ptx compiled from kernel code written with nvidia gpus in mind you hand nvidia a performance advantage you can not recover from.
Hip already has this problem to a large degree since it is source compatible with cuda via hipify, many projects "support" hip by simply translating cuda code to hip, this results in extremely performance deficient code on amd gpus, especially on cdna and gcn which are more different to nv gpus than rdna is (the whole point of rdna being that it is more like a nv gpu so that this kind of code runs better).
zluda makes this mutch mutch worse.
It would be a huge strategic loss for amd if zluda becomes wide spread and accepted as the "default" way to do compute on amd gpus.

[Developer12]

I don't really see how CUDA's license agreement is relevant regardless of where he's from. If you haven't installed CUDA and/or do not agree to the license and you are not using any of Nvidia's CUDA code then what legal power do they even have? Unlike a Nintendo emulator, the primary use of ZLUDA isn't obviously used for piracy, and since it isn't [yet] targeting Nvidia GPUs then at that point, it has practically nothing to do with Nvidia at all.

Think of it like the Mono project vs .NET. MS would have an incentive to shut that down, but they didn't, probably because they had no power to do so.

Patents. Lots and lots of CUDA patents.