Facebook Still Pursuing "NetGPU" - Working On AMD GPU Support In Addition To NVIDIA

[smitty3268]

Is Facebook doing a "google stadia for VR"?

It's about machine learning based off massive data sets they are feeding it over the network... So I think it's pretty obvious it has to do with ads/data-mining personal information. :<

[lowflyer]

Facebook should have known better. While the idea to connect network and GPU is brilliant, it was a really poor decision to look at Nvidia first. These engineers fell again for the high-gloss marketing babble coming out of the greenhouse.
It's good that this is now being corrected.

[Spacefish]

Facebook should have known better. While the idea to connect network and GPU is brilliant, it was a really poor decision to look at Nvidia first. These engineers fell again for the high-gloss marketing babble coming out of the greenhouse.
It's good that this is now being corrected.

At that level, you are way beyond marketing.. They probably talk to the hardware devs at nvidia directly and have their custom GPU cards build and so on / affect the design of GPUs directly as a big customer.

IMHO facebook will sooner or later jump wagon and build their own custom machine learning chip like google did with their TPUs

[starshipeleven]

Wait what? Writing software that works both with Nvidia and AMD drivers? Surely that's not possible

NVIDIA is waiting for it to be 90% done, then they will proudly state that "their own is a better way" and refuse to use the "standard" interface

[starshipeleven]

Facebook should have known better. While the idea to connect network and GPU is brilliant, it was a really poor decision to look at Nvidia first. These engineers fell again for the high-gloss marketing babble coming out of the greenhouse.
It's good that this is now being corrected.

nvidia on computing is a big thing, this isn't new or "marketing"

[lowflyer]

nvidia on computing is a big thing, this isn't new or "marketing"

Agreed. But there are other "big things" going on out there too. Facebook seems to have missed this. Seeing the aggressive marketing coming out of the green company makes me understand it. (A bit at least)

[starshipeleven]

Agreed. But there are other "big things" going on out there too. Facebook seems to have missed this.

like what? CUDA is the defacto standard for computing applications nowadays.

Until Intel comes over with their GPU offering and OneAPI it's pretty much a one-man race

[lowflyer]

CUDA is the defacto standard for computing applications <snip/>

Sorry, but no. cuda is *not* a standard as it is pretty proprietary and works with one overpriced vendor only. Hoards of script kiddies downloading the cuda-toolkit doesn't change that - but facebook employing these hoards can explain facebooks earlier poor decision.

[starshipeleven]

Sorry, but no.

do you know the meaning of "de facto" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_facto
"practices that exist in reality, even though they are not officially recognized by laws"

Which is the case for CUDA. It is the most common and sometimes only API used by GPU computing, as if it was an actual standard.

[lowflyer]

do you know the meaning of "de facto"

Yessir teacher sir, I can google that myself. (I thought it was only the lefties that have the urge to teach others?)

I think it's a bit premature to call it "de facto" only because you see people flocking down that road. Currently it is still a road with a prison at the end. There will always be way too many people out there that wont let themselves to be "enfenced". I don't see that changing until somebody tears down the fence of that prison.