
AMD announces CUDA support - oflordal
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9792/amd-sc15-boltzmann-initiative-announced-c-and-cuda-compilers-for-amd-gpus
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mikhailt
No, it didn't. The title is misleading, AMD is announcing tools to make it
easier to port from CUDA. Not the same as supporting CUDA, which is owned by
nVidia only. Unless nVidia open-sources CUDA, AMD cannot do anything for it.

The article said the same thing:

> Through HIP AMD will bridge the gap between HCC and CUDA by giving
> developers a CUDA-like syntax – the various HIP API commands – allowing
> developers to program for AMD GPUs in a CUDA-like fashion. Meanwhile HIP
> will also including a toolset (the HIPify Tools) that further simplifies
> porting by automatically converting CUDA code to HIP code. And finally, once
> code is HIP – be it natively written that way or converted – it can then be
> compiled to either NVIDIA or AMD GPUs through NVCC (using a HIP header file
> to add HIP support) or HCC respectively.

> To be clear here, HIP is not a means for AMD GPUs to run compiled CUDA
> programs. CUDA is and remains an NVIDIA technology. But HIP is the means for
> source-to-source translation, so that developers will have a far easier time
> targeting AMD GPUs.

What's even worse is that it may not be legal either:

> Now there are some unknowns here, including whether AMD can keep HIP up to
> date with CUDA feature additions, but more importantly there’s a question of
> just what NVIDIA’s reaction will be. CUDA is NVIDIA’s, through and through,
> and it does make one wonder whether NVIDIA would try to sue AMD for
> implementing the CUDA API without NVIDIA’s permission, particularly in light
> of the latest developments in the Oracle vs. Google case on the Java API.
> AMD for their part has had their legal team look at the issue extensively
> and doesn’t believe they’re at risk – pointing in part to Google’s own
> efforts to bring CUDA support to LLVM with GPUCC – though I suspect AMD’s
> efforts are a bit more inflammatory given the direct competition. Ultimately
> it’s a matter that will be handled by AMD and NVIDIA only if it comes to it,
> but it’s something that does need to be pointed out.

Why the heck would any developers use HIP with this legal issue up in the air?

~~~
sixbrx
> Why the heck would any developers use HIP with this legal issue up in the
> air?

Probably because if just implementing an API really turns out to be a
disallowed by law - and I'm not familiar enough with the Google/Oracle case in
particular or the law in general to know how well it generalizes to such a
conclusion - then most of the stuff I rely on goes poof anyway.

~~~
wtallis
The way the Oracle/Google case got resolved was that the Federal Circuit made
a ruling that almost everyone agreed was wrong with respect to the copyright
issues but that there was little danger of any other circuit ruling that way
on future cases that didn't have a patent aspect to get them in front of the
Federal Circuit. Part of the Supreme Court's reasoning for not taking up the
issue probably was that the Federal Circuit hadn't and couldn't create any
binding precedent in the matter (as they were supposed to be following the
local circuit's law on the non-patent aspects of the case).

