The reason (IMO) that AMD will never make ROCm actually comparable to CUDA is so that they don't have to worry about their gaming GPUs cannibalize their data center GPUs. nVidia is stuck putting tiny VRAM pools onto gaming GPUs so they are less attractive as compute, and AMD doesn't want to put themselves in the same position.
Maybe at one point they wanted to beat CUDA, but they are pretty happy with the feature segmentation now.
> The reason (IMO) that AMD will never make ROCm actually comparable to CUDA is so that they don't have to worry about their gaming GPUs cannibalize their data center GPUs.
At least by revenue, consoles are now the leader in gaming anyway, the PC market is shrinking - the old dudes crowd is aging out of hi-perf gaming (due to work and having kids), and the young crowd is either on hassle-free consoles or mobile). And a lot of the "gaming" GPU marketshare of the last few years were coin miners.
If AMD wants to be known for something else than tying their future to two large companies who can always hop back to NVIDIA, they absolutely have to step up their compute game to make sure they at least have the ability to pivot, should either of their deals with Microsoft and Sony fall apart. NVIDIA is the best example, it's a miracle Soldergate didn't sink them entirely a decade ago.
Maybe at one point they wanted to beat CUDA, but they are pretty happy with the feature segmentation now.