AMD and CUDA
Lorwinith
Posts: 60
I have been reading on the net that AMD might support CUDA, but third party software is starting to surface, to run Iray on ATI cards.( But wait for AMD to release the driver.)
All CUDA is, is a graphic driver, so keep a watch out just in case AMD release a driver for CUDA.
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Comments
No.
Either someone misposted, misunderstood or was trollling. CUDA is not simply a driver. They are processors. The more CUDA cores you have, the faster the CUDA calculations go. You actually have to have CUDA cores to do the cuda calculations...AMD does not have that.
If your AMD card doesn't have cudas (it does not) it won't ever run Iray, a product owned by Nvidia.
A GTX 760 is better at games than the older slower 660ti, but the 660ti is much faster at CUDA applications because it had more cuda cores. The rest of the hardware is less important in this situation. The Cuda number is what matters for GPU Iray. That is why newer, faster Nvidia cards are not faster at CUDA calculations than older slower cards that had more cuda cores.
where are you reading this?
CUDA is actually software, which just "happens" to be designed to work with the general purpose floating point processing cores on nVidia graphics cards. This is noted on the Wiki page for CUDA: "The CUDA platform is a software layer that gives direct access to the GPU's virtual instruction set and parallel computational elements."
Another core with a similar architecture could in theory work. Whether or not ATI would wish to license CUDA from their main competitor is another matter. Ostensibily, CUDA is an openly published standard, though only nVidia (and its licensors) use it. ATI has their own competing system with some industry support, in places like video rendering.
lets call them cuda cores. and currently I've never heard of any AMD chips with them. So the whole "wait for AMD driver" comment from the OP is pointless. It would be more like, wait for AMD card with "cuda cores". I orginally had quotes around cuda cores in my first post, but removed them for simplicity. cause in current practical sense, it's not just software.
This article is pretty good with the details of CUDA, and how it is based on the drivers supporting the GPU.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-cuda-gpu,1954.html
There's nothing technically stopping AMD from licensing the CUDA chipset from nVidia. After all, nVidia is a licensing entity whose main business is selling graphics chips. AMD is in the same business. nVidia licenses many of their boards for others to manufacture. nVidia is still #2 in the graphics chips business, with Intel ahead of them. So it's not likely they'll turn down a romance with rival AMD, especially since the CEO of nVidia was a key chip designer at AMD.
I agree it's pointless to buy an AMD board today with the hopes you'll be able to eventually run CUDA on it. AMD will license the chipset rather than spend the tens of billions to reinvent someone else's technology.
Now, as for Iray being able to run on an AMD GPU-accelerated chipset: that's entirely within the realm of possibility, just as Iray can today run from just the CPU. I have heard this rumor for several years. Whether there are any economics in it is another matter. There are certainly licensing issues to contend with.
CUDA cores and AMDs current stream processors are essentially the same thing. CUDA and CUDA cores are different things. CUDA, like OpenCL is a GPGPU language. I don't know how reliant CUDA is on the specific architecture of the CUDA cores, if at all. It does seem more likely that it is simply a matter of licencing.
Given the rapid development of openCL it is likely AMD will stick to their guns. Octane Render 3 will support OpenCL
From what I have read, AMD video cards actually have numerous calculating cores. Is this similar to the CUDA cores concept?
Does nivedia use Open CL in its video cards? If so will it be able to be used with Lux render?
NVIDIA works with OpenCL (version 1.2) and it works with Luxrender.
CUDA works only with NVIDIA cards. So Iray uses only CPUs if you have an AMD card or Intel grafics.
OpenCL works with NVIDIA, AMD and Intel grafics.
This can not be changed. The calculation cores have all grafic cards, but this is a general term, like PC.
Could it happen; sure. Will it happen, unlikely. Google the topic; Techradar reported that NVidia hinted it could happen back in 2009; also around the same there are legimate sites reporting why it is unlikely. NVidia support OpenCL as well as their own; I'm sure that isn't becuase they want to, as there is more cost in doing it but because they must.