MESSAGE
| DATE | 2024-02-23 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] cudu is being "open sourced"
|
AMD Quietly Funded A Drop-In CUDA Implementation Built On ROCm: It's Now
Open-Source
Written by Michael Larabel in Display Drivers on 12 February 2024 at
09:00 AM EST.
While there have been efforts by AMD over the years to make it easier to
port codebases targeting NVIDIA's CUDA API to run atop HIP/ROCm, it
still requires work on the part of developers. The tooling has improved
such as with HIPIFY to help in auto-generating but it isn't any simple,
instant, and guaranteed solution -- especially if striving for optimal
performance. Over the past two years AMD has quietly been funding an
effort though to bring binary compatibility so that many NVIDIA CUDA
applications could run atop the AMD ROCm stack at the library level -- a
drop-in replacement without the need to adapt source code. In practice
for many real-world workloads, it's a solution for end-users to run
CUDA-enabled software without any developer intervention. Here is more
information on this "skunkworks" project that is now available as
open-source along with some of my own testing and performance benchmarks
of this CUDA implementation built for Radeon GPUs.
Radeon GPU running CUDA Blender
From several years ago you may recall ZLUDA that was for enabling CUDA
support on Intel graphics. That open-source project aimed to provide a
drop-in CUDA implementation on Intel graphics built atop Intel oneAPI
Level Zero. ZLUDA was discontinued due to private reasons but it turns
out that the developer behind that (and who was also employed by Intel
at the time), Andrzej Janik, was contracted by AMD in 2022 to
effectively adapt ZLUDA for use on AMD GPUs with HIP/ROCm. Prior to
being contracted by AMD, Intel was considering ZLUDA development.
However, they ultimately turned down the idea and did not provide
funding for the project.
Radeon GPU with CUDA-Z on Linux
Andrzej Janik spent the past two years bringing ZLUDA to Radeon GPUs and
it works: many CUDA software can run on HIP/ROCm without any
modifications -- or other processes... Just run the binaries as you
normally would while ensuring that the ZLUDA library replacements to
CUDA are loaded. For reasons unknown to me, AMD decided this year to
discontinue funding the effort and not release it as any software
product. But the good news was that there was a clause in case of this
eventuality: Janik could open-source the work if/when the contract
ended.
Radeon ZLUDA Git commit
Andrzej Janik reached out and provided access to the new ZLUDA
implementation for AMD ROCm to allow me to test it out and benchmark it
in advance of today's planned public announcement. I've been testing it
out for a few days and it's been a positive experience: CUDA-enabled
software indeed running atop ROCm and without any changes. Even
proprietary renderers and the like working with this "CUDA on Radeon"
implementation.
The ZLUDA implementation though isn't 100% fail-safe as NVIDIA OptiX
support not being fully supported and some features such as software not
using PTX assembly code isn't currently handled. But for the most part
this implementation is surprisingly capable for being a single developer
effort.
Radeon ZLUDA libraries
For those wondering about the open-source code, it's dual-licensed under
either Apache 2.0 or MIT. Rust fans will be excited to know the Rust
programming language is leveraged for this Radeon implementation.
NOTE: In my screenshots and for the past two years of development the
exposed device name for Radeon GPUs via CUDA has just been "Graphics
Device" rather than the actual AMD Radeon graphics adapter with ROCm.
The reason for this has been due to CUDA benchmarks auto-reporting
results and other software that may have automated telemetry, to avoid
leaking the fact of Radeon GPU use under CUDA, it's been set to the
generic "Graphics Device" string. I'm told as part of today's
open-sourcing of this ZLUDA on Radeon code that the change will be in
place to expose the actual Radeon graphics card string rather than the
generic "Graphics Device" concealer.
153 Comments - NextAMD Quietly Funded A Drop-In CUDA Implementation
Built On ROCm: It's Now Open-Source
Written by Michael Larabel in Display Drivers on 12 February 2024 at
09:00 AM EST.
While there have been efforts by AMD over the years to make it easier to
port codebases targeting NVIDIA's CUDA API to run atop HIP/ROCm, it
still requires work on the part of developers. The tooling has improved
such as with HIPIFY to help in auto-generating but it isn't any simple,
instant, and guaranteed solution -- especially if striving for optimal
performance. Over the past two years AMD has quietly been funding an
effort though to bring binary compatibility so that many NVIDIA CUDA
applications could run atop the AMD ROCm stack at the library level -- a
drop-in replacement without the need to adapt source code. In practice
for many real-world workloads, it's a solution for end-users to run
CUDA-enabled software without any developer intervention. Here is more
information on this "skunkworks" project that is now available as
open-source along with some of my own testing and performance benchmarks
of this CUDA implementation built for Radeon GPUs.
Radeon GPU running CUDA Blender
From several years ago you may recall ZLUDA that was for enabling CUDA
support on Intel graphics. That open-source project aimed to provide a
drop-in CUDA implementation on Intel graphics built atop Intel oneAPI
Level Zero. ZLUDA was discontinued due to private reasons but it turns
out that the developer behind that (and who was also employed by Intel
at the time), Andrzej Janik, was contracted by AMD in 2022 to
effectively adapt ZLUDA for use on AMD GPUs with HIP/ROCm. Prior to
being contracted by AMD, Intel was considering ZLUDA development.
However, they ultimately turned down the idea and did not provide
funding for the project.
Radeon GPU with CUDA-Z on Linux
Andrzej Janik spent the past two years bringing ZLUDA to Radeon GPUs and
it works: many CUDA software can run on HIP/ROCm without any
modifications -- or other processes... Just run the binaries as you
normally would while ensuring that the ZLUDA library replacements to
CUDA are loaded. For reasons unknown to me, AMD decided this year to
discontinue funding the effort and not release it as any software
product. But the good news was that there was a clause in case of this
eventuality: Janik could open-source the work if/when the contract
ended.
Radeon ZLUDA Git commit
Andrzej Janik reached out and provided access to the new ZLUDA
implementation for AMD ROCm to allow me to test it out and benchmark it
in advance of today's planned public announcement. I've been testing it
out for a few days and it's been a positive experience: CUDA-enabled
software indeed running atop ROCm and without any changes. Even
proprietary renderers and the like working with this "CUDA on Radeon"
implementation.
The ZLUDA implementation though isn't 100% fail-safe as NVIDIA OptiX
support not being fully supported and some features such as software not
using PTX assembly code isn't currently handled. But for the most part
this implementation is surprisingly capable for being a single developer
effort.
Radeon ZLUDA libraries
For those wondering about the open-source code, it's dual-licensed under
either Apache 2.0 or MIT. Rust fans will be excited to know the Rust
programming language is leveraged for this Radeon implementation.
NOTE: In my screenshots and for the past two years of development the
exposed device name for Radeon GPUs via CUDA has just been "Graphics
Device" rather than the actual AMD Radeon graphics adapter with ROCm.
The reason for this has been due to CUDA benchmarks auto-reporting
results and other software that may have automated telemetry, to avoid
leaking the fact of Radeon GPU use under CUDA, it's been set to the
generic "Graphics Device" string. I'm told as part of today's
open-sourcing of this ZLUDA on Radeon code that the change will be in
place to expose the actual Radeon graphics card string rather than the
generic "Graphics Device" concealer.
153 Comments - Next
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