Side question, but why not advance something like Rust GPU instead as a general approach to GPU programming? https://github.com/Rust-GPU/rust-gpu/

From all the existing examples, it really looks the most interesting.

I.e. what I'm surprised about is lack of backing for it from someone like AMD. It doesn't have to immediately replace ROCm, but AMD would benefit from it advancing and replacing the likes of CUDA.

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LegNeato an hour ago | parent | next [-]

One of the rust-gpu maintainers here. Haven't officially heard from anyone at AMD but we've had chats with many others. Happy to talk with whomever! I would imagine AMD is focusing on ROCm over Vulkan for compute right now as their pure datacenter play, which makes sense.

We've started a company around Rust on the GPU btw (https://www.vectorware.com/), both CUDA and Vulkan (and ROCm eventually I guess?).

Note that most platform developers in the GPU space are C++ folks (lots of LLVM!) and there isn't as much demand from customers for Rust on the GPU vs something like Python or Typescript. So Rust naturally gets less attention and is lower on the list...for now.

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MobiusHorizons 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

From the readme:

> Note: This project is still heavily in development and is at an early stage.

> Compiling and running simple shaders works, and a significant portion of the core library also compiles.

> However, many things aren't implemented yet. That means that while being technically usable, this project is not yet production-ready.

Also projects like rust gpu are built on top of projects like cuda and ROCm they aren’t alternatives they are abstractions overtop

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shmerl 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I think Rust GPU is built on top of Vulkan + SPIR-V as their main foundation, not on top of CUDA or ROCm.

What I meant more is the language of writing GPU programs themselves, not necessarily the machinery right below it. Vulkan is good to advance for that.

I.e. CUDA and ROCm focus on C++ dialect as GPU language. Rust GPU does that with Rust and also relies on Vulkan without tying it to any specific GPU type.

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markisus an hour ago | parent [-]

The article mentions Triton for this purpose. I don’t think you will get maxed out performance on the hardware though because abstraction layers won’t let you access the fastest possible path.

	▲	shmerl an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> I don’t think you will get maxed out performance on the hardware though because abstraction layers won’t let you access the fastest possible path. You could argue about CPU architectures the same, no? Yet compilers solve this pretty well most of the time.

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HarHarVeryFunny 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If you don't want/need to program at lowest level possible, then Pytorch seems the obvious option for AMD support, or maybe Mojo. The Triton compiler would be another option for kernel writing.

	▲	shmerl 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I don't think that's something that can be pitched as a CUDA alternative. Just different level.