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Wdym American Vendors? Intel uses SPIRV iirc

my123 3d ago
> Intel uses SPIRV iirc They're migrating away from SPIR-V to their own, Intel PISA: https://discourse.llvm.org/t/rfc-upstreaming-the-pisa-backend-to-llvm/91474 https://discourse.llvm.org/t/rfc-upstreaming-the-pisa-backen...
- swerner 3d ago
  To my knowledge, SPIR-V on Intel will stay, and be it only because it’s part of the OpenCL and Vulkan standards.
  - my123 3d ago
    Yeah talking about the (vendor-preferred) compute part here Vulkan's SPIR-V dialect is substantially different from the OpenCL one, notably with the former having structured control flow. They're incompatible between each other.
    - swerner 3d ago
      Yes, unfortunately. Otherwise we could just implement all of SYCL and OpenCL on top of Vulkan and live happily ever after.
bigyabai 3d ago
I'm talking about holistic efforts like OpenCL, and standards that would be equivalent to Nvidia's "Compute Capability" versioning. The basic underlying tech can be agreed on, but Apple/AMD/Intel all have different GPU priorities that limit their ability to agree on a CUDA-adjacent hardware platform.
- swerner 3d ago
  What do you mean by holistic? SYCL is an open versioned standard that allows for vendor specific extensions. The problem is not that there isn’t a proper standard, the problem is that many hardware vendors - or software developers simply don’t want to adopt it. Intel (via Codeplay) was handing it out on a silver platter - Nvidia on SYCL, full top chain, and people still wouldn’t want it.
  - bigyabai 3d ago
    Isn't OneAPI a good example of the problem, alongside Mojo/ONNX/TensorRT? The industry doesn't need a fifteenth competing standard. They need hardware buy-in. By holistic, I mean hardware architecture cooperation. Nvidia can hold onto their lead forever if GPU designers fight over what a GPGPU hardware baseline looks like. The current ecosystem fragmentation is not competitive, and future fragmentation probably wouldn't work either. I think the fastest way to kill Nvidia would be a hardware consortium.
    - swerner 3d ago
      The problem with OneAPI is naming. It leads people to believe that is another competing standard where in fact is is simply just an implementation of a standard compliant SYCL compiler. If it just had been named “Intel SYCL compiler”, similar to the existing and accepted Intel OpenCL compiler, it would have been easier. What would you expect the hardware consortium to coordinate on? Unified ISA?
      - my123 3d ago
        oneAPI is effectively an Intel-only platform not a standard. Yes they have implementations on top of CUDA but they're maintained by... Intel. They didn't get buy-in for cross-vendor collaboration
        swerner 3d ago
        They were maintained by Codeplay - paid for my Intel. Nvidia can make contributions anytime they want, and here is the problem: Nvidia does not want to. Until each vendor starts pitching in with contributing their backend to an open standard, you will have to rely on others doing it for them.

> Intel uses SPIRV iirc They're migrating away from SPIR-V to their own, Intel PISA: https://discourse.llvm.org/t/rfc-upstreaming-the-pisa-backend-to-llvm/91474 https://discourse.llvm.org/t/rfc-upstreaming-the-pisa-backen...

swerner 3d ago
To my knowledge, SPIR-V on Intel will stay, and be it only because it’s part of the OpenCL and Vulkan standards.
- my123 3d ago
  Yeah talking about the (vendor-preferred) compute part here Vulkan's SPIR-V dialect is substantially different from the OpenCL one, notably with the former having structured control flow. They're incompatible between each other.
  - swerner 3d ago
    Yes, unfortunately. Otherwise we could just implement all of SYCL and OpenCL on top of Vulkan and live happily ever after.

bigyabai 3d ago

I'm talking about holistic efforts like OpenCL, and standards that would be equivalent to Nvidia's "Compute Capability" versioning. The basic underlying tech can be agreed on, but Apple/AMD/Intel all have different GPU priorities that limit their ability to agree on a CUDA-adjacent hardware platform.

swerner 3d ago
What do you mean by holistic? SYCL is an open versioned standard that allows for vendor specific extensions. The problem is not that there isn’t a proper standard, the problem is that many hardware vendors - or software developers simply don’t want to adopt it. Intel (via Codeplay) was handing it out on a silver platter - Nvidia on SYCL, full top chain, and people still wouldn’t want it.
- bigyabai 3d ago
  Isn't OneAPI a good example of the problem, alongside Mojo/ONNX/TensorRT? The industry doesn't need a fifteenth competing standard. They need hardware buy-in. By holistic, I mean hardware architecture cooperation. Nvidia can hold onto their lead forever if GPU designers fight over what a GPGPU hardware baseline looks like. The current ecosystem fragmentation is not competitive, and future fragmentation probably wouldn't work either. I think the fastest way to kill Nvidia would be a hardware consortium.
  - swerner 3d ago
    The problem with OneAPI is naming. It leads people to believe that is another competing standard where in fact is is simply just an implementation of a standard compliant SYCL compiler. If it just had been named “Intel SYCL compiler”, similar to the existing and accepted Intel OpenCL compiler, it would have been easier. What would you expect the hardware consortium to coordinate on? Unified ISA?
    - my123 3d ago
      oneAPI is effectively an Intel-only platform not a standard. Yes they have implementations on top of CUDA but they're maintained by... Intel. They didn't get buy-in for cross-vendor collaboration
      - swerner 3d ago
        They were maintained by Codeplay - paid for my Intel. Nvidia can make contributions anytime they want, and here is the problem: Nvidia does not want to. Until each vendor starts pitching in with contributing their backend to an open standard, you will have to rely on others doing it for them.