Monday, October 2nd 2023
Microsoft Tech Chief Prefers Using NVIDIA AI GPUs, Keeping Tabs on AMD Alternatives
Kevin Scott, Microsoft's chief technology officer was interviewed at last week's Code Conference (organized by Vox Media), where he was happy to reveal that his company is having an easier time acquiring Team Green's popular HPC GPU hardware: "Demand was far exceeding the supply of GPU capacity that the whole ecosystem could produce...That is resolving. It's still tight, but it's getting better every week, and we've got more good news ahead of us than bad on that front, which is great." Microsoft is investing heavily into its internal artificial intelligence endeavors and external interests alike (they are a main backer of OpenAI's ChatGPT system). Having a healthy budget certainly helps, but Scott has previously described his experience in this field as "a terrible job" spanning five years of misery (as of May 2023).
Last week's follow-up conversation on-stage in Dana Point, California revealed that conditions have improved since springtime: "It's easier now than when we talked last time." The improved supply circumstances have made his "job of adjudicating these very gnarly conflicts less terrible." Industry reports have Microsoft secretly working on proprietary AI chips with an unnamed partner—CNBC pinpointed Arm as a likely candidate—Scott acknowledged that something is happening behind-the-scenes but it will not be ready imminently: "I'm not confirming anything, but I will say that we've got a pretty substantial silicon investment that we've had for years...And the thing that we will do is we'll make sure that we're making the best choices for how we build these systems, using whatever options we have available. And the best option that's been available during the last handful of years has been NVIDIA."
Despite outlining a major reliance on the market leader, Scott's department has kept an eye on developments chez AMD: "They're making increasingly compelling GPU offerings that I think are going to become more and more important to the marketplace in the coming years." Scott declined to comment on how easy or difficult it would be to integrate AMD Accelerators into the current Microsoft infrastructure, but kept possibilities open with an ending quip: "competition is certainly a very good thing." The mere mention of potentially utilizing Team Red technologies resulted in some buoyant US market numbers—CNBC reported that: "Shares of AMD rose almost 5% Thursday, a day after Microsoft's technology chief said the chipmaker is bolstering its position in artificial intelligence, where NVIDIA dominates."
Sources:
CNBC #1, Wccftech, CNBC #2
Last week's follow-up conversation on-stage in Dana Point, California revealed that conditions have improved since springtime: "It's easier now than when we talked last time." The improved supply circumstances have made his "job of adjudicating these very gnarly conflicts less terrible." Industry reports have Microsoft secretly working on proprietary AI chips with an unnamed partner—CNBC pinpointed Arm as a likely candidate—Scott acknowledged that something is happening behind-the-scenes but it will not be ready imminently: "I'm not confirming anything, but I will say that we've got a pretty substantial silicon investment that we've had for years...And the thing that we will do is we'll make sure that we're making the best choices for how we build these systems, using whatever options we have available. And the best option that's been available during the last handful of years has been NVIDIA."
48 Comments on Microsoft Tech Chief Prefers Using NVIDIA AI GPUs, Keeping Tabs on AMD Alternatives
Not too long ago they broke the HDMI Audio driver. Instant BSOD upon access. That was fun to troubleshoot.
But just last night we had another totally isolated case here didn't we? Quite flawless, just ask @faye :rolleyes:
The irony is incredible.Also I hate to burst this wonderful theory, but I am an AMD user. My purchase chain is even trackable via this forum, friggin lol.
As they say the early bird gets the worm :laugh:
Why? Why even dx12 etc games? No one knows. It's a mystery that is more likely to get swept under the rug than solved sadly.That's horrible because a lot of end users will play fanboy and rather than admit there is an issue, deny it until it (doesn't) go away.
I still have 10-bit colour which works with triple buffering without any problems, though.
It's an odd problem and on its own not a big deal... but thats the thing. Go off the beaten path at all and the driver quality differences will become night and day in no time.
This is a less unique problem than AMD's HDR with triple buffering issue (just disable triple buffering, what's the big deal?), but I'm still not bashing Nvidia for it. Blaming a manufacturer of not sorting out a problem that maybe 0.5% of the user base is concerned about is childish.
hdmi 2.1 Atmos dropouts is honestly the only bug I experienced with my time on nvidia. With amd I could (and have) make quite a list. I actually had a .txt list with workarounds and mitigations at one point, but as I'm mainly on linux now it got sent to the square bin a bit back.
AMD does have strengths (a way better OSS driver is one of them) but they are not in the same league at all if you use the binary windows driver.That sounds like an edid compliance issue more than a driver issue. Lots of tvs get the edid wrong though, that is why CRU exists.It isn't but the fact that an opengl setting impacts anything NOT opengl is sort of a troubling sign of something being very messy internally.
Of course, AMD is NOT sitting on their ass by any means. Even I will admit their DX11/OGL driver performance gains have been great recently, even if only because they had been neglected for literal decades and someone finaly noticed...
Older nvidia drivers functioned similar but they had a big "strict compliance" push recently for whatever reason. It also broke some displayport to hdmi adapters before they whitelisted them.
My guess is 4k@60hz 8bpp rgb is just borderline enough that you get away with it? Really they should use standard lcd timings though.
My point is that there are off the beaten path bugs in every driver, it's not specific to AMD. If you don't want any bugs, you shouldn't buy/build a computer.
PS: if you use CRU odds are you can get that working on nvidia, too.
Like I said, my experience with AMD and Intel isn't buggy in this regard. Stuff just works that doesn't with Nvidia. That's it.
What's CRU?
It's just an example to show that on contrary to common belief, even Nvidia's drivers aren't perfect.Just done it, it gives me this:
On the other hand:
Something doesn't add up.
The dropdown and refresh rate are the important entries. Then OK-out of the program and reboot. If it does not work, it may cause you to need to boot into safe mode to reset the displays, I can walk you through that if needed (It's just the reset.exe contained inside the zip).
It should work if the display really supports HDMI 2.0.
With that EDID I'm surprised even AMD works frankly, though. I hate to do this to you, but... are you sure you are rendering in full chroma? If you aren't colored text will be awful.
Does this test pattern look clear and crisp throughout, at 100% zoom?