Editorial AMD is Becoming a Software Company. Here's the Plan

[Nordic]

With Windows becoming more intrusive maybe it's time for AMD to partner to produce a serious alternative desktop? Linux + Steam + AMD = The future of desktop gaming?

This already exists. Valve has made Linux gaming viable. 90% or more games on steam work out of the box and perform well on Linux. No technical knowledge necessary. You don't need to install and drivers on Linux. AMD just works. AMD doesn't need to do a thing because their Linux drivers are amazing.

If you want to give Linux a try, check out EndeavorOS or Nobara. If you want a steam deck like experience get Bazzite.

 

[rv8000]

If AMD can't make good drivers for their own GPUs, how can anyone trust them to be a software company?

Are you still trying to crossfire some 3850s or something? “Bad drivers” hasn’t really been a thing for 2+ years now. Strictly from a UI, accessibility, and unification standpoint, the actual drivers AMD provide are much better than what Nvidia offers when it comes to gaming; the Nvidia Beta APP is still an abomination lacking feature parity to AMD.

Both vendors will still have bugs, but no need to perpetuate the myth.

 

[AusWolf]

With Windows becoming more intrusive maybe it's time for AMD to partner to produce a serious alternative desktop? Linux + Steam + AMD = The future of desktop gaming?

Combine that with affordable hardware, and I'm game!

 

[Vayra86]

tl;dr right decision, wrong reason, way wrong timing.

This is the story of AMD's life unfortunately

With Windows becoming more intrusive maybe it's time for AMD to partner to produce a serious alternative desktop? Linux + Steam + AMD = The future of desktop gaming?

I think AMD has the gaming market captured in its own way. Those handhelds we got now are also driven by AMD and they're neat. Real neat.

Still, then you think of marketing and you wonder why AMD's logo doesn't briefly appear when you boot up your Deck, right?

AMD should have been all over this. They're still not presenting themselves as the gaming hardware company, I don't get it at all. They have everything except any Intel PC on lockdown! They didn't follow up proper on the RT push - not even by saying loudly and repeatedly that it ain't ready and they're biding their time. They just don't say anything, there was this one burp many moons ago about them waiting for RT to appear in the midrange... and here we are. They're grossly behind. You'd think they'd have taken that time proper to get up to speed, or otherwise have a marketing story why its not required.

None of all that. Now they're becoming a software company. And they'll make lots of software I have no doubt. But then there's selling it.

 

[TechLurker]

I just want them to succeed and bring more competition instead of still being stuck "chasing" the lead. Improving software would help go a long way; moreso if they can democratize it with more open-source solutions that can still be competitive. Heck, they already have majority control in the console and gaming portable space and could leverage improved software to make it much easier to port games onto AMD and Linux faster and more easily. Aside from Sony's special memory chip, there aren't exactly any ultra-proprietary elements in consoles that should be held back from the PC space.

I also wonder if they'll start leveraging their Xilinx IP to provide dedicated RT/AI capabilities that can be repurposed when not in use for gaming or rendering.

 

[Vayra86]

This honestly feels like something that should have started the moment AMD acquired ATI. And then they wasted that momentum on weird initiatives like pushing APUs as the “future of heterogeneous computing” and making GPUs with massive compute potential (higher than that of NVIDIA at the time), but with absolutely no software stack to even support it. It’s good that they finally woken up to the reality that apart from console chips the Radeon division was essentially a dead weight stuck in limbo for a decade now, but they have to actually commit to transforming themselves this time around and prepare contingencies other than banking heavily on the AI fad.

Yeah at the time that whole strategy did sound like a plan though right? This software company thing strikes me as similar. It feels similarly unfocused, not really worked out, just general ideas flying over the table there about some sort of new direction while keeping the old. Everyone feels that something is needed and that it is probably found 'in software'. But there's no strategy involved any deeper than 'we need to cover this space'. No shit, sherlock.

You know what it reminds me of? Volkswagen 'switching to the EV'. They've produced some okay EV's but nothing special in any sort of way, while the competition is racing past them left and right, both in the West and East. They're still making ICE's, still spending tons of resources on it, still really not changing anything and thinking they can do EV's 'on the side'. It really spells lack of commitment, and I think AMD is guilty of the same thing. Its the story of their GPU architectures' lives too. Good start, sometimes a good followup, and then things stall again. The only space where they keep their commitment (renewed...) is CPU.

 

[dragontamer5788]

Yeah it's very much a damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario. My biggest fear is that 2029 rolls around, AMD has finally got some decent software, the AI bubble bursts, all the software engineers get let go and the software gets outsourced, and the company squanders the goodwill they managed to build in that intervening half-decade. That would completely destroy any future possibility of getting into businesses, and probably end AMD as a company.

tl;dr right decision, wrong reason, way wrong timing.

Aside from NVidia, who is even competing in this space?

Software wise, its Vulkan and DirectX12Ultimate for up-to-date graphics programming... and of course CUDA. Intel has OneAPI going but who knows how long that will take for Intel to cancel / change methodologies??

AMD ROCm, as bad as it is compared to NVidia, continues to improve. Further investments into ROCm push AMD ahead of everyone else. NVidia hardware continues to grow in price far exceeding the hardware, the only thing holding back AMD is the software.

The "AI stuff" for coding isn't even that much of an effort. Port some GPU kernels to TensorFlow or whatever else is popular in the AI Field. The bulk of the infrastructure to get ROCm loaded and running is kernel device drivers, the llvm clang compiler, a whole slew of infrastructure libraries and compilers + assemblers + linkers for AMD's CDNA and RDNA GPU instruction sets.

 

[Sound_Card]

Are you still trying to crossfire some 3850s or something? “Bad drivers” hasn’t really been a thing for 2+ years now. Strictly from a UI, accessibility, and unification standpoint, the actual drivers AMD provide are much better than what Nvidia offers when it comes to gaming; the Nvidia Beta APP is still an abomination lacking feature parity to AMD.

Both vendors will still have bugs, but no need to perpetuate the myth.

I had crossfire HD 6950's and not a single problem.

This is a great move by AMD. If they can unify their hardware through software, this would be a major advantage over the other companies. More importantly, they need to execute on releasing products and focus on being first to market for once.

 

[AdmiralThrawn]

The underdogs.

AMD is a multibillion dollar company. They are not underdogs.

 

[dragontamer5788]

AMD is a multibillion dollar company. They are not underdogs.

NVidia is a 3 Trillion dollar company and has very few investments into CPUs.

AMD is mostly a CPU company (by revenue) with a sizable GPU side-project and is only worth Billions. They're absolutely the underdogs in this scenario. AMD's GPUs are 2nd best in the world but 2nd best is still much much smaller than NVidia in the great scheme of things.

"Multibillion" is surprisingly passe in today's economy. We're in the age of Trillions.

 

[DaemonForce]

I get that there's a HUGE dropoff after #1 and that's a pretty ridiculous thing even in thought.
I haven't had AMD driver issues in ~6 years but tuning for stability has been a nightmare.
Gotta get things exactly right, which is also insane to think about.
When AMD starts to hyperfocus on the software side of things, the rest will come very quickly.
Everything we do in this computer space has us marked as users first. We need new software.

 

[Ravenas]

Thank you for the post. Great information.

 

[Neo_Morpheus]

I hope that AMD continues to push open source because I frankly do not want even more features in games that can only be used on a specific video card brand.

Same here but given how we “suddenly” went from fight lock-in tech (PhysX, Hairworks, GameWorks, etc) to “all worship” DLSS i dont blame them for trying.
Hell, the local Ngreedia fanbois love to go after anyone that dares stating this or saying “I support FSR for the greater good of sustaining an open PC gaming platform “

This a million times over. Unfortunately, I read the opposite in articles like this one.

Please see above.

If AMD can't make good drivers for their own GPUs, how can anyone trust them to be a software company?

This is really sad coming from a staff member that should know better. The bad drivers is a lie, please stop spreading FUD.

If you want a steam deck like experience get Bazzite.

Also ChimeraOS, really nice experience.

And actually, the devs of both distros are working together in making both better.

Still, then you think of marketing and you wonder why AMD's logo doesn't briefly appear when you boot up your Deck, right?

I agree with you that they should do more, but i think one of the reasons why everyone loves to work with AMD is that they dont pull things like this.
But yes, they should at least, show their logo somewhere.

 

[ir_cow]

This is really sad coming from a staff member that should know better. The bad drivers is a lie, please stop spreading FUD.

So I'm not allowed to have independent thought? My personal experience with AMD drivers has been sub-par. Yes it is subjective, but it makes me question how well AMD will do in other ventures. I'm sure it's a different team of people, but it just looks bad on them.

 

[Makaveli]

This already exists. Valve has made Linux gaming viable. 90% or more games on steam work out of the box and perform well on Linux. No technical knowledge necessary. You don't need to install and drivers on Linux. AMD just works. AMD doesn't need to do a thing because their Linux drivers are amazing.

If you want to give Linux a try, check out EndeavorOS or Nobara. If you want a steam deck like experience get Bazzite.

Does that 90% include games with anti cheat?

So I'm not allowed to have independent thought? My personal experience with AMD drivers has been sub-par. Yes it is subjective, but it makes me question how well AMD will do in other ventures. I'm sure it's a different team of people, but it just looks bad on them.

It does go both ways i've been using ATI Radeons still the 64DDR model so like almost 20 years now and my experience has been above par.

I haven't had any major issues that I said you know what I need to switch.

 

[evernessince]

So I'm not allowed to have independent thought? My personal experience with AMD drivers has been sub-par. Yes it is subjective, but it makes me question how well AMD will do in other ventures. I'm sure it's a different team of people, but it just looks bad on them.

I don't think the issue he had was that you have an opinion but that you expressed it as a broadly applicable fact that AMD has bad drivers. If you are speaking for yourself you need to be verbose about it as in your case you are TPU staff. Had your first comment been "My person experience with AMD drives has been sub-par" is a good example of a measured comment but unfortunately in this case it's your 2nd stab at it. In addition, working for a company does come with some compromises in terms of free speech as your actions reflect on said company. If something could be considered inflammatory extra consideration should be taken and there's always the option of not commenting and letting whatever TPU's stance on a specific matter stand. I have seen quiet a few staff members express opinions as of late that do not align with TPUs own reviews or articles on the respective topics and often have only served to further inflame the comments section. If TPU doesn't already, it should have rules in regards staff member conduct in the forums / comments.

You could also hold your opinion but also acknowledge the strides AMD has taken in regards to their driver quality. The two are not mutually exclusive.

 

[ir_cow]

@evernessince TPU staff have independent thought. We can say whatever we please outside a review. Also not all staff are reviewers either. Remember that.

I didn't say TPU hates AMD and that is exactly what you are making it seem like.

 

[unwind-protect]

When was the last time that the AMD drivers caused memory corruption? I honestly don't know.

 

[Neo_Morpheus]

Does that 90% include games with anti cheat?

You know, given how many (maybe all?) anticheat software runs (ring 0 access in the windows kernel) I am actually ok that they dont run in Linux at all.

Some people way smarter than I have said that the anticheat software should be server side, not client side.

We have enough to worry in our systems to now have a program with absolute access to it.

 

[dir_d]

@W1zzard Great Article.
I do believe that AMD is late on this by many years but can still turn this around. I know that AMD wants to start at the high end but it would be nice if ROCm trickles down further than just the 7900XTX. I read higher up that the tinkers don't dabble on high end hardware and i agree. If AMD wants help "Open Source" they need to extend this down to the lower models so other can play with APIs for cheap.

On the topic of Marketing, like others have been stating if they can get Sony, Microsoft and Steam to splash screen the AMD logo even for 3 sec on boot it would help exponentially. This could help get rid of that stigma that's been around for ages and may bring in some more sales. Which in turn adds up to be able to add more software engineers in the long run.

 

[Neo_Morpheus]

would be nice if ROCm trickles down further than just the 7900XTX

I’m trying to find the post from an AMD employee, but the gist is that it does work on other AMD gpus (as old as Vega VII i think) but AMD itself hasnt “officially tested/certified” hence why are not listed.

Yes, I know, that’s completely BS on AMD part, but some have indeed got ROCm to work on other gpus besides the 7900 xtx.

 

[evernessince]

@evernessince TPU staff have independent thought. We can say whatever we please outside a review. Also not all staff are reviewers either. Remember that.

I didn't say TPU hates AMD and that is exactly what you are making it seem like.

I pointed out (with a whole lot of nuance that you aren't mentioning) that your actions reflect on TPU, particularly when your comments don't make it clear if it's a personal opinion or not.

I'm not trying to make it seem like anything, I pointed out the facts of the discussion thus far. If you think that your own words reflect badly on TPU, there's an easy solution. Condition your statements as personal ones or cool the rhetoric.

I'm hoping you take one of those options but given the malicious use of the lol emoji I'm not holding my breath.

 

[unwind-protect]

Well, the French government is interested in CUDA wrt abuse:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/french-antitrust-regulators-preparing-nvidia-charges-sources-say-2024-07-01/

Der erste Dominostein gegen Nvidias Dominanz: Frankreich prescht gegen CUDA

Nvidia kommt in einem Bericht der französischen Kartellbehörde schlecht weg. Angeblich werden bereits Maßnahmen vorbereitet.

www.heise.de

 

[ir_cow]

I'm hoping you take one of those options but given the malicious use of the lol emoji I'm not holding my breath.

I was laughing inside that you think staff views should always align with TPU reviews. That's is a bit extreme in my opinion.

If you want to attach "nuance" and made up rules to my original comment, that's on you.

 

[evernessince]

I was laughing inside that you think staff views should always align with TPU reviews. That's is a bit extreme in my opinion.

If you want to attach "nuance" and made up rules to my original comment, that's on you.

This was your original comment for reference:

If AMD can't make good drivers for their own GPUs, how can anyone trust them to be a software company?

I didn't attach nuance to your comment, I pointed out the complete lack of it. The "nuance" I had in my comment was recommendations as to how you could word it better but clearly you'd rather fight than consider constructive criticism.

"you think staff views should always align with TPU reviews" is simply a scarecrow argument on your part, not what I said. You are trying to strip my argument of context because you know such a statement doesn't stand when taken in whole.

"I was laughing inside" reacting with an emoji is an externalization.