[HN Gopher] AMD ROCm Software Blogs
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       AMD ROCm Software Blogs
        
       Author : jrepinc
       Score  : 95 points
       Date   : 2024-02-23 18:28 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (rocm.blogs.amd.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (rocm.blogs.amd.com)
        
       | brucethemoose2 wrote:
       | Some of these are pretty good. The AITemplate Stable diffusion
       | demo, for instance, is a nice hidden gem (though I'm not sure if
       | it works on consumer hardware these days).
        
       | mcbuilder wrote:
       | With a little finagling, I was able to get ComfyUI working for my
       | AMD Cards. I purchased 7800XT with 16GB RAM and have been pretty
       | happy with its value. Getting around 9it/s for a simple SD 1.5
       | pipeline using 512x512 latent image. Not a speed beast, but
       | plenty fast to teach my kids about AI and run some local models.
        
         | tempest_ wrote:
         | I have automatic1111 working on my 7900xtx and it does alright.
         | 
         | Took some finagling to get it working with ROCM 6 and the
         | newest pytorch which I couldnt seem to coax invoke or comfy to
         | do
        
       | mikeweiss wrote:
       | When are we likely to see MI300 available for rent and what would
       | the cost per hour be?
        
         | photonbucket wrote:
         | Which companies that already rent out H100s would risk the ire
         | of nvidia providing them less capacity next time?
         | 
         | edit: It seems cudocompute and dataknox is willing to rent them
         | out
        
         | latchkey wrote:
         | Thanks for asking.
         | 
         | Soon! Estimated ship date is 2/29. Should arrive around 5 days
         | after that. We are going to fly to the data center, get the
         | boxes all set up and start to launch things.
         | 
         | Pricing is TBD since there isn't really a comparable and we
         | expect that since these GPUs are so new, people will want to do
         | a lot of testing before they are willing to commit. Therefore,
         | we are looking for partnerships over just customers.
         | 
         | Disclosure: Check out my profile, I'm building a white glove
         | bare metal service that is focused on only top end AMD compute
         | and specifically the MI300x (and future generations). Feel free
         | to reach out via email.
        
           | brucethemoose2 wrote:
           | We can't quite afford an 8x bare metal instance, but I am
           | pinning this for later.
           | 
           | Think ya'll will ever offer single MI300X instances?
        
             | latchkey wrote:
             | Yes! Like I said above, we fully expect people to be toe
             | dipping at first given how new this hardware is.
             | 
             | We offer single GPU access through a VM and PCIe pass
             | through. Either we can provide you a basic Ubuntu VM with
             | everything loaded into it (with regards to drivers and
             | such) or you can send us your VM image and set it up
             | however you like. Then you'll just have direct ssh access
             | into it.
        
               | brucethemoose2 wrote:
               | OK that sounds lovely. We are but a poor startup, but I
               | am hoping we can _afford_ to reach out to y 'all soon.
               | Maybe even share workflows/stuff that works for us. If
               | some ML (unsloth? lorax? sglang?) work on a Mi300 with a
               | little tinkering, that would be spectacular.
        
         | mlyle wrote:
         | MI300 is early access in Azure right now --
         | https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-high-performanc...
        
           | latchkey wrote:
           | This sadly doesn't mean that they are actually available. I
           | haven't seen anyone saying they are using them. Obviously,
           | that doesn't mean much either, but I'd at least hope to see
           | someone post some performance benchmarks.
        
             | mlyle wrote:
             | Early access means NDA.
        
               | latchkey wrote:
               | Well, that's no fun at all.
        
       | hiddencost wrote:
       | Waiting for this to work on windows.
       | 
       | My gaming machine is a windows machine, so that's where my GPU
       | is. Not willing to add a Linux partition, and the "Linux in
       | Windows" support doesn't work with AMD gpus.
        
         | tester756 wrote:
         | We've came to the sad state of ecosystem where tools work by
         | default on Linux and rarely on Windows
        
           | rubatuga wrote:
           | Don't fret, Microsoft and AMD are working together, Windows
           | recently added NPU usage to Task Manager:
           | https://www.extremetech.com/computing/windows-task-
           | manager-w...
        
           | Zambyte wrote:
           | Is it sad? It seems like the natural conclusion of locking
           | down your software and making it (both technically and
           | legally) hard to extend.
        
           | PeterisP wrote:
           | The nVidia stack seems to work on Windows in various ways, so
           | it's up to AMD to be competitive with respect to
           | compatibility.
        
         | Aaronstotle wrote:
         | You could add another ssd and have that be a linux distro. Its
         | not a partition per se, since the whole drive is dedicated to
         | it.
         | 
         | I have that on my PC and I like it a lot
        
           | smallmancontrov wrote:
           | This is the way. Using a partition is just begging for an
           | update (Windows or Linux) to kill your boot. Convert the
           | amount of time you would spend periodically fixing a broken
           | boot into a dollar amount and suddenly having a separate SSD
           | looks dirt cheap.
           | 
           | See also: fixing software bluetooth issues, especially those
           | caused by dual boot, by using an external 3.5mm or toslink ->
           | bluetooth transmitter. I use a B03Pro and haven't had to
           | fight bluetooth pairing / quality / microphone issues in
           | years, despite dual booting.
           | 
           | Software sucks. Replace it with dedicated hardware and your
           | life will suck less.
        
             | tombert wrote:
             | > Using a partition is just begging for an update (Windows
             | or Linux) to kill your boot.
             | 
             | Everyone says that, but I really haven't found that to be
             | true in the last 12 years or so. I dual-booted Windows and
             | Arch Linux for multiple years (2014-2017), doing plenty of
             | system updates. I never really had any boot issues caused
             | by an update. The only time I ever had any boot issues is
             | when I was mucking with Grub configs and I didn't really
             | know what I was doing.
             | 
             | Maybe I've just been lucky, but I've had a ton of
             | computers, many of which I've dual-booted with partitions,
             | and it feels like a pretty streamlined process that doesn't
             | seem to break.
        
               | smallmancontrov wrote:
               | My lived experience is just wildly different from yours
               | and stretches from shortly after 9/11 to about 2019 when
               | I swore off partitions.
               | 
               | > The only time I ever had any boot issues is when I was
               | mucking with Grub configs and I didn't really know what I
               | was doing.
               | 
               | Why were you mucking with Grub configs? Because something
               | went wrong.
               | 
               | Why did you know what you were doing? Because it was far
               | from the first time something had gone wrong.
               | 
               | Beware the rose-tinted glasses.
        
               | tombert wrote:
               | > Why were you mucking with Grub configs? Because
               | something went wrong.
               | 
               | Because I needed to enable a driver, actually, and
               | something on the Arch forums or AskUbuntu said that I
               | could enable it in a boot parameter in my grub config. I
               | cannot remember the specific driver, but it was
               | absolutely not to fix any boot partition issues.
               | 
               | Also, I explicitly stated that I _didn 't_ know what I
               | was doing in the comment you're replying to.
               | 
               | Please don't get me wrong; I really don't have any rose-
               | tinted glasses in regards to Linux. I'm basically a Mac
               | person now; my work computer is a Mac M3, my home
               | computer is a MacBook i9. I do have NixOS dual-booted on
               | my personal computer, and it's been a nightmare to get
               | all the drivers working. Just kidding, they still don't
               | work, because the Linux drivers for the T2 MacBooks are
               | garbage. There's a good chance that I will be nuking the
               | Linux partitions this weekend in all honesty. The only
               | thing that runs Linux full time in my house is my server,
               | which runs a NixOS install on a tmpfs root.
               | 
               | It's not like I have a ton of love for Linux, if I did I
               | would probably still be using it for my daily driver, but
               | I just haven't had the dual-boot-partition issues that
               | people complain about. Maybe it's because I so rarely
               | _actually went_ to Windows, but grub more or less did the
               | job.
               | 
               | I will acknowledge that getting Linux installed in a
               | secureboot environment continues to be a pain, however.
        
               | smallmancontrov wrote:
               | Windows is usually the side that causes problems, so if
               | you stayed out of it or supervised the updates that could
               | be why.
               | 
               | The most common killer combo is that Windows tries an
               | update, reboots as part of it, and the reboot
               | unexpectedly (from Windows point of view) goes into
               | Linux. Some time later you log into Windows, it looks at
               | the clock, realizes the reboot didn't go as planned, and
               | flips its shit into some kind of hare-brained recovery
               | process that winds up overwriting your bootloader with
               | something that can't load Linux and can't load Windows
               | either. It doesn't happen every time so clearly there are
               | heuristics, but it definitely happens some of the time
               | because the dead windows loader it leaves behind is
               | distinctive and unmistakable. That said, I've seen both
               | Ubuntu and Fedora updates that automatically fixed the
               | bootloader until it was broken, so it's wrong to
               | fingerpoint too hard here.
               | 
               | The upshot is that "leave bootloader on boot drive alone"
               | isn't part of the implicit operating system social
               | contract, but "leave bootloader on non-boot drive alone"
               | is, so you can solve a big hairy software problem with a
               | small hardware investment.
        
               | arein3 wrote:
               | I currently have dual boot on my laptop.
               | 
               | It is not straightforward, you have to disable windows
               | fastboot, and some windows updates might mess stuff up.
               | Sometimes weird behaviour happens with the bootloader,
               | but it might be bad configuration.
               | 
               | For the peace of mind I would not use dual boot. Perfect
               | way would be to have windows and linux on separate drives
               | and having a easy to use switch.
        
               | pjmlp wrote:
               | You were lucky, there is a reason why when VMWare
               | Workstation and Virtual Box became good enough, around
               | 2010, I never used partitions any longer.
               | 
               | The blame has been more on the Windows side than Linux,
               | and special OEM partitions on laptops, nevertheless I no
               | longer had to reinstall my computer, or try to rescue
               | boot partitions.
        
           | therealfiona wrote:
           | If you want to not be moving SATA cables, or worse, swapping
           | NVME drives, you're still having to modify the boot loader,
           | which is probably what OP worries about. I've had a bad time
           | trying to dual boot due too boot loaders not working the way
           | the manual says they should.
        
         | renewiltord wrote:
         | Just use a live USB. New USB-3.0 external drives are fast. Then
         | you can just switch boot device when BIOS starts and switch OS
         | without needing chainloader. GRUB very stable these days, but
         | if you don't want any hassle at all, this will be completely
         | separate.
        
       | vagab0nd wrote:
       | Looks like tinycorp is shipping a box with 6x 7900 soon.
       | 
       | https://twitter.com/__tinygrad__/status/1760988080754856210
        
         | jauntywundrkind wrote:
         | I wonder what the PCIe AER difficulties he refers to are.
         | 
         | Switching from HIP to HSA is an interesting turn of events. I
         | thought HSA was dead or mostly a buzzword. The Wikipedia
         | article is short on dates, but it feels like the HSA was trying
         | to be a thing a decade ago.
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterogeneous_System_Architect...
        
         | WaxProlix wrote:
         | 6x 7900 XTX according to the link. That's a lot of horsepower.
        
       | superkuh wrote:
       | Just watch out. Sometimes AMD's ROCm support for their consumer
       | GPU can be only 4 years (like the RX 580). So if you're not
       | buying cutting edge on release day that means you have ~2-3 years
       | max of ROCm support. And then you have to use opencl and let me
       | assure you: it's not fun or widespread.
        
         | kkielhofner wrote:
         | It also took AMD a year to officially support ROCm with the
         | 7900xtx. IME it's still rough because ROCm is fundamentally
         | rough but non-officially supported cards are even rougher.
        
       | montebicyclelo wrote:
       | Guessing there are a few of us in a position where we are
       | frustrated with our past experiences with ROCm software, (e.g.
       | being awful to install, in the past there were long guides with
       | loads of steps to follow, and not the greatest clarity /
       | simplicity in the instructions, and the only option they
       | suggested if you messed it up was to reinstall the operating
       | system, and there were multiple guides / pages and it wasn't
       | clear which was the latest one, and then it only supported older
       | versions of tensorflow / pytorch / jax, and only supported recent
       | / higher end cards, etc. -- it may be better now, this is my
       | experience from I guess a few years ago); but who at the same
       | time recognise that it would be great for GPU compute to be more
       | affordable, and for there to be good competitors to Nvidia.
        
         | latchkey wrote:
         | I don't think that anyone is trying to whitewash the past. All
         | we can do is look to the future. Fact is that the demand for
         | AI, has forced their hand. As I see it, AMD is trying to clean
         | up their act as quickly as possible, but change of this
         | magnitude, isn't going to happen over night.
         | 
         | These sorts of updates to things, like their blogs, are baby
         | steps in the right direction.
        
           | montebicyclelo wrote:
           | Thanks, I do agree with this, and I am rooting for them.
           | Would love to find out at some point that it's turned around.
        
           | hackerlight wrote:
           | Andrew Ng says ROCm has improved a lot in the last year and
           | is no longer as bad as people make it out to be
        
       | vanillax wrote:
       | https://forum.level1techs.com/t/mi25-stable-diffusions-100-h...
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4J_KYp0NGM
       | 
       | interesting stuff with mi25
        
         | latchkey wrote:
         | MI25 is dropped from ROCm supported list from 4.5.x onwards.
        
       | dang wrote:
       | Lists don't make great HN submissions:
       | https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor....
       | It would be better to pick the most interesting element in the
       | list and submit that instead.
        
         | latchkey wrote:
         | hi dang, I think in most cases you are correct, however in this
         | case it is subtly acknowledging the general change that AMD is
         | making with regards to overall their focus and support of ROCm
         | (which has been a complaint in the past), more than any single
         | blog post on the topic. I think that is what is spawning the
         | discussion here now.
        
       | Lichtso wrote:
       | If you think about doing something using ROCm, read these first
       | to get a feeling for what to expect:
       | 
       | https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/a9tjge/amd_rocm_hcc_pr...
       | 
       | https://www.reddit.com/r/ROCm/
        
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       (page generated 2024-02-23 23:01 UTC)