Re: AW: vmd-l: AMD vs. nvidia support

From: Aron Broom (broomsday_at_gmail.com)
Date: Thu Dec 12 2013 - 09:10:52 CST

I've not used an AMD GPU for any calculations, but I have tried OpenCL
instead of CUDA with the OpenMM MD library, and in that case the
performance is comparable. So, at least the language is not limiting as it
once was. Would certainly be interesting to see how the performance
compares, I think the architectures are fairly different.

On Thu, Dec 12, 2013 at 2:05 AM, Norman Geist <
norman.geist_at_uni-greifswald.de> wrote:

> Jerome,
>
> as far as I know, without rewriting the NAMD code, you can't use it with
> AMD(ATI) GPUs. NAMD is written in CUDA which belongs to Nvidia. AMD cards
> won't run CUDA code. A language both types of GPUs work with is openCl. But
> CUDA is faster than openCl on Nvidia GPUs. So there can't barely be a
> person with experience in running namd on GPUs other than Nvidia.
>
> Norman Geist.
>
> > -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> > Von: owner-vmd-l_at_ks.uiuc.edu [mailto:owner-vmd-l_at_ks.uiuc.edu] Im
> > Auftrag von Jérôme Hénin
> > Gesendet: Mittwoch, 11. Dezember 2013 18:31
> > An: vmd
> > Betreff: vmd-l: AMD vs. nvidia support
> >
> > Hi everyone,
> >
> > Traditionally I used to favor nvidia GPUs over AMD for running VMD
> > under Linux, because the drivers were "better" (that is, they ran with
> > some glitches, but ran nonetheless). The landscape seems to be evolving
> > these days, and nvidia has notoriously antagonized the Linus crowd (or
> > was that Linux?) for its lack of cooperation, while AMD has been more
> > forthcoming. That was mostly a problem with open source support, but I
> > wonder if that also reflects in the quality of the proprietary drivers.
> >
> > So, it would be great to hear about the recent experiences of some
> > VMD/Linux users with AMD and nvidia support - both in terms of features
> > and performance.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Jerome
>
>
> ---
> Diese E-Mail ist frei von Viren und Malware, denn der avast! Antivirus
> Schutz ist aktiv.
> http://www.avast.com
>
>
>

-- 
Aron Broom M.Sc
PhD Student
Department of Chemistry
University of Waterloo

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.6 : Wed Dec 31 2014 - 23:22:00 CST