VMD-L Mailing List

From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Tue Dec 06 2016 - 23:24:23 CST

Hi,
  I know that there are some very early CUDA implementations for AMD GPUs
exist (maybe still only prototype?), but to my knowledge no implementation
is far enough along to allow complex CUDA algorithms like what is in
VMD and NAMD to run on AMD GPUs yet. Last I heard from someone working on
one of those implementations, there are a few things that existing
AMD GPU hardware doesn't implement that we use in NAMD, for example.

In principle the hardware features I refer to are things one could
live without, but they would impact performance.

Before I would advise someone to spend any time on looking for this or trying
it, I would expect to see AMD making much more noise about this themselves.
The last thing I heard that was public information was their announcement
last year at SC'15:
  http://www.amd.com/en-us/press-releases/Pages/boltzmann-initiative-2015nov16.aspx

The only thing I have really heard since then was from someone working
on one of the prototype implementations asking about how to get around
CUDA features that weren't yet implemented so that they could start testing
our software. We responded, but I haven't heard anything since, so I would
guess we're probably still a ways out before something useful comes of this.

Cheers,
  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu

On Wed, Dec 07, 2016 at 10:29:44AM +0530, Harish Srinivasan wrote:
> Is it possible to install CUDA for VMD and NAMD if I am using an AMD R7
> GPU in my laptop. The operating system I am using is Ubuntu 14.04.4 (this
> has the upgraded HWE stack - with a kernel ~ 4.4).
> Thank you
> Harish 

-- 
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Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
University of Illinois, 405 N. Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/           Phone: 217-244-3349
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