AMD “SSG” API Manual: Using a 2TB Solid State Drive with the AMD SSG GPU [pdf]

http://pro.radeon.com/_downloads/SSG_API_User_Manual%20v1.01.pdf

by dragontamer • 9 years ago

22 17 9 years ago

pro.radeon.com

I heard about this mysterious "Solid State GPU" around the internet, so I looked around for how to actually use it. Unfortunately, the $7000ish price tag is a bit too high for me to personally invest into, but the entire concept of making files on the GPU directly is intriguing. I'm curious if anyone has done anything with this hardware yet.

The manual is relatively straight forward, it shows 3 vendor-API extensions to OpenCL, OpenGL, and DirectX which allows the programmer to create files on the GPU. AMD markets this GPU as being able to play 8k video or perhaps do some kind of huge memory computation (without ever being bottlenecked by the PCIe bus).

EDIT: There's a second, shorter "device driver" manual which shows how the card works. Apparently, there are 4 NVMe SSDs on board the GPU.

http://pro.radeon.com/_downloads/SSG_Driver_Installer_Guide....

testrun• 9 years ago

Interesting concept, downside is it is only available for Windows 10.

tedivm• 9 years ago

Well that's one way to destroy any chances of this gpu being useful for machine learning.

erikj• 9 years ago

Intel's Larrabee actually ran FreeBSD with a proper filesystem and everything. You could telnet into your GPU, install your own API implementation, pretty cool stuff: http://tomforsyth1000.github.io/blog.wiki.html#%5B%5BWhy%20d...

wessorh• 9 years ago

If it worked on linux I would consider working with the device. Windows is a non-starter.

dragontamer4• 9 years ago

Its really odd that AMD is pushing so strongly with Open Source Linux Drivers / Open Source Vulkan Drivers / ROCm and then they come out with a $7000-card that doesn't work on Linux.

With that said, their "standard Vega" chips: the WX 9100, Vega Frontier, and the MI25 seem to work with Linux. Its just that this "SSG" is a $7000 anomaly.

Most likely, some big corporate customer wanted this card for maybe Adobe products (Photoshop? Premier?) or maybe 3d effects like Maya. Considering that AMD's "test product" was an older SSG "Developer Edition" a few years ago, clearly some big customer wanted this card, and clearly wanted it on Windows.

bitL2• 9 years ago

I guess it's a bleeding edge stuff if you want to avoid GPU being bottlenecked by PCIe transfer during computations, and their SW expertise is likely better on Windows. Even with the crazy SW hiring AMD does right now, it might take some time until Linux catches up.

cameldrv• 9 years ago

Software over there seems like it must be a total mess. There is a pretty good sized market for people training DL models that Nvidia currently owns completely that they have not yet entered simply because they haven't made Tensorflow and Pytorch work with ROCm. Even the ROCm web pages are amateurish and appear to have virtually no work behind them.

Seriously, it's three very good developers and a few months of work that's holding them back from maybe a hundred million in sales, and at least 20 billion in their stock valuation from being perceived as being in the DL game.

posterboy• 9 years ago

maybe it just doesn't work well enough, yet. would be a pr decision to leave it out if i consider the price.

AMDGfxManager• 9 years ago

Support for linux was added recently.

You can the info here

http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/AMDGPU-Pro-Dr...

http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/Radeon-PRO-SS...

mannyk7• 9 years ago

Dropped to ~$4600 now. https://www.tweaktown.com/news/59728/amds-new-radeon-pro-ssg...

angry_octet• 9 years ago

If they had a regular CPU on board too this would make more sense. But this could be useful for some volumetric work, like oil & gas visualisation. Maybe parallel database stuff too, but lots of porting. Just can't see what bottleneck it is fixing apart from super high res uncompressed video.

AMD “SSG” API Manual: Using a 2TB Solid State Drive with the AMD SSG GPU [pdf]

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