AMD GPUs Now ‘Indirectly” Support NVIDIA CUDA Libraries With ROCm Using ZLUDA

AMD GPU owners can now effortlessly run CUDA libraries and apps within ROCm through the use of ZLUDA, an Open-Source library that effectively ports NVIDIA CUDA apps over to ROCm that does not require code adaption.

AMD ROCm Now Supports NVIDIA CUDA Libraries Using Open-Source "ZLUDA", Works Across All GPUs From The Red Team

The practice of "transitioning" codebases from one project/language to the other is common since it allows developers to code to access a wider "arsenal" of features and makes maintenance easier. In this case, however, an interesting development has occurred since Team Red has apparently hastened its efforts of porting the CUDA platform to run it with AMD's ROCm but contacted a developer who has already been involved in a similar implementation.

Related Story NVIDIA Back On Earth After Briefly Beating Alphabet, Amazon On Stock Market

Phoronix reports that AMD's ROCm magic now supports CUDA APIs in a "workaround" method, which involves utilizing ZLUDA, an open-source porting project designed originally to facilitate NVIDIA CUDA support on Intel GPUs. While ZLUDA offered intriguing possibilities in the domain of code porting, it faced technical and practical challenges that ultimately halted its development, especially when it came to the interest of companies such as Intel at that time. However, the developer behind it, Andrzej Janik, was contacted by AMD for a pretty exciting experiment back in 2022, the results of which are now finally evident.

Based on extensive testing by Phoronix, it is disclosed that ZLUDA "almost" runs perfectly with AMD's Radeon GPUs on with ROCm utilizing NVIDIA's CUDA-loaded libraries. Moreover, it didn't require any changes to the existing code either. Despite the project's development getting halted due to AMD's apparent backout, the developer was kind enough to open-source the work after he met the deadline, which made it possible for Phoronix to test out to see what it brought onboard.

Since code porting opened up