> It is also pushed a lot by Intel for FPGA, which probably scare even more NVidia.
These tools aren't available for the wide majority of developers, and are still exceptionally difficult to use and maintain without hardware engineers. I'm going to assume you haven't used FPGAs at all? The ones that can compete at the same tasks for GPUs are not as easily available in terms of price, volume, or even over-the-counter availability (be prepared to ask for a lot of quotes), and the tools have only become more accessible very recently -- such as Intel slashing the FPGA OpenCL licensing costs, and Dell EMC shipping them in pre-configured rack units.
> Nvidia only introduced the possibility of having runtime compilation as a preview in Cuda 7
In the mean time, Nvidia also completely dominated the market by actually producing many working middleware libraries and integrations, a solid and working programming model, and continuously refining and delivering on core technology and GPU upgrades. Maybe those things matter more than runtime compilation and speculative claims about peak performance...
> The "single source" argument is completely overrated.
Even new Khronos standards like SYCL (built on OpenCL, and which does look promising, and I'm hoping AMD delivers a toolchain after they get MIOpen more fleshed out) are moving to the single-source model. It's not even that much better, really, but development friction and cost of entry matters more than anything, and Nvidia understood this from day one. They understood it with GameWorks, as well. They plant specialist engineers "in the field" to accelerate the development and adoption of their tech, and they're very good at it.
This is because their core focus is hardware and selling hardware; it's thus in their interest to release "free" tools that require low-effort to buy into, do as much dirty integration work as possible, and basically give people free engineering power -- because it drives their hardware sales. They basically subsidize their software stack in order to drive GPUs.
> Furthermore, you can have single source in OpenCL putting the code in strings.
These tools aren't available for the wide majority of developers, and are still exceptionally difficult to use and maintain without hardware engineers. I'm going to assume you haven't used FPGAs at all? The ones that can compete at the same tasks for GPUs are not as easily available in terms of price, volume, or even over-the-counter availability (be prepared to ask for a lot of quotes), and the tools have only become more accessible very recently -- such as Intel slashing the FPGA OpenCL licensing costs, and Dell EMC shipping them in pre-configured rack units.
> Nvidia only introduced the possibility of having runtime compilation as a preview in Cuda 7
In the mean time, Nvidia also completely dominated the market by actually producing many working middleware libraries and integrations, a solid and working programming model, and continuously refining and delivering on core technology and GPU upgrades. Maybe those things matter more than runtime compilation and speculative claims about peak performance...
> The "single source" argument is completely overrated.
Even new Khronos standards like SYCL (built on OpenCL, and which does look promising, and I'm hoping AMD delivers a toolchain after they get MIOpen more fleshed out) are moving to the single-source model. It's not even that much better, really, but development friction and cost of entry matters more than anything, and Nvidia understood this from day one. They understood it with GameWorks, as well. They plant specialist engineers "in the field" to accelerate the development and adoption of their tech, and they're very good at it.
This is because their core focus is hardware and selling hardware; it's thus in their interest to release "free" tools that require low-effort to buy into, do as much dirty integration work as possible, and basically give people free engineering power -- because it drives their hardware sales. They basically subsidize their software stack in order to drive GPUs.
> Furthermore, you can have single source in OpenCL putting the code in strings.
This is a joke argument, right?