AMD Could Do DLSS Alternative with Radeon VII through DirectML API
There is an interesting development, as you know the GeForce RTX graphics cards have tensor cores, dedicated cores for optimizing and accelerating anything AI and Deep Learning. A spawn from that technology for gaming is DLSS, which NVIDIA is marketing strongly. With the October 2018 update for Windows 10, Microsoft has released the DirectML API for DirectX 12.
ML stands for Machine Learning - and makes it possible to run trained neural networks on any DX12 graphics card. Basically, the Deep Learning optimization or algorithm if you will, becomes a shader that can be run over the traditional shader engine, without a need for tensor cores. In an interview with AMD they mention that the team is working on this and it seems, Radeon VII seems very well suited for the new API. Japanese website 4gamer.net spoke with AMD marketing manager Adam Kozak, AMD is currently testing DirectML with Radeon VII and was positively impressed by the results, and that is exciting news for AMD offering them an AI/DL alternative.
While AMD is testing this on Radeon VII, logic obviously dictates that it would work well on Radeon RX Vega 64 and Radeon RX Vega 56 as well. This allows, for example, an alternative implementation to Nvidia's DLSS.
Only 1+1=2
Of course, should this become an actual supported thing, then it can't be addressed AMD alone, this question remains: will game developers actually implement, experiment and integrate support for DX ML into games?
It also has to be said, it works reversed, DirectML could also make use of Nvidia's Tensor cores, certainly giving them an advantage. As the Radeon card would see a performance hit, whereas the RTX cards can simply offload the algorithm towards its Tensor cores. Time will tell, but this certainly is an interesting development as long as your graphics card is powerful enough, of course.
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I think there would be some tradeoff. You'd basically use some CU's for packed FP16 & trade that power for an algorithm to save performance overall.
But yeah you're right - Tensors are separate while any implementation regarding this would basically be 'stealing' from overall shader/compute performance.
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Would it have to be though?
I mean surely Nvidia could implement driver middleware which would leverage the tensor cores for DirectML on Turing cards?
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Waits with Popcorn in one hand and soda in another for said fireworks to happen.
I do like the Nvidia DLSS it pretty much Free AA, if it works with everything it great other wise those cores are waste of space, cause that it there only only gaming card, if look better or worse then TAA is irrelevant to me cause it would be FREE AA with zero hit and I sure as time goes by, would pay the price for these said RTX card hells no
I hope this work out for AMD
Would it have to be though?
I mean surely Nvidia could implement driver middleware which would leverage the tensor cores for DirectML on Turing cards?
why would they do that ? I mean they could by why, when they have the RTX card that will do there version of it? , just gsync thing happening. Dont get me wrong I not fan of priority crap the gpu companies pull, if there is break threw it should be shared with all gpu makes for the benefit of the gamer, but it all about the money.
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Would it have to be though?
I mean surely Nvidia could implement driver middleware which would leverage the tensor cores for DirectML on Turing cards?
It's pretty obvious that DirectML will run on tensor cores on Volta and Turing. There's little reason to even create a new API otherwise.
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Posts: 2001
Joined: 2006-09-28
Honestly I think this is where Nvidia went wrong with DLSS, the marketing.
The technology is quite interesting and I were more keen on DLSS than the whole RT paradigm when the RTX cards were announced, simply because RT isn't going to see wide adoption for quite a while.
Unfortunately Nvidia chose to market DLSS as a performance uplift, in conjunction with upscaling, and compared to TAA no less - when postfx AA has been a curse inflicted on PC gaming rather than anything that actually benefits image quality.
I believe Nvidia should have sold us on DLSS not as a performance enhancer at 4K but as a way to reintroduce SSAA for modern titles with a lower performance hit.
Looks almost as good as TAA at 4K? Yeah, not impressed.
Computationally cheap SSAA at 1080/1440p? Sold!
Give me a way to help relegate postfx AA to the garbage bin of history and I'll start throwing money at the screen.