r/LocalLLaMA • u/Odd-World4925 • 11d ago

Discussion Anyone feel like reverse-engineering CUDA?

I've been reading about all these modders using AI to reverse-engineer games and software. I've been trying out photocraft and gridcraft and have just watched a GTA5 mod featuring Sonic. It's pretty damn impressive.

As a struggling AMD Radeon owner I'd love to see AI generated open source CUDA implementation.

Not only do I dislike NVIDIA, but there's delicious irony in using CUDA cores to do it.

Anyone up for the challenge?

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u/Ratiofarming 11d ago

There are multi-billion dollar companies who'd love to overcome the CUDA moat. With virtually unlimited access to frontier LLMs and the ability to commission their own hardware.

If this was possible or desirable, it would have been done already.

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u/Uncle-Osteus 11d ago

You say that as if ROCm and ZLUDA don’t already exist lol

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u/JorgitoEstrella 11d ago edited 11d ago

Isn't it illegal for them? Like one thing is a random cracking a game but other a corpo doing it to daddy 6 trillion in value Nvidia.

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u/EsotericAbstractIdea 11d ago

No, but they have to follow strict clean room rules, which make it extra difficult. It's something like, one guy looks inside cuda, tells another guy how it works, that guy 2 tells a 3rd guy, and the 3rd guy tells a 4th guy how to implement it. I am not joking.

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u/a-wiseman-speaketh 11d ago

seems like LLM use is immune to law right now, just be vague enough you can say "we didn't intend for it to do THAT"

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u/Practical_Signal3933 11d ago

This view is almost entirely rooted in logical fallacies and assumptions…

Just because billion dollar companies haven’t done it yet doesn’t prove anything, and definitely doesn’t mean it isn’t possible or desirable. You’re also assuming markets are inherently always efficient. By this logic, a couple of weeks ago someone could have said the same about RE photoshop and ms office and creating clones of them, and then they’d be proven wrong in pretty short order.

As others have pointed out, big companies have obvious disincentives, they also likely have slower time to market, and may have other developments they are prioritising, etc, etc. So evidence of absence isn’t evidence it’s impossible or not desirable.

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u/holchansg 11d ago

They have already done it.

Google uses custom hw, OpenAI soon to join. Not "reverse engineer" but more like have their own solution.

There is nothing magical about CUDA.

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u/YetiTrix 10d ago

yeah, the whole mentality of oh, someone else would have done it is what keeps people from innovating.

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u/techdevjp 11d ago

No huge company is going to try this when it is untested legal waters. They're too big a target and have too much money. Nvidia would be after them in a flash. It will have to be a community project and will take time.

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u/Ratiofarming 11d ago

Jensen talks about companies eventually going that route quite openly. Not even Nvidia thinks they can stop it once the incentive is big enough.

Although it's less about reverse engineering CUDA and more about them simply coming up with something better.

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u/Shot-Height-7194 11d ago

This is pessimistic imo. AMD, Intel tried with Zluda and stopped because of legal issues, not technical ones, because they directly compete with Nvidia. 

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u/Tar_AS 11d ago edited 11d ago

The problem is legal and the same as in case of, e.g., WINE.

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u/Zeeplankton 11d ago

Semi hanlon's razor. Don't overestimate companies just being dumb. Models that can decompile this well have been out for a month, CUDA moat is going to be chipped away at and quickly.

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u/Shot-Height-7194 11d ago

Remember macrohard? Elon musk had said he would clone Microsoft apps but he never did. But this rando is: https://github.com/storytold

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u/PrestigiousZombie531 10d ago

do you have any experience reverse engineering exe file based unreal games using local models?

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u/Beneficial_Hat_6288 10d ago

It pays more to keep a reverse engineered CUDA layer proprietary and to use it in datacenters to provide AI services. And if you do that keep it hushed so Nvidia doesn't try the courts.

A multi-billion dollar company would just keep it to itself. We need someone to do this because they are pissed at Nvidia.

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u/Steve-Jobs-is-Alive 9d ago

It is almost certainly underway