Intel Quietly Discontinues Its Open-Source User-Space Gaudi Driver Code

Intel has quietly stopped maintaining its open-source user-space driver stack for Gaudi accelerators. Phoronix reports: It turns out earlier this year Intel archived the SynapseAI Core open-source code and is no longer maintained by Intel. The open-source Synapse AI Core GitHub repository was archived in February and README updated with: "This project will no longer be maintained by Intel. Intel has ceased development and contributions including, but not limited to, maintenance, bug fixes, new releases, or updates, to this project. Intel no longer accepts patches to this project. If you have an ongoing need to use this project, are interested in independently developing it, or would like to maintain patches for the open source software community, please create your own fork of this project."

Tell Me Why?

[SlashbotAgent]

Tell me what Gaudi is and why I should care.

Tell me why I should care that Intel stopped contributing to an open source project.

Tel me why, if this is so important, you didn't fucking notice for 10 months.

Tel me why.

Re:

[Narcocide]

It's drivers for their AI chips.

Re:

[Fly Swatter]

*discontinued* AI chips.

Re:

[KiloByte]

Current [intel.com] AI chips.

Re:

[Junta]

I think they are only hypothetically 'current' as in not really available. I think if you wanted to buy a Gaudi solution new you might find no one really ready to sell it to you.

Intel abandoned the concept, again. What you see online is mostly the corpse of a product and vendors playing with leftover samples to hedge their bets in case Intel decides to get back into the market with a follow-on product.

Re: Tell Me Why?

[zuralin]

I never wanna hear you say... I want it that way!

Re:

[nightflameauto]

I never wanna hear you say... I want it that way!

I'm glad I'm not the only one. Tell me, you saw the Brooklyn 99 version in your head, didn't you?

Re:

[Cley Faye]

If only this was posted on a news site, under some pretense of bringing information to the readers, right?

Re:

[Valgrus Thunderaxe]

Tel me why, if this is so important, you didn't fucking notice for 10 months.

Exactly. Why wasn't this reported ten months ago and is only being reported now?

Answer: Nobody knows or cares what a "Gaudi" is, especially the writer of the summary who could have drooped a hint using a single sentence, but decided not to.

Re:

[Locke2005]

EVERYBODY knows what a "Gaudi" is? He's the architect that designed Basílica de la Sagrada Família. You know, the guy that gave us the cliche "What if you get hit by a bus?"

Re:

[KiloByte]

Exactly. Why wasn't this reported ten months ago and is only being reported now?

Because this got raised this Monday as a blocker to merging their newest bits to the kernel. If a driver requires both kernel and userspace parts, and no open source userspace part exists, the driver is not allowed into the kernel (see: nVidia).

This requirement was met when Gaudi 1 and Gaudi 2 were upstreamed, but the discontinuance means Gaudi 3 can't go in. Unlike CPU support which Intel prepares years before general availability of the hardware, GPU drivers tend to get upstreamed long after. And some

Re:

[geekmux]

Tell me what Gaudi is and why I should care.

Tell me why I should care that Intel stopped contributing to an open source project.

Tel me why, if this is so important, you didn't fucking notice for 10 months.

Tel me why.

If you care about fashion you care. It’s fucking Gaudi.

Lets hope there’s not a Taci fork somewhere. Could get really ugly.

Re:

[Locke2005]

I'm guessing it's a scheme to complete Basílica de la Sagrada Família much sooner?

Re:

[sabbede]

Nah, it's a scheme to complete it in a gold-leaf Rococo style. You know, gaudy.

Don’t trust Intel for anything other than CP

[dangermen]

Don’t trust Intel for anything other than CPUs & NICs.

All they do is create product only to abandon it.

So?

[Locke2005]

That's exactly why open-sourcing drivers is a GOOD thing! I once paid good money for an HP flatbed scanner, which became unusable when the next version of Windows shipped and HP declined to provide drivers for it since they were no longer making any money off the scanner. So I had to throw it away.

Re: So?

[shm]

Around 2002? I probably had that same scanner. Never bought HP again. Had to buy third party software to run it: Vuescan by Hamrick.

Ran it for several more years until SCSI went out of style.

Re:

[Locke2005]

Yes, it was a SCSI scanner, which meant I had to buy a special SCSI card for my PC to support it too... the only SCSI device I've ever owned. Let's just say I don't miss the SCSI standard. Everything going Thunderbolt 5 now (or at least USB-C) is awesome!

Re:

[Bert64]

A SCSI scanner should at least be a standard so it shouldn't need device specific drivers...
An ancient SCSI scanner from the 80s or 90s should still work today, providing you have a working SCSI controller.

Much worse are the scanners with proprietary interfaces, or proprietary protocols over other interfaces (parallel, usb, even their own proprietary isa/pci controller cards). You may find your scanner wasn't actually SCSI at all if you had to get a specific controller for it, a proper SCSI scanner should w

That will teach nVidia a lesson for sure!

[thesjaakspoiler]

If Intel is abandoning their AI accelerator then there must be something fishy about this whole AI bubble.

Re:

[Junta]

The problem with Gaudi is that even if you did everything right, it was still embarrassingly behind nVidia offerings. So after a lot of work to *try* to support Intel as an nVidia alternative you still end up just in a terrible place.

They spent some time trying to spin it as 'well if you don't need a H200, then Gaudi 3 is good enough', except by that argument the H100 is the right choice. So the only thing they could have done is be way cheaper than nVidia and AMD MI.

Now the bubble is indeed fishy, but In

Gaudi

[rossdee]

The last album produced by the Alan Parsons Project

Eric Woolfson is now dead, but I think Alan Parsons is still alive

Was Antonio Gaudi spanish, or was he a Catalan?