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Nvidia announces native GPU programming in Rust

970 points · 404 comments · nonmaskable

dllu · 1789597370 · focus · HN ↗
Since NVIDIA owns huggingface now and huggingface has the excellent Candle [1] crate for inference on Rust, this seems like a good step towards nice native Rust kernels.
[1] <a href="https://github.com/huggingface/candle" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/huggingface/candle
1. jacobgorm · 1789599363 · focus · HN ↗
  Nobody cares if kernels are written in Rust. Kernels were meant to be written in C, but if you want to go more high-level try Triton or a similar DSL that nicely abstract tile sizes etc.
  1. keithnz · 1789601228 · focus · HN ↗
    kernels aren't meant to be written by any defined language. C is just a traditionally good default language that took over from assembly. No particular reason we have to stick with C.
    chadcmulligan · 1789606025 · focus · HN ↗
    And quite a few reasons that something better than C should be used. Rust seems a good candidate.
    jacobgorm · 1789671283 · focus · HN ↗
    What reasons would you have to prefer Rust over C for compute kernels? I am a great fan of Rust, but I don't see any benefit for kernels, due to their relatively simple nature.
    chadcmulligan · 1789706904 · focus · HN ↗
    I'm not sure why being relatively simple would mean C over Rust? Rust still has the safety advantages.

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