ZLUDA is an open-source project that aims to implement NVIDIA’s CUDA library using AMD’s HIP/ROCm library as a backend engine, enabling AMD graphics chips to run programs compiled for CUDA.
Andrzej Janik, the developer of ZLUDA, has been working on this library for several years. Initially, it was developed for CPU Intel. However, in 2022, AMD approached him to develop the library to support AMD graphics chips. After nearly two years of development, AMD decided to terminate the project, leading Janik to release it as open-source.
Currently, ZLUDA only supports ROCm 5.x, even though AMD has already released ROCm 6. Testing results have shown that several programs that support both AMD and NVIDIA actually perform better when run through ZLUDA rather than AMD’s own API. Overall, ZLUDA allows programs that require CUDA to run efficiently on the AMD 7800XT chip, comparable to the performance of NVIDIA’s RTX 4070 or RTX 3080.
The project is now an open-source Apache 2.0. We will have to wait and see if Janik creates a community to maintain and further develop this library.
TLDR: ZLUDA is an open-source project that utilizes AMD’s HIP/ROCm library to enable AMD graphics chips to run programs compiled for NVIDIA’s CUDA. Despite AMD terminating the project, ZLUDA proves to provide better performance compared to AMD’s own API. It supports the AMD 7800XT chip and offers performance comparable to NVIDIA’s high-end GPUs. The future development of ZLUDA depends on whether a community is formed to maintain it.
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