>>The article says "Nvidia has been the only real option for GPU computing." What
>>is it about AMD's hardware or software that makes it unattractive for GPU computing?

First and foremost it's the software.

Nvidia manifestly has a stategic goal of winning share of the high-performance computing hardware market and has invested accordingly to develop high-quality development tools and really nail driver and platform stability.

Even though AMD is arguably approaching parity with the GCN design in terms of compute capability, it is pretty clear that all expense is spared on developing the software side beyond the level required to support the latest game.

Yes, the OpenCL compiler is reasonably good finally, but there are still frequent performance and correctness regressions between runtime releases. The Linux support (sine qua non for any HPC deployment) consistently disappoints: woefully unstable driver, dependency on an X server, limited multi-device support and, even when it is working, performance consistently far below the Windows releases of the same driverset.

Gripes aside, no-one gets fat by chasing the high end of this market. Even Nvidia's big push in that direction has, outside of a few very specific application spaces and some TOP-500-chasing design wins notwithstanding, amounted to not much yet and -I suspect- yielded modest returns to its bottom line.

So why should AMD bother going beyond DirectX?

S.