In a previous article, HPCwire mentioned the CUDA emulation project called ZLUDA. Written mostly in Rust, the open-source project runs unmodified binary CUDA applications with near-native performance on AMD GPUs. Considered alpha quality, ZLUDA has been confirmed to work with various native CUDA HPC applications (e.g., LAMMPS, NAMD, OpenFOAM, and others). Until recently, AMD quietly funded ZLUDA, but that sponsorship has ended and the project was expected to continue in some fashion.

According to Phoronix, the project has been taken down at AMD’s request and must restart if it wants to continue. As was reported on developers Andrzej Janik’s ZLUDA GitHub repository:

“IMPORTANT

What happened

The code that was previously here has been taken down at AMD’s request. The code was released with AMD’s approval through an email. AMD’s legal department now says it’s not legally binding, hence the rollback. Before anyone asks: I have received no legal threats or any communication from NVIDIA.

What now

At this point, one more hostile corporation does not make much difference. I plan to rebuild ZLUDA starting from the pre-AMD codebase. Funding for the project is coming along and I hope to be able to share the details in the coming weeks. It will have a different scope and certain features will not come back. …”

While AMD’s actions seem confusing, the ZLUDA project looked like a promising technology that could bring CUDA applications to AMD hardware. Perhaps independent support can keep the project moving forward.