AMD joins as main sponsor for Blender

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#5723971
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120,000 a year? Nice, but sure that's loose change for AMD isn't it.
#5724008
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geogan:

120,000 a year? Nice, but sure that's loose change for AMD isn't it.
Sure, but it help one of the major tool to "optimise" AMD's production for Blender. As Blender is one of the best tool to learn, to get if no money but talented, to have if you are a pro but need something cool that your company's expensive tool have issue to do it easely... (you can add lot lot lot more reasons to use Blender): so it is a good move to improve how consumer see AMD. It follow the recent accort with M$, the line is clear, good point.
#5724019
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geogan:

120,000 a year? Nice, but sure that's loose change for AMD isn't it.
I wouldn't say so. AMD would have gone bankrupt without the console deals a few years ago, and even those weren't any gold mines, just something that allowed them to survive. Supporting Blender is a worthy cause, however, and definitely something they should do if they can afford it. It's a hundred times better than sponsoring Formula 1, or something. At the end of the day, although their CPU department is now in good shape for the time being, their GPU side is lagging behind and would need all the resources it can get. So, I wouldn't say AMD has chests full of loose money like Intel, which could build a manned base on Mars if they want to, with all the money they have got.
#5724035
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geogan:

120,000 a year? Nice, but sure that's loose change for AMD isn't it.
I'm quite sure AMD wouldn't have bothered if Nvidia didn't do the same thing a couple weeks ago.
#5724580
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I feel AMD is falling behind in this matter. Quite recently, Blender added support for Nvidia Optix, besides the already existing CUDA. And even before that performance on AMD GPU's was slower (OpenCL vs CUDA). Now the opportunity for AMD is .. that Vulcan gets support (since Apple's Metal API won't be added to Blender due to license issues) .. for which there is demand in the Blender community, and interest among devs. But merely giving money is not the answer imho. They need to commit a few specialist that can work with core blender devs to work out the low-level stuff. AMD does have a renderer of its own with Blender supported which is called AMD ProRender. But the adoption of that is pretty low.