"Start Locally" Preferences Selector

1

One one computer that I viewed https://pytorch.org/get-started/locally/ the “Compute Platform” options listed CUDA-ROCm-CPU.

On another machine the CPU option was replaced with “default” and the corresponding install commandf line created was different. Also the CUDA and ROCm options were struck through.

I am assuming the selector attempts to determine the best option for the computer viewing it since the preset options in both cases seemed sensible. However I am unclear as to the difference between “CPU” and “Default” options. The second computer had an AMD GPU but presumably not ROCm capable.

2

I guess you were on a Mac, as it disabled the CUDA and ROCm options and provides “Default” instead.
I would guess that the selected package is called “default” instead of “CPU” as it should be able to use the MPS backend.

3

Yes, on a Mac. I thought MPS was a CUDA based system devised by Nvidia so not sure how that would be the case.

4

No, MPS is not a CUDA-based system by NVIDIA.

5

Oh right. Unless we are not talking about Multi Process Service which is what MPS means to me.

6

Right, MPS refers to “Metal Performance Shaders” and is used on Apple hardware. Multi-Process Service is not related to it.

7

Doh! The problem with TLA’s when contexts overlap. Given that a quick google search of “MPS GPU” returns CUDA & Nvidia for the first 8 responses and only 1 reference to Apple in the first 20 I am clearly not the only one who doesn’t connect the acronym to “Metal Performance Shaders”.

Thanks so much for clarifying. Its a pity that this is not made more clear somewhere obvious in the docs as I spent ages trawling them and search terms like “MPS GPU” didn’t point me anywhere near the right direction.

8

Ha, yeah it can be quite confusing if similar (but still different) things use the same acronym.
This reminds me when I tried to google the linux size command:

size --help
Usage: size [option(s)] [file(s)]
 Displays the sizes of sections inside binary files
 If no input file(s) are specified, a.out is assumed
 The options are:
  -A|-B|-G  --format={sysv|berkeley|gnu}  Select output style (default is berkeley)
  -o|-d|-x  --radix={8|10|16}         Display numbers in octal, decimal or hex
  -t        --totals                  Display the total sizes (Berkeley only)
            --common                  Display total size for *COM* syms
            --target=<bfdname>        Set the binary file format
            @<file>                   Read options from <file>
  -h        --help                    Display this information
  -v        --version                 Display the program's version

size: supported targets: elf64-x86-64 elf32-i386 elf32-iamcu elf32-x86-64 pei-i386 pei-x86-64 elf64-l1om elf64-k1om elf64-little elf64-big elf32-little elf32-big pe-x86-64 pe-bigobj-x86-64 pe-i386 srec symbolsrec verilog tekhex binary ihex plugin
Report bugs to <http://www.sourceware.org/bugzilla/>

which uses quite a tricky binary name if you want to search for it :wink:

9

Well, Its all Gnu to me…