ROCm works better in HPC than on consumer systems because it was initially written for HPC and arguably is still tested with HPC in mind. ROCm development was substantially funded by the Frontier supercomputer and the DoE developers get to complain directly at AMD developers when they're not happy.
The DoE doesn't like having single suppliers for their tech. AMD/HPE's Frontier bid was a bit of a gamble from the DoE - it wasn't remotely obvious whether they'd be able to deliver it or not, and was against a background of Intel broadly failing to deliver Aurora - whereas nvidia was a known safe bet. However placing a big order with Intel and another one with AMD was their best shot at getting away from being wholly reliant on nvidia.
Frontier shipped. It's a real thing, people run code on it. I'd guess the DoE labs talk to each other to some extent and thus AMD ended up winning the El Capitan bid. That means AMD has a flagship HPC machine that sales people can point to and a big ongoing revenue stream to continue funding development from. It looks like the DoE plan to have two HPC vendors has worked.
Aurora seems to be somewhat in existence now but is less compelling as a story other potential customers might want to copy. I'm curious whether Intel end up making a loss on it.
The DoE doesn't like having single suppliers for their tech. AMD/HPE's Frontier bid was a bit of a gamble from the DoE - it wasn't remotely obvious whether they'd be able to deliver it or not, and was against a background of Intel broadly failing to deliver Aurora - whereas nvidia was a known safe bet. However placing a big order with Intel and another one with AMD was their best shot at getting away from being wholly reliant on nvidia.
Frontier shipped. It's a real thing, people run code on it. I'd guess the DoE labs talk to each other to some extent and thus AMD ended up winning the El Capitan bid. That means AMD has a flagship HPC machine that sales people can point to and a big ongoing revenue stream to continue funding development from. It looks like the DoE plan to have two HPC vendors has worked.
Aurora seems to be somewhat in existence now but is less compelling as a story other potential customers might want to copy. I'm curious whether Intel end up making a loss on it.