AMD places hopes for machine learning -- and moneymaking -- in GPUOpen

Graphics processors power more than the likes of Call of Duty: Black Ops III; they also provide the number-crunching for modern machine learning systems. But GPUs are largely proprietary hardware devices, led in the market by Nvidia, which is notorious for its poor reputation as an open source player. Leave it to Nvidia's competitor AMD, long beleaguered by slumping sales and shrinking market share, to develop a plan with the partial goal of advancing the state of GPU-accelerated high-performance computing. Thus, while AMD hopes to make GPU programming less of a black box with GPUOpen, the company is trying to rescue its own business as well. After all, AMD's reputation with open source users is also shaky, thanks to unfulfilled promises.