I work in distribution. We have over 100 racks used to calculate trends per item spread out across the locations of my employer. These racks came online in 2008 at the cost of $350,000 each. They have half the computing power of AMD's 9000 series GPGPUs. I'm not inflaming the thread, its' just this whole thing with me knowing what I'm talking about and you not having the slightest clue. Would I put in the order for a $3500 part that was faster then the $350,000 part we currently have? Yeah, without hesitation. Would I get a bonus for pulling something like that off? Probably. Would AMD make truckloads of money on me ordering a couple hundred of them? Yep, close to three quarters of a million dollars. So I get increased performance for my job making my life easier, I'm happy, my bosses save ~$50 million dollars so they are dancing a jig, and AMD makes a ton of profit. Downside here?
I'm not a brain damaged donkey, so explain how 'open source' is going to help them with anything at all in the GPGPU space. The code I need to run, like almost anyone else that is going to be in a comparable position, is proprietary as hell. We don't allow most of our employees to ever see it any way, not the code base itself, even the program running. You have to have clearance to get into the room where the machine is located(no remote access to it). The financial field and insurance industries are the same way. Open source is so much ignorant fan boy wanking.
When is the next time you are going to be putting a purchase order in for a million dollars worth of computing hardware in this segment? When is the last time you got paid for the work you handled on one? Maybe you should sit back down at the little kids table while the grownups have a discussion