China's Moore Threads Unveils MUSA: A Homegrown Alternative to NVIDIA's CUDA

China's Moore Threads polishes homegrown CUDA alternative -- MUSA supports porting CUDA code using Musify toolkit

The first traces of Moore Threads' GPU programming software stack, dubbed MUSA, have surfaced online, furthering the nation's pursuit of tech-autarky. MUSA serves as an alternative to Nvidia's CUDA environment, compatible with the domestic MUSA MTT GPU lineup. Any open-source pedigree of the SDK has not been mentioned, so it is likely proprietary and won't be of much benefit to developers outside China. The U.S. has implemented a series of export restrictions on China, including: advanced AI chips, high-bandwidth memory (HBM), manufacturing equipment, and silicon wafers from leading players like Intel, TSMC, and Samsung. In a bid to reduce reliance on Western hardware, China is hard at work developing its semiconductor ecosystem with in-house silicon, fab equipment, memory, CPUs, and even GPUs. The latter is of great importance, as modern-day machine learning (sometimes under the buzzword banner of AI) is largely accelerated by parallel computing, something which GPUs excel at. A strong GPU programming ecosystem offers high-level abstraction, ready-to-use libraries, documentation, and profiling tools. With high-performance Nvidia GPU exports still in limbo, Moore Threads is offering an alternative to CUDA. MUSA provides a built-in compiler (MCC), runtime libraries (MUSA Runtime), a comprehensive list of specialized libraries (MUSA-X), debuggers, and profilers. To ensure compatibility with already written CUDA code, the MUSA SDK also includes Musify, a tool that translates CUDA code for the MUSA environment, likely by translating PTX code at runtime, similar to zLUDA. The MUSA SDK version 4.0.1 is compatible with x86 processors from Intel (on Ubuntu) and Hygon (on Kylin). Moore Threads is demonstrating the prowess of its stack through several demonstrations on its website, including speech synthesis, AI-image generation, image processing, AI-powered 3D face modeling, just to name a few. You can actually try out a bunch of these demos right now (though you might need an account), some of which are reportedly running on Moore Threads' MTT S3000 datacenter GPUs. Despite CUDA's clear advantage in terms of advancement, maturity, and support, MUSA could find many indigenous customers in small-scale environments, evolving over time. AI developers and researchers envision a heterogeneous future, championing the adoption of hardware-agnostic and open-source platforms. Breaking free from CUDA's reign requires superior alternatives, with ROCm being a key contender. However, AMD's hardware support still trails behind Nvidia.

China's First "In-House" Alternative To NVIDIA's CUDA Emerges Online; The MUSA SDK From Moore Threads

It appears that the Chinese firm Moore Threads wants its share of the AI market, as the firm has released a new upgrade to its MUSA SDK, an alternative to NVIDIA's CUDA stack. When it comes to software capabilities, NVIDIA has managed to dominate the industry with its CUDA ecosystem, offering not only high-end support but also speedy updates. Team Green ensures that competitors cannot see any breathing space. However, with evolving geopolitical conditions, it has become difficult for Chinese tech giants to rely solely on NVIDIA, and keeping this in mind, the domestic GPU manufacturer Moore Threads has brought in new advancements to its MUSA SDK in an attempt to increase its adoption. Moore Threads's AI software stack is designed specifically for the company's GPUs. It allows parallel computing and AI workloads across various platforms. It features runtime libraries, drivers, and instruction sets to enable the environment to be used with existing systems. The MUSA SDK is divided into multiple components, ranging from dedicated toolkits to application-specific libraries, which we'll discuss ahead. Apart from all the runtime libraries, an interesting fact about MUSA SDK is that it includes a "code-porting" tool called the MUSIFY, which allows developers to port CUDA-based code to MUSA's ecosystem, enabling seamless adoption. Along with this, the MUSA SDK supports libraries lik muBLAS, muFFT, and muThrust, which are intended for specific applications like mathematical operations or accelerated computing. With MUSA SDK's latest 4.0.1 version, the stack now supports Intel processors, along with the domestic Hygon, Kylin, and Loongson CPUs, which are employed in traditional workloads. While Moore Threads cannot compare with the likes of NVIDIA's CUDA at all, by providing a domestic solution, it allows small-scale developers to access libraries on in-house GPUs without spending too much on NVIDIA alternatives, and of course, there's always an element of patriotism involved, even in tech.

China has an alternative to NVIDIA's CUDA: What do we know about the new system? - Softonic

China now has a CUDA alternative with Moore Threads' MUSA, a new software ecosystem that promises compatibility and independence in the growing AI hardware race. China is making serious strides toward independence in artificial intelligence, and a key part of that effort is reducing reliance on U.S.-based technologies like NVIDIA's CUDA. While NVIDIA's dominance stems not just from its hardware but from its powerful software ecosystem, a new Chinese solution is aiming to challenge that supremacy. CUDA is deeply embedded in most AI projects worldwide. It offers a full development environment -- compiler, runtime libraries, and debugging tools -- that's incredibly hard to replace. For Chinese companies, replacing CUDA isn't just a technical challenge; it's also a geopolitical necessity, as the country pushes for technological self-sufficiency. Huawei has its own answer in CANN, but the real momentum may come from a younger player: Moore Threads. Founded in 2020 by a former NVIDIA executive, Moore Threads is positioning itself as China's top GPU contender. The company offers several GPU models aimed at both gaming and AI, such as the MTT S4000 and S3000, but its real innovation is software: MUSA (MT Unified System Architecture). MUSA is a complete alternative to CUDA, featuring a compiler, libraries, and debugging tools. But its most promising feature is CUDA code compatibility, allowing existing projects to migrate more easily. This means China could bypass one of the biggest hurdles in abandoning U.S. AI infrastructure. Whether MUSA will gain traction remains to be seen, but it's clear that China is building a parallel AI ecosystem, and Moore Threads may be its most important piece.