I am exploring the different ways that RNNs can be implemented for batches of variable-length sequences. I found that PyTorch uses the packed sequence format for variable length batches.
Looking at the documentation for cuDNN 8, I noticed that the packed format appears to be supported only for backwards compatibility:

This function initializes a previously created RNN data descriptor object. This data structure is intended to support the unpacked (padded) layout for input and output of extended RNN inference and training functions. A packed (unpadded) layout is also supported for backward compatibility.

(API Reference :: NVIDIA Deep Learning cuDNN Documentation 1)
This seems to suggest that cuDNN prefers unpacked, padded sequences instead of packed sequences. Why is this the case? Aren’t packed sequences better, since they consume less memory?