&gt; Why is Nvidia this dominant, and why are so many researchers using a proprietary API like Cuda when there&#x27;s open alternatives?<p>CUDA came out first and was really good, IMO.  OpenCL is also really good, but doesn&#x27;t get as much love from NVIDIA.  NVIDIA really hypes CUDA and when they add features, they add them to CUDA first (and OCL never in some cases).<p>See my other comment for more - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10554601" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10554601</a>