Dev tools · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to RunMat – runtime with auto CPU/GPU routing for dense math
Hi, I’m Nabeel. In August I released RunMat as an open-source runtime for MATLAB code that was already much faster than GNU Octave on the workloads I tried. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44972919 Since then, I’ve taken it further with RunMat Accelerate: the runtime now automatically fuses operations and routes work between CPU and GPU. You write MATLAB-style code, and RunMat runs your computation across CPUs and GPUs for speed. No CUDA, no kernel code. Under the hood, it builds a graph of your array math, fuses long chains into a few kernels, keeps data on the GPU when…
RunMat is an open-source runtime that executes MATLAB-style code with automatic optimization across CPUs and GPUs. Developers write standard array mathematics without CUDA or kernel code, while RunMat automatically… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Prices are shown for the 1 we have checked on their own sites, 1 of them free or with a free tier.
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Why build this? MATLAB wasn’t chosen by engineers; it was inherited from classrooms. That unfair advantage let MathWorks sell a decades-old runtime with heavy startup, sluggish hot loops, and paywalled toolboxes. It milks about $500M a year out of the engineering ecosystem for what amounts to an outdated compiler and runtime stack. GNU Octave has been the main open-source way to run MATLAB code but it only supports a subset of the grammar and semantics, and its performance is far behind modern expectations. It’s more of a compatibility bridge than a true runtime alternative. I decided to…
2025 · runmat.org · its alternatives →
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CUDA is NVIDIA's language for GPU programming, allowing you to mix write CPU and GPU code in C++ in one file. By chaining a few projects that compile CUDA to OpenCL, then Vulkan, then WebGPU, you can experiment with this GPGPU language on any hardware.
2025 · hipscript.lights0123.com · its alternatives →
- 3
Creator here. I built ChartGPU because I kept hitting the same wall: charting libraries that claim to be "fast" but choke past 100K data points. The core insight: Canvas2D is fundamentally CPU-bound. Even WebGL chart libraries still do most computation on the CPU. So I moved everything to the GPU via WebGPU: - LTTB downsampling runs as a compute shader - Hit-testing for tooltips/hover is GPU-accelerated - Rendering uses instanced draws (one draw call per series) The result: 1M points at 60fps with smooth zoom/pan. Live demo:…
Jan 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Hi HN, I’m Joe. My friends Matthew, Jake and I are building Luminal (https://luminalai.com/), a GPU compiler for automatically generating fast GPU kernels for AI models. It uses search-based compilation to achieve high performance. We take high level model code, like you'd have in PyTorch, and generate very fast GPU code. We do that without using LLMs or AI - rather, we pose it as a search problem. Our compiler builds a search space, generates millions of possible kernels, and then searches through it to minimize runtime. You can try out a demo in `demos/matmul` on mac to…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
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An Open Source Machine Learning Framework for Everyone - tensorflow/tensorflow/core/distributed_runtime at master · tensorflow/tensorflow
2016 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Runtimefree tier, from $99/mo▲299Sandboxed coding agents for everyone on your team
May 2026 · runtm.com · its alternatives →
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Hi HN, Over the past few months, I've been building `dsc`, a tensor library from scratch in C++/CUDA. My main focus has been on getting the basics right, prioritizing a clean API, simplicity, and clear observability for running small LLMs locally. The key features are: - C++ core with CUDA support written from scratch. - A familiar, PyTorch-like Python API. - Runs real models: it's complete enough to load a model like Qwen from HuggingFace and run inference on both CUDA and CPU with a single line change[1]. - Simple, built-in observability for both Python and C++. Next on the roadmap is…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Back in the old days, people used to do general-purpose GPU programming by using shaders like GLSL. This is what inspired NVIDIA (and other companies) to eventually create CUDA (and friends). This is an implementation of GPT-2 using WebGL and shaders. Enjoy!
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Demo of agent based model on GPU with CUDA and OpenGL (Windows/Linux) Agent instances on GPU memory Uses SSBO for instanced objects (with GLSL 450 shaders) CUDA OpenGL interops Renders with GLFW3 window manager Dynamic camera views in OpenGL (pan,zoom with mouse) Libraries installed using vcpkg (https://github.com/KienTTran/ABMGPU)
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
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RunInfra▲156Describe the AI model you need and get an optimized AI
Jul 2026 · runinfra.ai · its alternatives →
- 11WM
Try it out! https://glhf.chat/ Hey HN! We’ve been working for the past few months on a website to let you easily run (almost) any open-source LLM on autoscaling GPU clusters. It’s free for now while we figure out how to price it, but we expect to be cheaper than most GPU offerings since we can run the models multi-tenant. Unlike Together AI, Fireworks, etc, we’ll run any model that the open-source vLLM project supports: we don’t have a hardcoded list. If you want a specific model or finetune, you don’t have to ask us for it: you can just paste the Hugging Face link in and…
2024 · glhf.chat · its alternatives →
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I ported Microsoft's TRELLIS.2 (4B parameter image-to-3D model) to run on Apple Silicon via PyTorch MPS. The original requires CUDA with flash_attn, nvdiffrast, and custom sparse convolution kernels: none of which work on Mac. I replaced the CUDA-specific ops with pure-PyTorch alternatives: a gather-scatter sparse 3D convolution, SDPA attention for sparse transformers, and a Python-based mesh extraction replacing CUDA hashmap operations. Total changes are a few hundred lines across 9 files. Generates ~400K vertex meshes from single photos in about 3.5 minutes on M4 Pro (24GB). Not as fast as…
Apr 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
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This is a GPU "software" raytracer (i.e. using manual ray-scene intersections and not RTX) written using the WebGPU API that renders glTF scenes. It supports many materials, textures, material & normal mapping, and heavily relies on multiple importance sampling to speed up convergence.
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
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We ported pbrt-v4 to Julia and built it into a Makie backend. Any Makie plot can now be rendered with physically-based path tracing. Julia compiles user-defined physics directly into GPU kernels, so anyone can extend the ray tracer with new materials and media - a black hole with gravitational lensing is ~200 lines of Julia. Runs on AMD, NVIDIA, and CPU via KernelAbstractions.jl, with Metal coming soon. Demo scenes: github.com/SimonDanisch/RayDemo
Feb 2026 · makie.org · its alternatives →
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2013 · zhehaomao.com · its alternatives →
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GPU Raytracer from scratch in C++/CUDA. Contribute to jan-van-bergen/GPU-Raytracer development by creating an account on GitHub.
2021 · github.com · its alternatives →
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I was fascinated reading through another recent HN submission about a highly efficient implementation of A* in Lisp, which got me thinking about how I could do something similar in Python. However, these kinds of pathfinding algorithms really need complex terrain/mazes with interesting obstructions to showcase what they can do and how they work. So, I started thinking about how I could generate cool and diverse random "mazes" (they aren't really mazes, but I'm not sure what the best term is). I got a bit carried away thinking of lots of different cool ways to generate these mazes, such…
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
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A langgraph based workflow with a C++ CUDA suite to optimize CUDA kernels - bertaye/agentic-cuda-optimizer
27d ago · github.com · its alternatives →
- 19AG
This is a vector index I built that supports insertion and k-nearest neighbors (k-NN) querying, optimized for GPUs. It operates entirely in CUDA and can process queries on half a billion vectors in under 200 milliseconds. The codebase is structured as a standalone library with an HTTP API for remote access. It’s intended for high-performance search tasks—think similarity search, AI model retrieval, or reinforcement learning replay buffers. The codebase is located at https://github.com/rodlaf/BinaryGPUIndex.
2025 · rlafuente.com · its alternatives →
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Forge Agent▲113Swarm Agents That Turn Slow PyTorch Into Fast GPU Kernels
Jan 2026 · rightnowai.co · its alternatives →
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dstack is a unified control plane for GPU provisioning and orchestration that works with any GPU cloud, Kubernetes, or on-prem clusters.
2024 · dstack.ai · its alternatives →
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A pipeline that translates Rust GPU code into formal Coq models, as a foundation for memory model proofs - neelsomani/vericuda
Oct 2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 23
Grant Sanderson (3Blue1Brown) created Manim, the Python library he uses to make the math animations in his videos. We reimplemented Manim with the same Python API, but the implementation underneath is Rust, connected to Python through PyO3. The Rust code uses wgpu, so rendering happens on the GPU. To run it in the browser, we compiled the Rust parts to WebAssembly so the PyO3 extension loads in Pyodide. In the browser, wgpu targets the WebGPU API, so animations render in real time on your GPU through the browser. The editor is Monaco (the editor that powers VS Code) with a live preview:…
Jul 2026 · studio.academa.ai · its alternatives →
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An approach for runtime detection inside a constexpr function - SaadAhmad/in_constexpr
2017 · github.com · its alternatives →
Also compare
- RunMat – a V8 inspired Rust runtime for the landlocked Matlab language alternatives
- HipScript – Run CUDA in the browser with WebAssembly and WebGPU alternatives
- ChartGPU – WebGPU-powered charting library (1M points at 60fps) alternatives
- Luminal – Open-source, search-based GPU compiler alternatives
- Initial release of the distributed TensorFlow runtime alternatives
- Runtime alternatives
Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →