AMD To Open-Source Its Linux Execution & Compilation Stack

In the discussion last night about AMD not having any plans to suspend their proprietary Linux driver, John Bridgman of AMD shared some interesting information about AMD planning to provide a full execution stack in open-source form.

John Bridgman, the AMD employee response for their open-source graphics driver initiatives, wrote in the Phoronix Forums:

I wasn't able to get out to AFDS this year so don't know the exact words Phil used (will try to find a video link tomorrow) but if you're familiar with FSA/HSA the announcement was basically about providing the full Linux execution stack (compiler/runtime/kernel drivers) in open source form, except for one commercial third party piece (the C++ parser front end). Slides and abbreviated transcript at :

http://www.slideshare.net/hsafoundat...m-architecture

Slide 30 IIRC. The presentation was basically a "heads up" for developers and ISVs. There was some media coverage but mostly summarized as "will also be available on Linux"

This work is coming due to the new Heterogeneous System Architecture Foundation .

The slides that Bridgman references can be found at SlideShare.net. The page cited is entitled "AMD's Open Source Commitment To HSA" and says "We will open source our Linux execution and compilation stack." This is being done to jumpstart the HSA ecosystem, allow a single shared implementation where appropriate, and to enable university research in all areas.

This stack hasn't been released yet but looks like it will include an HSA Bolt Library, OpenCL HSAIL Code Generator, LLVM Contributions, HSA Assembler, HSA Runtime, HSA Finalizer, and an HSA Kernel Driver. The HSA Kernel Driver they hope will be included within Linux distributions.

This information was shared earlier this month during the AMD Fusion Developer Summit in Bellevue.

As soon as we have any other details about AMD's plans to open-source this stack to enable the Heterogeneous System Architecture work, it will be passed along on Phoronix.