It's Going To Take More Time To Get Vega Compute Support With The Mainline Kernel

[bridgman]

While the AMD drivers have improved immensely the last year or two why is it that they never seem to be able to reach a feature complete state? There is no major feature still missing from the windows versions is there? When will the only new code be optimizations and/or support for new hardware?

Pretty simple... we have been re-doing the Linux stack from bottom to top, rebuilding it around open source components, and so not all of the areas are going to get finished at the same time.

In 2016 we finished the kernel driver transition from fglrx to amdgpu open/PRO. In 2017 we got the major userspace graphics tasks finished (although open source Vulkan took longer than we hoped), and first part of 2018 should see similar progress on reconciling compute.

[Rallos Zek]

Indeed. The Linux driver landscape of AMD seems worse than ever. There are too many stacks to maintain and no uniform place to hook both compute and graphics into.

You must be joking? I've been using Ati/Amd cards under Linux since 2002 outside a couple years having Nvidia and Intel GPUs, and the drivers ecosystem is better than ever. And the too many stacks you fud about goes for any modern desktop gpu driver under linux and the other OS'es that use free driver stacks.

[DrYak]

we have been re-doing the Linux stack from bottom to top, rebuilding it around open source components,
{...}
In 2016 we finished the kernel driver transition from fglrx to amdgpu open/PRO. In 2017 we got the major userspace graphics tasks finished (although open source Vulkan took longer than we hoped), and first part of 2018 should see similar progress on reconciling compute.

And big thumbs up and thank you to the whole AMD crew. Thanks for the good work.

[RussianNeuroMancer]

Pretty simple... we have been re-doing the Linux stack from bottom to top, rebuilding it around open source components, and so not all of the areas are going to get finished at the same time.

In 2016 we finished the kernel driver transition from fglrx to amdgpu open/PRO. In 2017 we got the major userspace graphics tasks finished (although open source Vulkan took longer than we hoped), and first part of 2018 should see similar progress on reconciling compute.

Hi! If possible, could you please ask engineers properly look into this? https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=196683 (Comment 115 and below).

Is anybody working on this issue? Is there ETA for solution?

[StillStuckOnSI]

Pretty simple... we have been re-doing the Linux stack from bottom to top, rebuilding it around open source components, and so not all of the areas are going to get finished at the same time.

In 2016 we finished the kernel driver transition from fglrx to amdgpu open/PRO. In 2017 we got the major userspace graphics tasks finished (although open source Vulkan took longer than we hoped), and first part of 2018 should see similar progress on reconciling compute.

This is amazing news

A quick question, if I may: does "reconciling compute" include support for OpenCL and/or ROCM support on GCN 1.0 cards (without using fglrx and pre-4.0 kernels)?

[uentity]

We are working on a separate solution for OpenCL without PCIE atomics - with a bit of luck it will hit the next (18.10) release.

I already had this insight info from this ROCm github issue, but thanks for double confirming this!
Just a little question: when 18.10 is planned to be released?

[bridgman]

A quick question, if I may: does "reconciling compute" include support for OpenCL and/or ROCM support on GCN 1.0 cards (without using fglrx and pre-4.0 kernels)?

We can't really extend ROCM any further back without changing the programming and delivery models, since it is based on having at least a core set of HSA hardware features, but the OpenCL support should be able to go further back. That said, it will still depend on amdgpu support for SI, which is still rough in places.

[bridgman]

Just a little question: when 18.10 is planned to be released?

Late March IIRC.

[pcxmac]

What a bunch of lazy assholes. What are people supposed to do with AMD on Linux? They've sold out of every damned GPU and chip they got. You'd think they could bother to hire more than 1 developer without a fucking timeline. This is bordering on operational negligence.

Just keep this in mind, AMD can't just turn around and order a whole bunch of chips from a fab, there are many months involved in that process, reservations, tooling, etc... It requires a lot of time for a turn around, that is why its going to take INTEL at least a year to address their security issues, given how far out they design and run their business. AMD has a long lead time on it's profit margins, given the way the market is moving, it's a risky game, and they need more funds to pump out more siliicon so they can profit and THEN hire developers. It will be a while before AMD can 'afford' to support open source in a more meaningful way. Now NVIDIA, their margins are ridiculous, and they only offer a pittance of what AMD does, and they make so much more, that's ridiculous IMO. AMD is behind the ball, and it takes a long time to catch up in this industry, especially if you don't control a fab (several) like INTEL does.

[clintar]

Pretty simple... we have been re-doing the Linux stack from bottom to top, rebuilding it around open source components, and so not all of the areas are going to get finished at the same time.

In 2016 we finished the kernel driver transition from fglrx to amdgpu open/PRO. In 2017 we got the major userspace graphics tasks finished (although open source Vulkan took longer than we hoped), and first part of 2018 should see similar progress on reconciling compute.

So based on how much longer than you thought to implement these, how far out do you think vulkan support will REALLY take?