Linux 5.11 Drops AMD Zen Voltage/Current Reporting Over Lack Of Documentation

[OneTimeShot]

Wow - talk about entitled. The source code is there - document it yourself. If AMD is like anywhere else that I've worked, there probably aren't any docs.

[leipero]

I'm really confused by this. Removing functional things "for the user experience" doesn't really make much sense. I can't see any situation where misreporting at the OS level can influence hardware at all, AFAIK, those limits are set in UEFI and controlled by it, OS just "levels them", so whatever is misreported should be irrelevant because it's not the OS that controls those parameters (aside form leveling on power states)?

Whoever did the job in "assuming" did it in a excellent manner, because reports on my system are spot on and do not deviate at all from the UEFI/Windows.

[Guest]

If I had to guess, I'd say with Zen being relatively new, the architecture changes faster than documentation can.

Yeah, that's bullshit. They have this reporting support for their own tools (like Ryzen Master) and third party ones like Hwmonitor.

The documentation is there. And if it's not, AMD's software engineering is even worse than I thought.

I regret buying AMD hardware even more now. Worst consumer support ever. Honestly wish I'd gone with Cometlake, even if used more power. Or should have waited for Rocketlake.

[fenixex]

Your UEFI/Windows values may not be correct at all. Some MB vendors misreport in order for the CPU to boost higher/make their product look better.

Since at least two of the largest motherboard manufacturers, still insist on using this exploit to gain an advantage over their competitors despite being constantly asked and told not to, we thought it would be only fair to allow the consumers to see if their boards are doing something they're not supposed to do. The issue with using this exploit is, that it messes up the power management of the CPU and potentially also decreases its lifespan because it is running the CPU outside the spec, in some cases by a vast margin. Also, it can cause issues when this exploit goes undetected by a hardware reviewer, since both the performance and the sofware based power consumption figures will be affected by it.

You can read the full post for hwinfo here.

[Guest]

No reason in particular. Someone would have to write up and release the documentation which is probably as much, if not more, work than writing the code, but in either case, there is no one to do it at the moment as far as I know. While it's nice to have, this isn't exactly a critical feature for a viable platform.

Cut the bullshit. This is extreme important information, especially given AMDs weird boost behaviour. Using a CPU like the 3900X to it's full extent, requires the ability to see voltage, current, temperature etc. from userspace. This is very much critical functionality.

If this support was missing on Windows, AMD would get terrible reviews. So cut the pure bullshit.

I get that you can't criticize your employer, doesn't mean you have to come in here and defend every shitty thing they do.

[Guest]

I'm really confused by this. Removing functional things "for the user experience" doesn't really make much sense. I can't see any situation where misreporting at the OS level can influence hardware at all, AFAIK, those limits are set in UEFI and controlled by it, OS just "levels them", so whatever is misreported should be irrelevant because it's not the OS that controls those parameters (aside form leveling on power states)?

Whoever did the job in "assuming" did it in a excellent manner, because reports on my system are spot on and do not deviate at all from the UEFI/Windows.

Well in Linux 5.10, Vcore reports a constant 1.6 V for some reason, while Vsoc is reporting the correct voltage. This wasn't the case before Linux 5.10

[shmerl]

No reason in particular. Someone would have to write up and release the documentation which is probably as much, if not more, work than writing the code, but in either case, there is no one to do it at the moment as far as I know. While it's nice to have, this isn't exactly a critical feature for a viable platform.

AMD's situation is gradually improving financially. So I hope with bigger success of Ryzen and Radeon AMD will be able to hire more people to improve documentation for Linux.

[shmerl]

there is no one to do it at the moment as far as I know.

Alternatively, why not simply help with support of k10temp? That will save the effort of documenting it, but at least AMD can find someone who knows what to implement and contribute at least the actual code. That's better than nothing for sure.

[birdie]

Open Source "friendly" AMD. Yeah. right.

[Guest]

Open Source "friendly" AMD. Yeah. right.

Yeah, I agree. Nothing's really changed from a decade ago. Some shit is kind of supported, some of it works, some of it is very buggy and won't be fixed for several months (or ever) and also, every tiny thing is "proprietary information that could destroy the company" so it won't be documented or supported.

Funny, the my initially said they won't support UVD on Linux due to DRM concerns, but it seems that DRM on the GPU only started with TMZ support, so that claim from them sounds like utter crap.