GPUVM Discrete GPU Code For AMDKFD, Radeon Compute Could Be Ready For Linux 4.17

[Jumbotron]

In fairness, KFD code for APUs has been upstream for a couple of years already, although we didn't make it easy to find matching userspace code.

Upstreaming DGPU support (for older AMD CPUs and all Intel CPUs) took longer because we did not have the recoverable page fault support from IOMMUv2 that we could rely on with our APUs, and had to come up with an upstreamable alternative by allowing the controlled eviction of pages which ROC userspace believed to be pinned along with temporarily disabling the affected userspace processes.

Early ROC releases did not include this eviction logic and hard-pinned buffers from userspace, which was fine for compute workloads but did not play sufficiently well with arbitrary graphics workloads to be upstreamable.

Original RFC for eviction with comments is here...

https://lists.freedesktop.org/archiv...ch/078573.html

... and current implementation is in patches 6 & 16 from this set, among others.

Just curious, how do you get to 2019 ? The 4.17 kernel should be released mid-2018 if I'm doing the math right, and I don't think it takes 6 months for stable versions to start.

I'm very conservative in my definition of "stable". I give most things open sourced... ( or closed sourced for that matter ) ...a year before I consider it "stable". In my experience since 1982 when I bought my first computer ( Commodore 64 ) the REAL beta test starts when something is released as "stable". There just are not enough testers and use cases discovered even by the time something is released as "stable" or as golden master or a boxed retail release. But a year out from release you usually have enough people banging on it so that even deeper bugs and unforeseen use cases have been caught and dealt with.

Nothing is ever bug free, perfect or even COMPLETELY stable...( particularly in this agile, always iterating world ). However, in MY user experience...(Your mileage may vary)...I have found waiting a year longer than the "stable" release takes care of 99.9% of my issues with dealing with buggy software.

I am of course talking about my production PCs and my family's PCs. I have a couple of personal PCs...( laptop and desktop )...that I use for bleeding edge stuff where I know what I am potentially getting into. I travel a lot and have to troubleshoot clients technology. The last thing I need is "service" calls from family members. Hence the conservatism.

[Jumbotron]

It will be a while ... at least until Ethereum switches to Proof of Stake. Then there will probably be a flood of cheap (ab)used cards. Unlikely though, as there will be other coins to mine.

Was making a funny about a list that never showed up. Not about mining. Couldn't give a crap about wasting precious energy resources over the 21st century version of Tulip Mania or Beanie Babies.

[Marc Driftmeyer]

It does recognize it, can select it, but there are errors when trying to use for "Cycles" renderer.

Still, that is progress.

[tajjada]

Was making a funny about a list that never showed up. Not about mining. Couldn't give a crap about wasting precious energy resources over the 21st century version of Tulip Mania or Beanie Babies.

Yeah, you might not give a crap, but if you want to buy a gpu, you will be faced with the inevitable reality that, due to miners, all high-end gpus are either sold out or significantly above MSRP.