AMD Nearing Full OpenCL 2.0 Support With ROCm 2.0 Compute Stack

[phoronix]

Phoronix: AMD Nearing Full OpenCL 2.0 Support With ROCm 2.0 Compute Stack

AMD's fully open-source GPU compute stack in the form of ROCm "Radeon Open Compute" is nearing its next milestone with OpenCL 2.0 compliance...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=AMD-OpenCL-2.0-ROCm-2.0-Work

[busukxuan]

Phoronix: AMD Nearing Full OpenCL 2.0 Support With ROCm 2.0 Compute Stack

On the NVIDIA Linux driver front, they are officially at OpenCL 1.2 with some CL 2.0 extensions but in not supporting SVM, but they are waiting for OpenCL-Next to suit their needs.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...-ROCm-2.0-Work

Sorry if this is a stupid question, does "SVM" refer to support vector machines? Doesn't sound likely to me that OpenCL would have such a high level primitive.

[Tomin]

Sorry if this is a stupid question, does "SVM" refer to support vector machines? Doesn't sound likely to me that OpenCL would have such a high level primitive.

Shared Virtual Memory

[Wielkie G]

Aren't ROCm 1.8 and below incompatible with mainline amdkfd and wasn't ROCm 1.9 supposed to fix this?

[uid313]

Then OpenCL 2.1 support is needed. Khronos also have a OpenCL 2.2 but nothing supports it yet.
But perhaps OpenCL is getting phased out in favor of computing with Vulkan and SPIR-V?
Or are Vulkan, OpenGL 4.6 and OpenCL all going to support SPIR-V?

[kenjo]

When I tried to test this I failed to understand what was actually needed to make it work. there was only description on how to install precompiled versions thus mostly useless. There was not really any description on how to make it work from source.

[turboNOMAD]

There is zero information on ROCm in the Arch Wiki. I don't even know how to install it on my Arch. The website provides binaries and instructions for Ubuntu only. There is a package in the AUR but the comments say it needs a custom-built kernel to work.

What is the point?

[FireBurn]

When I tried to test this I failed to understand what was actually needed to make it work. there was only description on how to install precompiled versions thus mostly useless. There was not really any description on how to make it work from source.

There's a couple of live ebuilds in Gentoo Overlays that seem to offer support - I really need to give them a test some time and get versioned ones set up

Would be nice to get OpenCL working on my Tonga and Raven setups

[juno]

Then OpenCL 2.1 support is needed. Khronos also have a OpenCL 2.2 but nothing supports it yet.
But perhaps OpenCL is getting phased out in favor of computing with Vulkan and SPIR-V?
Or are Vulkan, OpenGL 4.6 and OpenCL all going to support SPIR-V?

IIRC OpenCL 2.1/2.2 already use SPIR-V.
I don't know what OpenCL offers on top of Vulkan. Maybe a generic OpenCL-over-Vulkan driver would be possible, maybe Vulkan will replace OpenCL. I think OpenCL has similar problems to OpenGL, driver situation is a joke and it's not surprising that people don't seem eager to use it.

There is zero information on ROCm in the Arch Wiki. I don't even know how to install it on my Arch. The website provides binaries and instructions for Ubuntu only. There is a package in the AUR but the comments say it needs a custom-built kernel to work.

According to bridgman the upcoming rocm 1.9 should be compatible to the upstream kernel. I have no idea if it will work with upstream llvm though. If we're lucky they'll publish build/packaging guides so ROCm gets actually usable on all distributions.
I also wish I could get rid of the fragile frankenstein opencl-amd package from the aur and have an upstream-compatible opencl driver from AMD in official repos.

[turboNOMAD]

Yes, it's not the prettiest solution, but opencl-amd works for me. However, my OpenCL usage is limited to ethminer and similar software.

Regarding ROCm, I'll wait until it becomes easier to install. Too much hassle now, and no obvious performance/feature advantages over opencl-amd.