AMD Posts New AMDGPU Patches For UVD Video Decode For GCN 1.0

[phoronix]

Phoronix: AMD Posts New AMDGPU Patches For UVD Video Decode For GCN 1.0

One of the main blockers from AMD Radeon GCN 1.0 "Southern Islands" GPUs achieving feature parity when using the newer AMDGPU DRM kernel driver rather than the older "Radeon" DRM kernel driver has been in regards to UVD video decoding. But in 2020 it looks like that might finally change...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=AMDGPU-GCN1.0-UVD-2020

[FireBurn]

This is great news, hopefully they can get all the GCN cards officially supported with AMDGPU and remove those bits from the radeon driver

[smitty3268]

I could have sworn the last time this came up AMD devs came on here and said it wasn't just a matter of finding time to do this, but that there were fundamental technical reasons it couldn't be done - the firmware was too large or something to that effect.

Guess one of their direct customers must have paid them to do it and the technical reasons magically went away.

[bridgman]

I could have sworn the last time this came up AMD devs came on here and said it wasn't just a matter of finding time to do this, but that there were fundamental technical reasons it couldn't be done - the firmware was too large or something to that effect.

Yes we said the problem was that the microcode image ended up too big.

We didn't say it couldn't be done though, just that it was a big pile of work if we could do it and we hadn't found a way to do it yet.

[jakubo]

nice!
i hardly ever experienced any trouble over the last 2 years so far.
But what is that thing about copyright...? can someone explain it to me please?

[qarium]

Yes we said the problem was that the microcode image ended up too big.

We didn't say it couldn't be done though, just that it was a big pile of work if we could do it and we hadn't found a way to do it yet.

will the radeon kernel parts for GCN 1.0 and 1.1 finally be EOL end of life?
so we get full UVD video decoding and _Vulkan support for all GCN cards?
sounds good for me.
but for me it is very strange how long AMD needed to do this.

i think if this finally is done many linux people will buy used cards on ebay from windows people who buy vega64/radeon7/ NvidiaRTX2000 cards.

i bought 6 cards Vega64 in 2018 and even if i had money to buy radeon7/5700XT or big.navy
linux makes me think double time buy a card new because what we see with 5700XT it needs like 1 year to be useable for linux.

if you read valve hardware statistic windows people are a joke the average vram on windows is 1GB and the average on linux is 8GB vram...

this alone if you think AMD makes a lot of money with windows instead of linux you think better double time about your math skill.

linux people who want amd hardware maybe better buy 2 years old used cards on ebay.

if AMD want to make more money on linux people maybe bring up better release support.

[DanL]

The radeon kernel driver is still maintained and will continue to be. Just because the "new excitement" happens in amdgpu, that doesn't mean radeon is deprecated.

[duby229]

The radeon kernel driver is still maintained and will continue to be. Just because the "new excitement" happens in amdgpu, that doesn't mean radeon is deprecated.

Well, it would certainly be "professional" if they deprecated support for GCN products on radeon so that amdgpu could support the entire range of GCN products to their full capability. It should have been that way from the jump. It definitely isn't "new excitement", it's more like "shoulda been done years ago"...

[tuxd3v]

Will be needed some adjustments in mesa drivers to take advantage of UVD?
or by itself AMDGPU backend delivers it?

[agd5f]

Will be needed some adjustments in mesa drivers to take advantage of UVD?
or by itself AMDGPU backend delivers it?

It's the same userspace drivers for radeon and amdgpu for SI and newer asics.