R600 Gallium3D Now Has Compute Shaders Working With NIR

[phoronix]

Phoronix: R600 Gallium3D Now Has Compute Shaders Working With NIR

If you are still rocking a pre-GCN AMD Radeon graphics card on the R600g driver for the HD 2000 through HD 6000 series, you really ought to consider upgrading in 2020, but otherwise at least from the open-source community there continues to be improvements...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=R600g-NIR-Compute-Shaders

[rene]

"you really ought to consider upgrading in 2020" ???

if it just works for your workflow, e.g desktop, code, science, office use? Nope. Save money and resources, and use it another decade or two ;-)

[Elinvention]

I still hope OpenGL 4.0 will arrive for my Radeon HD 6670, that I'm currently using as a backup, because my newer GCN GPU is dead. What became of that software FP64 implementation?

[zxy_thf]

I still hope OpenGL 4.0 will arrive for my Radeon HD 6670, that I'm currently using as a backup, because my newer GCN GPU is dead. What became of that software FP64 implementation?

You need upgrade your OS instead of hoping for anything.
It's already there (probably has been for years) according to https://mesamatrix.net/

[ermo]

Just installed a SATA SSD in an old hand-me-down HP 15.6" 1366x768 laptop with a quad-core Llano A6-3410MX APU (HD 6520G "SUMO" on-die) and a discrete HD 6750M "TURKS/Whistler Pro" GPU w/1 GB 128bit DDR5 VRAM.

As it turns out, these K10.5 "Stars" APUs manufactured on 32nm can be undervolted/overclocked out the wazoo.

Using stock speeds, I can on average undervolt the P-states to 65% of their stock voltage and when OCing, I can hit the same power consumption as stock at the fastest P-States with an extra +400-500Mhz (1600->2000MHz all core OC, 2300 MHz -> 2800 MHz boost OC).

This little thing could eventually benefit from this work with e.g. Minecraft when using lightweight shaders. It's certainly fine for couch usage.

[Elinvention]

You need upgrade your OS instead of hoping for anything.
It's already there (probably has been for years) according to https://mesamatrix.net/

Mesamatrix is a lie. GL_ARB_gpu_shader_fp64 on the r600 driver is available only for select GPUs that have hardware FP64 implementation (Radeon HD 6900 and HD 5800 series). There is a software implementation of FP64, but it is currently used only by the Intel driver, see https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pa...64-Merged-Mesa. Thus all the other GPUs, including my 6670, are stuck to OpenGL 3.3.

[Mez']

Just installed a SATA SSD in an old hand-me-down HP 15.6" 1366x768 laptop with a quad-core Llano A6-3410MX APU (HD 6520G "SUMO" on-die) and a discrete HD 6750M "TURKS/Whistler Pro" GPU w/1 GB 128bit DDR5 VRAM.

As it turns out, these K10.5 "Stars" APUs manufactured on 32nm can be undervolted/overclocked out the wazoo.

Using stock speeds, I can on average undervolt the P-states to 65% of their stock voltage and when OCing, I can hit the same power consumption at the fastest P-State with an extra +400-500Mhz (1600->2000MHz all core OC, 2300 MHz -> 2800 MHz boost OC).

This little thing could eventually benefit from this work with e.g. Minecraft when using lightweight shaders. It's certainly fine for couch usage.

I have an Asus X53TA from 2011. The APU is a Llano A4-3300M (incl. 6480G Sumo) coupled to the HD 6650M (Turks/Whistler Pro).
It's slightly less powerful than yours on the GPU side, but clearly inferior on the CPU side.

Still hoping I could squeeze an extra bit of performance out of it with the NIR activation.

[kuco]

"you really ought to consider upgrading in 2020" ???

if it just works for your workflow, e.g desktop, code, science, office use? Nope. Save money and resources, and use it another decade or two ;-)

Agreed. But also consider perf/watt. Newer cards can safe alot of energy.

[Mez']

Mesamatrix is a lie. GL_ARB_gpu_shader_fp64 on the r600 driver is available only for select GPUs that have hardware FP64 implementation (Radeon HD 6900 and HD 5800 series). There is a software implementation of FP64, but it is currently used only by the Intel driver, see https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pa...64-Merged-Mesa. Thus all the other GPUs, including my 6670, are stuck to OpenGL 3.3.

I've looked into this quite a bit since the GPU in my laptop is concerned by this limitation to version 3.3 due to the lack of hardware FP64. And I can confirm what you say. Whatever I do or enable still only exposes OpenGL 3.3.
Not many games were using those features though, and overriding the OpenGL version at game launch usually worked when I played with this laptop.

[rene]

Agreed. But also consider perf/watt. Newer cards can safe alot of energy.

still it will usually be a decade or two until you safe the energy the price of a new card. Especially for users with normal "2D" desktop use, not everyone is gaming. And if you use the new "3D" card in games, then you likely burn the same energy running at higher res or more fps ;-)