AMD Radeon PRO W7700 Launches As $999 GPU With Fully Open-Source Upstream Linux Drivers

[sharpjs]

all these PRO cards do have SR-IOV

I don't think that's the case. My reading suggests that only Radeon Vxxx (sold only to hyperscalers) and maybe Instinct cards support it. I would be happy to be proven wrong, though.

[qarium]

I don't think that's the case. My reading suggests that only Radeon Vxxx (sold only to hyperscalers) and maybe Instinct cards support it. I would be happy to be proven wrong, though.

i am 100% sure that amd sells SR-IOV cards as PRO cards... for example i have a AMD PRO w7900...

you can find the answer here:

https://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/hardware/graphics-cards/1401678-amd-launches-the-radeon-pro-w7500-w7600-rdna3-gpus/page2

full conversation:

Does it support hardware virtualization?

To this point, AMD has only enabled/supported SR-IOV (MxGPU in AMD terms) with their Radeon Pro V series, Instinct M series, and Radeon Pro S series GPUs (all targeted for the data center/cloud providers), and not with any of their consumer or workstation GPUs.

They kinda do*... but there's a lot of hoops you have to jump through to get it. AMD is just calling it a different name because NIH and apparently everything has to be cloud. AMD is calling it "remote workstation" or "VDI", and it requires Citrix or Microsoft Remote Desktop Services (not RDP, RDPS which is an Azure/365 thing). Apparently AMD's management seems to think the only people that want hardware virtualization are people buying into Microsoft's whole "cloud PC" initiative. Universe forbid anyone actually want on-prem hardware any more... Which is why Nvidia is cleaning up in the workstation, compute, and data center spaces. AMD can't seem to stop chasing Microsoft marketing unicorns where as the compute industry has long since settled on Linux & CUDA (or Windows/CUDA when it comes to visualization workstations because enterprises like certifications). Edit to add: And Nvidia workstations because they have pass through support without the additional requirements.

*look down at the specs under "additional features" for "remote workstation". NIH naming is annoying. They are using virtual machine technology as if it's a security layer rather than as a resource utilization multiplier, same as Microsoft has been doing (and failing, because virtualization as implemented on x86 systems isn't about security, it's about hardware resource economization. Cloud providers and customers want density at the cost of security, so they're paying the price for that by suffering though the problems inherent in that kind of shared environment.)

as you see AMD has a big problem Advertise it properly and cause a lot of confusion. but it looks like any product meant for professionals like PRO cards have it.

reading this sounds like the hardware has the hardware bits but the opensource software stack is not ready yet to accelerate these hardware bits.

commercial software stacks like "Citrix or Microsoft Remote Desktop Services" do use the hardware bits to accelerate it.

[agd5f]

i am 100% sure that amd sells SR-IOV cards as PRO cards... for example i have a AMD PRO w7900...

SR-IOV is only available on V-series (e.g., https://www.amd.com/en/products/serv...adeon-pro-v620) and MI-series (e.g., https://www.amd.com/en/graphics/inst...r-accelerators) boards.

SR-IOV does not work the way most people probably think it does. Something like virtio would make more sense for end users IMHO. See https://www.phoronix.com/forums/foru...40#post1422640

[qarium]

SR-IOV is only available on V-series (e.g., https://www.amd.com/en/products/serv...adeon-pro-v620) and MI-series (e.g., https://www.amd.com/en/graphics/inst...r-accelerators) boards.
SR-IOV does not work the way most people probably think it does. Something like virtio would make more sense for end users IMHO. See https://www.phoronix.com/forums/foru...40#post1422640

AMD Radeon™ PRO V620 Graphics
AMD Instinct™ MI Series Accelerators

honestly these products make no sense for end-users

why does AMD not have any product in this field for end-users ?

its very sad that people who buy the PRO cards like AMD PRO W7900 do not have this feature.

on my Fedora 39 workstation with the AMD PRO W7900 i have windows 11 installed in a virtual machine and i have the Proxmox virtio driver installed

but it honestly gives not the result what people expect. yes basic 2D works but even if you only want 4K resolution instead of 2K or 2.5K you already need to manually edit the XML config file to add more vram to the guest vM.

honestly AMD could improve the experience a lot for example i could not install the AMD.com driver for the AMD PRO W7900 to get all the GUI driver stuff.

my opinion is that AMD should make it in a way that you can install the AMD.com driver to get all the driver GUI stuff from the orginal driver.

right now it does work in a very minimalist way without anything what is not the bare minimum.

in fedora 39 amd also has no driver GUI.... honestly we bought the AMD PRO W7900 for 4000€ and AMD really could add some GUI driver stuff.

in the VM for the virtualised windows and also for the host linux system.

[sharpjs]

why does AMD not have any product in this field for end-users ?

The previous post seems to have answered that exact question.

SR-IOV does not work the way most people probably think it does. Something like virtio would make more sense for end users IMHO.

I must admit I'm an end user, not an expert in advanced virtualization. I can (and prefer to) hand-roll libvirt domain XML, but SR-IOV, VFIO, etc. are currently not part of my repertoire. I just want good graphics performance (including access to hardware acceleration) in my Windows development VMs without a lot of hassle. I suspect there are others like me.

[qarium]

The previous post seems to have answered that exact question.
I must admit I'm an end user, not an expert in advanced virtualization. I can (and prefer to) hand-roll libvirt domain XML, but SR-IOV, VFIO, etc. are currently not part of my repertoire. I just want good graphics performance (including access to hardware acceleration) in my Windows development VMs without a lot of hassle. I suspect there are others like me.

there are many people like you and me... problem is we do not have lobby.

if people spend a lot of money in microsoft licences microsoft can invest that money to improve their stack

as you see 2-3 month ago i did spend like 8000€ on a all AMD system with even 4000€ AMD PRO W7900

and lets face it... AMD only spend very little money on linux development. because of the low marketshare.

if AMD spend 2% on linux of the money what they spend on windows then we are lucky.

if you see steam statistic the linux users beat the windows in all metrics they have more cores more ram more mhz and so one.

but still for AMD we linux users are no significant group. the only group AMD really gives some care is the steam deck customers...

[darkbasic]

SR-IOV does not work the way most people probably think it does. Something like virtio would make more sense for end users IMHO. See https://www.phoronix.com/forums/foru...40#post1422640

"SR-IOV virtual functions (VFs) are not the same as physical functions (PFs). You need explicit support for the VF in the KMDs for every OS you want to run in a VM. You can't just use the regular bare metal drivers."

WTF? Seriously? With GVT-g I used to use the same exact Windows driver, is this not supposed to work with SR-IOV? If AMD's driver don't support VFs what's the point of having SR-IOV in the first place? If it does indeed support VFs then the only problem I see is if you want to run something exotic like a hackintosh.

[qarium]

"SR-IOV virtual functions (VFs) are not the same as physical functions (PFs). You need explicit support for the VF in the KMDs for every OS you want to run in a VM. You can't just use the regular bare metal drivers."
WTF? Seriously? With GVT-g I used to use the same exact Windows driver, is this not supposed to work with SR-IOV? If AMD's driver don't support VFs what's the point of having SR-IOV in the first place? If if does indeed support VFs then the only problem I see is if you want to run something exotic like a hackintosh.

absolutly right... why do all the people in this forum talk like SR-IOV fix all their virtualisation problems ? and in reality it fix nothing ?...

i really don't get why AMD and Microsoft have like zero interest to run good in Qemu/KVM with virtio-win driver...

[agd5f]

absolutly right... why do all the people in this forum talk like SR-IOV fix all their virtualisation problems ? and in reality it fix nothing ?...

I think there is a misconception that SR-IOV will magically make your single GPU show up as multiple GPUs and everything just works transparently. That is not the case. You need explicit support for SR-IOV in the hypervisor and guest drivers to make this all work. You could make SR-IOV the basis for a consumer-targeted solution, but you could also use a number of other things (virtio, etc.).

i really don't get why AMD and Microsoft have like zero interest to run good in Qemu/KVM with virtio-win driver...

MS already has a paravirtualization solution for Windows host + Windows guest and Windows host + Linux guest. For Linux host + Linux guest you can use virtio-gpu and mesa. So the only thing missing is Linux host + Windows guest.

[sharpjs]

Thanks for setting us straight, agd5f.