AMD Unleashes Initial AMDGPU Driver Support For GCN 1.0 / Southern Islands GPUs

[drSeehas]

... I don't really understand that constraint though, since AFAICS you are not planning to use the card for anything but desktop & light OpenGL. Something like the R5 230 would fit your needs and is available in single-slot passive form.

Oh, it is not me, it is tajjada.
I agree with you. A Cedar would do:

https://geizhals.eu/?cat=gra16_512&xf=5586_passiv+(l%FCfterlos)%7E3082_1%7E1481_1

[Berniyh]

Can you share, how is Kaveri on Linux? What use case scenarios does it work with for you and how well? I'm considering building a new Arch Kaveri for a friend for use at their office.

Depends on what you want. I would like to use it for OpenCL (mainly for editing pictures), but that doesn't work. The open source implementation is rubbish and the amdgpu-pro OpenCL implementation doesn't yet work without DAL being merged to the mainline kernel (and maybe something else as well, didn't check).
I'd also like to use HSA, but there isn't really software that makes use of it. I had a brief talk to one of the darktable devs about these things and they are interested in that kind of stuff, but like always nobody will do that sort of work if they don't have the hardware.
So it would require one of their devs to really think about HSA support.

Apart from that, it's just fine. Although I'm not using it for games, not using Hybrid or Crossfire stuff, just a plain desktop.
Performance in kwin/plasmashell is good, but that's hardly challenging for any modern graphics card. I don't play games on it.
(And never really tried.)

I'd recommend it, if you're thinking about building a desktop system just for work/internet/etc. and not for games.

[bridgman]

I would like to use it for OpenCL (mainly for editing pictures), but that doesn't work. The open source implementation is rubbish and the amdgpu-pro OpenCL implementation doesn't yet work without DAL being merged to the mainline kernel (and maybe something else as well, didn't check).

I know what you mean, but just to avoid confusing others... the amdgpu-pro stack includes its own kernel driver in a DKMS package. What you need (I imagine) is a DKMS package that supports whatever distro you are running, which is presumably not the recommended-for-the-preview Ubuntu 14.04.4 HWE.

AFAIK the issue with running amdgpu-pro userspace on an upstream kernel driver is not DAL but rather an IOCTL or two which are required by OpenCL & Vulkan but which can't go upstream yet because they are not used by any open source userspace driver. It's possible there is a DAL dependency but I'm not aware of one.

[bridgman]

Unapproved again

[papu]

Yep... we had to go with a generic name because at the time we weren't sure how far back (HW-wise) the driver support would need to go.

seems that have a version name

x11-drivers/xf86-video-amdgpu
Available versions: 0.0.01_pre20150814 (~)1.0.1 (~)1.1.0 **9999 {glamor}
Homepage: http://xorg.freedesktop.org/
Description: Accelerated Open Source driver for AMDGPU cards

[nuetzel]

I know what you mean, but just to avoid confusing others... the amdgpu-pro stack includes its own kernel driver in a DKMS package. What you need (I imagine) is a DKMS package that supports whatever distro you are running, which is presumably not the recommended-for-the-preview Ubuntu 14.04.4 HWE.

AFAIK the issue with running amdgpu-pro userspace on an upstream kernel driver is not DAL but rather an IOCTL or two which are required by OpenCL & Vulkan but which can't go upstream yet because they are not used by any open source userspace driver. It's possible there is a DAL dependency but I'm not aware of one.

Hello John,

my second post here, I'm on dri-devel/mesa-devel for over 16 years and in Mesa .mailmap, so...;-)

I have to build a new AMD (sic) desktop system for my dad, currently.
So Carrizo is mobile (laptop), only?
Can't wait for Bristol Ridge, sad but dad need it, now.
So I have to go with Kaveri (Godavari), right? --- Top APU A10-7870?
The above requirements (Berniyh) sum it mostly.
OpenGL, OpenCL, little HSA with amdgpu / radeonsi. Does that work with Kaveri currently (mostly)?
I'm on openSUSE 13.2 + devel stuff / Tumbleweed.
Dad's system should run openSUSE Leap 42.1 / Tumbleweed.

Sorry that I step in, here. I've could asked this your nice known guys on dri-devel/mesa-devel but ElectricPrism asked the right question ;-)

Happy Whitsun!

Dieter

[bridgman]

Hi Dieter,

If you are building now you basically have two options, both FM2+:

For Kaveri there is a new top-end part, the A10-7890. CPU clocks are ~200 MHz higher. Other options are the A10-7870 you mentioned, and the A10-7860 which is similar but slightly slower clocks and 65W vs 95W for the 7870 and 7890. For your needs probably either 7860 or 7870 would fit.

The other interesting option is the X4 845 CPU plus a dGPU like the R7 240/250/260/360. The 845 is actually a Carrizo with GPU and FCH disabled, but in an FM2+ package... main advantage over Kaveri for your requirements would be somewhat better single-thread performance and potentially better graphics depending on the GPU.

If you use the "pro" drivers you'll get the userspace drivers from Catalyst, with OpenCL / OpenGL / Vulkan, otherwise you get OpenCL/OpenGL from Mesa.

[Berniyh]

I know what you mean, but just to avoid confusing others... the amdgpu-pro stack includes its own kernel driver in a DKMS package. What you need (I imagine) is a DKMS package that supports whatever distro you are running, which is presumably not the recommended-for-the-preview Ubuntu 14.04.4 HWE.

AFAIK the issue with running amdgpu-pro userspace on an upstream kernel driver is not DAL but rather an IOCTL or two which are required by OpenCL & Vulkan but which can't go upstream yet because they are not used by any open source userspace driver. It's possible there is a DAL dependency but I'm not aware of one.

Well, ok. Something is missing or wrong, so the -pro OpenCL implementation doesn't work on open source, be it DAL or something else.
And it doesn't look like that that is changing soon. Which is really a shame, because there are many people that want to use OpenCL but don't really have any (advanced) interest in OpenGL at all.
Of course, you can use the complete -pro driver, but keeping track of that is much more work and more likely to be problematic (given the beta-status) than just using the open source driver.

Regarding HSA: I think it's a beautiful approach, but right now there really is no point to it, because I have yet to find a software making use of it.
I'm thinking about donating an APU+Mainboard to one of the devs, but no idea if that would help.
(Actually, maybe AMD should do that to promote HSA?)

[haagch]

Also the drm-next-4.8-wip-si branch is not stable on intel graphics. The whole machine randomly freezes. drm-next-4.7-wip has done the same when I tried it, so I have to run 4.6 with "drm/radeon: Allow setting shader registers using DMA/COPY packet3 on SI." cherry-picked for compute shaders...

[Xelix]

amdgpu seems to be getting support for all the cards currently supported by radeonsi. Doesn't that mean that eventually, radeonsi will disappear?