What is the state of OpenCL on Ubuntu 16.04 for GCN 1.0 cards

[tinkerbeast]

I recently upgraded from Ubuntu 14.04 to 16.04 without knowing that fglrx was dropped. I have a GCN 1.0 card (R9 270X) and from https://www.phoronix.com/forums/foru...-valve-gcn-1-0 I gather that there is no native support for this card as of now. The real problem that I am facing is that I can't get OpenCL to work at all.

From my logs I see that I use the radeon driver and not amdgpu driver by default - And nothing I did could get OpenCL to work on this. So my questions are:

Is there any way to get OpenCL to work with the radeon drivers?

If not - Should I blacklist the radeon driver? Will this force the amdgpu driver to be activated? And can I use OpenCL on that?

Also should I install the amdgpu-pro binaries from the AMD site? Does this binary works standalone or on top of radeon or amdgpu?

Assuming none of this works, I don't mind waiting a few weeks and trying OpenCL on my Windows - However is there an estimated timeline in which GCN 1.0 will be supported?

Finally - What I understand is thet proprietery driver is ready and it's just interfacing with the new kernel that's taking time. While I don't have any experience in video drivers, I do have considerable experience in kernel hacking. So is there a portal where I can go and contribute to make things work?


PS. Hello to everyone in the forums. I have followed these forums for quite and while now wihout ever contributing, about time I start.

[juno]

Hi there o/

Long story short:
- there is no sufficient OpenCL solution that works with radeon
- your card doesn't work with amdgpu (open and pro) either
- you rely on catalyst for OpenCL

Amdgpu pro does not work with radeon and does replace the amdgpu kernel module with its own.
Amdgpu works best with gcn gen 3 and 4 GPUs for now. Gen 2 does work more or less. There is work being done extending support to gen. 1, but community work and no timeline. If you want to contribute, you could help there. There has been some coverage about this on phoronix (hard to find links ATM, on mobile).
It is right, you'd need to get amdgpu and libdrm working, the OpenCL blob would hook in and should support Pitcairn already. There is a new mailing list for AMD, you could say hello and ask for more info there

[bridgman]

FYI Alex pushed an updated SI amdgpu tree yesterday - still in development but moving:

https://cgit.freedesktop.org/~agd5f/linux/log/?h=drm-next-4.9-si

DPM is still disabled at the moment though...

[Vyrlokar]

FYI Alex pushed an updated SI amdgpu tree yesterday - still in development but moving:

https://cgit.freedesktop.org/~agd5f/linux/log/?h=drm-next-4.9-si

DPM is still disabled at the moment though...

Nice! progress!

The plan is still to get SI to work on AMDGPU for the -PRO stack right? I understand that switching SI to the open stack by default might need you guys finally releasing the vulkan/opencl open stack support, but I can wait for the fully open stack to happen. You guys ditched the idea of simply extending fglrx/catalyst for SI cards while waiting for the -PRO stack to bring support right? I really don't mind (fglrx/catalyst can diaf, go open kernel drivers - Open userspace is good too, but open kernel drivers are a must.)

[juno]

I understand that switching SI to the open stack by default might need you guys finally releasing the vulkan/opencl open stack support, but I can wait for the fully open stack to happen.

I don't think so. The userspace VK and OCL drivers are derived from/share code with catalyst and windows drivers. So they do have support for SI, as it works there.
The thing that must be finished is adding SI support to amdgpu, the kernel module (and libdrm, respectively). This was not even planned to implement initially into the new amdgpu stacks and there is no public roadmap or schedule, so we'll have to stay patient.
OCL and VK drivers being opened and released under free license are just the cherry on top

We get our questions answered nicely here but I still wish some more public announcements would happen, describing the vision of the finished new driver stacks, desktop graphics, HPC computing, HSA and how it all comes together.

[Vyrlokar]

I don't think so. The userspace VK and OCL drivers are derived from/share code with catalyst and windows drivers. So they do have support for SI, as it works there.
The thing that must be finished is adding SI support to amdgpu, the kernel module (and libdrm, respectively). This was not even planned to implement initially into the new amdgpu stacks and there is no public roadmap or schedule, so we'll have to stay patient.
OCL and VK drivers being opened and released under free license are just the cherry on top

We get our questions answered nicely here but I still wish some more public announcements would happen, describing the vision of the finished new driver stacks, desktop graphics, HPC computing, HSA and how it all comes together.

I meant that until AMDGPU works better than Radeon for SI, I don's see them changing the default on the mainline kernel driver to AMDGPU, if there's no open source consumer of the improvements.

Still, I'm seriously considering an AMD card mainly because of how the open source driver is evolving.

[Amarildo]

There is no OSS OpenCL that works in Radeon or AMDGPU yet, which tells how much the community and AMD developers care about serious work being done on OpenSource software. But games? Yeah, we have like a gazillion people working on that Cuz it's so much more important, I guess.

I have the same card as you and I did try AMDGPU-PRO without DKMS and linux-4.8-amdgpu-si yesterday, but it didn't work, I got a black screen before I could type my password to unlock my HD. With Linux 4.6 and AMDGPU-PRO, however, I was able to boot, but sddm/lightdm/gdm wouldn't work and I saw numerous core-dump errors in journalctl.

I will try AMDGPU-PRO and drm-next-4.9-amdgpu-si today. But just remember, we still won't get OpenCL. Only in FGLRX and AMDGPU-PRO for the moment. The good part is that if we're able to boot the 4.9 with usable graphics, then AMDGPU-PRO can provide OpenGL and OpenCL on the userland level (not kernel level, which will be covered by the OpenSource AMDGPU).... I guess. I just hope I can use this driver with Grsec.

I really hate the poorly coded FGLRX for it's closeness and buffer overflow problem, and I wish I didn't need to use that crap. I tried using it on Arch with newer and older grsec Kernels (down to 4.1) and on Debian, but the modules just won't build.
At least NVIDIA works with GRSec.