AMD's ROCm 1.4 Now Available With OpenCL Support

[bug77]

It's useless unless you use the sanctioned Ubuntu 4.7 blessed Kernel and a few other tag along options which I know no one who is going to rebuild a system [outside of Phoronix whose livelihood seems to be a perpetual state of testing] to use AMDGPU-Pro.

I think you're just described the status quo of the AMD Linux GPU driver for most of 2016.

[schmidtbag]

It still needs closed source components ---> useless.

What a fruitless comment. Sure, fully open source would be nice, but this is not useless by any logical perspective.

[nevion]

awesome to see they delivered after all before the end of the year after all! Now if only they'd at least support SLES 12 sp2 / OpenSUSE there too instead of the blessed Ubuntu/Fedora only versions. Not sure how the closed bits can work without binary packages prebuilt, with a complex chain like ROCm's ecosystem its a half non starter... having said that I installed it on an ubuntu 16.04 machine I have limited access to today but it does limit my experiences and contributions being Ubuntu only and not being regularly in my reach... Waiting to get a Ryzen APU system so I can follow these blessed versions without destroying my desktop and benchmark APUs as well as GPUs on ROCm OpenCL.

So remaining items, until we reach the golden age of compute on GPU:

• OpenCL 2.1 runtime with C++ kernel language
• Open source everything on the host
• Wider distro support on binary packages (at least SLES 12sp2/OpenSUSE support)

[bridgman]

It's useless unless you use the sanctioned Ubuntu 4.7 blessed Kernel and a few other tag along options which I know no one who is going to rebuild a system [outside of Phoronix whose livelihood seems to be a perpetual state of testing] to use AMDGPU-Pro.

The ROCM stack supports Ubuntu 14.04, 16.04, and Fedora 23 with their stock kernels. Building the kernel driver gives you DKMS packages, we don't replace the entire kernel any more.

I think you're just described the status quo of the AMD Linux GPU driver for most of 2016.

The Linux GPU driver is upstream and gets picked up by all the distro packagers, and component builds are available from both distro and third party packages. When you say "rebuild a system" are you just talking about "installing newer components ?".

[bridgman]

awesome to see they delivered after all before the end of the year after all! Now if only they'd at least support SLES 12 sp2 / OpenSUSE there too instead of the blessed Ubuntu/Fedora only versions.

SUSE is next on the list, probably OpenSUSE first then SLE*

Not sure how the closed bits can work without binary packages prebuilt, with a complex chain like ROCm's ecosystem its a half non starter...

AFAIK the only binary package that doesn't come with source code is the preview OpenCL runtime - is there something else I missed ?

[nuetzel]

SUSE is next on the list, probably OpenSUSE first then SLE*

Right order! ;-) --- With focus on KERNEL:stable, I hope?

[smitty3268]

The ROCM stack supports Ubuntu 14.04, 16.04, and Fedora 23 with their stock kernels. Building the kernel driver gives you DKMS packages, we don't replace the entire kernel any more.

Even Fedora doesn't support v23 anymore, so I'm not sure why AMD does. I have a hard time believing many (any?) Fedora users want to use it and haven't moved on yet.

The Linux GPU driver is upstream and gets picked up by all the distro packagers, and component builds are available from both distro and third party packages. When you say "rebuild a system" are you just talking about "installing newer components ?".

I think he means that if you try to use the pro driver on newer kernels, it bugs out and falls back to the OSS version. Right? Isn't that why Michael has to do tests on certain special (old Ubuntu) kernels when he tests the pro driver?

It really is getting kind of ridiculous. There was always going to be an adjustment period as fglrx left and the pro driver started trying to use the upstream amdgpu code, but that window where it was reasonable to have difficulties is starting to close.

[bridgman]

Even Fedora doesn't support v23 anymore, so I'm not sure why AMD does. I have a hard time believing many (any?) Fedora users want to use it and haven't moved on yet.

I'll check... the docco is still being updated so maybe F24 support is already there. We didn't change distro support in this release though AFAIK, it was more of a point release to get the OpenCL developer preview out along with required fixes & features in the rest of the stack (the previous release was only a month or so ago).

I think he means that if you try to use the pro driver on newer kernels, it bugs out and falls back to the OSS version. Right? Isn't that why Michael has to do tests on certain special (old Ubuntu) kernels when he tests the pro driver?

I guess... but the PRO driver was always aimed at workstation users running enterprise distros with older kernels. We still get more pressure to support older kernels than newer kernels from FirePRO users. We bundled it up for consumer users while the open source driver was picking up GL 4.5 support and performance improvements but that is pretty much done now other than recently released games.

It really is getting kind of ridiculous. There was always going to be an adjustment period as fglrx left and the pro driver started trying to use the upstream amdgpu code, but that window where it was reasonable to have difficulties is starting to close.

For the lebenty-millionth time, the plan was *never* for the PRO driver to be an add-on to the upstream amdgpu code. It was always a separate driver with kernel compatibility layer targeting FirePRO products & users. The "-PRO is a userspace add-on to upstream" message came from random posters, not from us.

We did talk separately about open sourcing the OpenCL and Vulkan userspace bits so that they could become part of the open source stack (and would track upstream) but that is a separate effort. Maybe people aren't keeping the two separate ?

[smitty3268]

I guess... but the PRO driver was always aimed at workstation users running enterprise distros with older kernels. We still get more pressure to support older kernels than newer kernels from FirePRO users. We bundled it up for consumer users while the open source driver was picking up GL 4.5 support and performance improvements but that is pretty much done now other than recently released games.

I get that, but that's why it really surprises me that Ubuntu is your target. Shouldn't it be RHEL and SLES? I mean, I get having Ubuntu as an option, but it seems like the period of having it be the only option has gone a bit long. Adding Fedora support once upon a time just makes it seem more like you were interested in modern updated kernels rather than enterprisey support.

For the lebenty-millionth time, the plan was *never* for the PRO driver to be an add-on to the upstream amdgpu code. It was always a separate driver with kernel compatibility layer targeting FirePRO products & users. The "-PRO is a userspace add-on to upstream" message came from random posters, not from us.

Perhaps i phrased that poorly, but all i meant was the switch to using mostly OSS amdgpu code rather than the fully closed fglrx codebase. I think you'd agree it was a big switch and has caused you issues properly supporting different distros.

[LinuxID10T]

OpenCL works for me, you just have to install the opencl packages from the repository once you finish setting up the ROCm environment as it shows in the install. Waiting for all the damn kernels to compile for Blender so I can see how my RX 480 compares to Ryzen in a really weird, not so useful way.