AMD Linux Graphics Driver Seeing More Patches Around Multi-XCC Support

Written by Michael Larabel in Radeon on 29 March 2023 at 03:30 PM EDT. 7 Comments
RADEON
The AMDGPU kernel driver patch flow has ticked up in recent days with working on new hardware support/features.

Last week AMD engineers began posting new open-source driver patches enabling new graphics IP blocks as part of bringing up new GPU hardware support in their Linux kernel driver. This continues AMD's modern Linux GPU driver enablement strategy rather than the big patch series of the past with colorful fishy codenames or that of stars for the Instinct line-up.

Since last week they've continued posting new Linux driver enablement patches for what shares lineage with the "Arcturus" GPU family that started with the MI200 series and now with the current MI300 series. For the graphics IP, it's GFX943 (9.4.3) over GFX940 for the existing MI300 series support in their open-source driver.

The uptick in AMDGPU patches has continued and it's looking more interesting with time and part of a bigger driver update than simply adding a minor new minor production revision. In particular, there's a lot of work pouring in around multi-XCC support in the AMD Linux graphics driver.

AMDGPU multi-XCC patches


Yesterday saw another 32 patches posted around multi-XCC enablement for the AMDGPU kernel driver. This all appears to be as part of their multiple graphics chiplets/tiles handling.

With the Instinct MI300 effectively an APU with a CPU and GPU on-die, with prior disclosures putting it at twenty-four Zen 4 CPU cores and then "CDNA3" GPU(s). With this multi-XCC work all pointing to GFX943, it's not clear yet if this new work is for a follow-on successor of the MI300/GFX940 or how this is sitting from a product perspective. But with these patches only coming out now where as the initial MI300/GFX940 enablement for Linux started a year ago, whatever the case it will be some months still before all of this new code has been upstreamed into the mainline Linux kernel. In the mean time it will be interesting to see what other Linux patches drop around AMD GFX943.

Update: Not an hour after this article, and yet more GFX943 / multi-XCC patches have surfaced... One series with 12 patches and then another 14 patches in another series pertaining to multi-XCC GFX943.
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