AMD Publishes Initial Firmware For Yellow Carp APUs

A small but important step forward is seeing AMD recently publishing their binary firmware files in advance of new GPU/APU launches for rounding out their Linux driver support stack.

Last month AMD published the Van Gogh APU firmware files in advance of hardware like the Steam Deck shipping at large. Now this morning the Yellow Carp APU firmware files are also published well in advance of the APUs being officially launched.

This is a pleasant change since historically AMD has held off until right around release time or even days after launch before publishing these binary-only firmware files. These firmware blobs are necessary for the open-source Linux graphics driver to successfully initialize the hardware. Without these firmware files, mode-setting fails and there is no 3D acceleration... So even these days with enjoying open-source driver support months in advance of launch so that the bits can work their way upstream, the tardiness of their firmware file publishing has hurt launch-day customers and others who need to manually track down these firmware files rather than having them already part of the linux-firmware package of their Linux distribution.

Yellow Carp is expected to be the alternative Linux codename for the Ryzen Mobile 6000 series "Rembrandt" APUs. With Rembrandt not expected until H1'2022, it's a bit surprising to see these firmware files published so soon but good nevertheless for allowing that linux-firmware support to appear in Linux distributions in time. It also points to Rembrandt likely being in good standing and on-track for the debut early next year.

The firmware binaries landed this morning in linux-firmware.git. With these firmware files, on the open-source driver side you will also need at least Linux 5.14 and Mesa 21.2 but ideally running the latest Linux kernel and Mesa as of release-time for YC/Rembrandt for enjoying the best open-source driver support when it comes to performance and supported features. Such as while initial Yellow Carp AMDGPU support is found in Linux 5.14, there is APU temperature monitoring and other bits that just landed recently in Linux 5.15.