AMD Radeon RX 7900 Series Firmware Upstreamed
As outlined in my Radeon RX 7900 XT / RX 7900 XTX Linux review on Monday, Linux 6.0+ and Mesa 22.2+ (or ideally Mesa 22.3 if not comfortable using Mesa Git, for the latest optimizations and fixes) are the key pieces needed for enjoying the upstream open-source AMD graphics driver for these new high-end GPUs. The other piece of the puzzle as is always necessary is the AMDGPU firmware files for the AMDGPU kernel driver to properly initialize the hardware. As of this morning the new AMDGPU firmware files have been added to the linux-firmware.git repository for easy picking up by Linux distributions.
The GC 11.0.0, VCN 4.0.0, SMU 13.0.0, SDMA 6.0.0, PSP 13.0.0, and DCN 3.2.0 firmware files are now present in the upstream linux-firmware.git repository. Those versioned IP blocks correlate to what is needed for the Radeon RX 7900 XT and Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics cards.
Now that the firmware blobs are in that repository, they will hopefully be picked up quickly by modern Linux distributions so that there can be out-of-the-box AMD RDNA3 graphics card support for those also shipping the latest Linux kernel and Mesa.
AMD traditionally has held off on publishing the firmware files until around launch day for new hardware, which is unfortunate as it otherwise slightly complicates a nice out-of-the-box open-source experience... Granted, fetching a few binaries and dropping them in /lib/firmware/amdgpu and rebuilding any initramfs is much easier than having to rebuild the Linux kernel and Mesa, but alas something that could ideally be improved upon by AMD for easing the launch-day open-source experience for Linux enthusiasts and gamers.
Today's linux-firmware.git today also landed updated AMDGPU firmware files for existing GPUs, based on the state of the firmware files found in yesterday's Radeon Software for Linux 22.40 packaged driver release for enterprise Linux distributions.
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