AMDgpu is an

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

device driver In the context of an operating system, a device driver is a computer program that operates or controls a particular type of device that is attached to a computer or automaton. A driver provides a software interface to hardware devices, enabli ...

for the

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

operating system developed by

AMD Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California and maintains significant operations in Austin, Texas. AMD is a hardware and fabless company that de ...

to support its

Radeon Radeon () is a brand of computer products, including graphics processing units, random-access memory, RAM disk software, and solid-state drives, produced by Radeon Technologies Group, a division of AMD. The brand was launched in 2000 by ATI Tech ...

lineup of

graphics card A graphics card (also called a video card, display card, graphics accelerator, graphics adapter, VGA card/VGA, video adapter, display adapter, or colloquially GPU) is a computer expansion card that generates a feed of graphics output to a displa ...

s (GPUs). It was announced in 2014 as the successor to the previous radeon device driver as part of AMD's new "unified" driver strategy, and was released on April 20, 2015.

Development

It takes the form of an in-tree

kernel module A loadable kernel module (LKM) is an executable library that extends the capabilities of a running kernel, or so-called ''base kernel'', of an operating system. LKMs are typically used to add support for new hardware (as device drivers) and/or ...

. As of 2022, AMD Kernel Fusion Driver (KFD) is now integrated in this one kernel module. AMD KFD development at AMD is part of

ROCm ROCm is an Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) software stack for graphics processing unit (GPU) programming. ROCm spans several domains, including general-purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPU), high performance computing (HPC), and h ...

, under the ROCk project.

Distribution

AMDgpu has been fully upstreamed and new developments continue to do so. As AMDgpu is part of the

monolithic A monolith is a monument or natural feature consisting of a single massive stone or rock. Monolith or monolithic may also refer to: Architecture * Monolithic architecture, a style of construction in which a building is carved, cast or excavated f ...

Linux kernel, it is shipped by most Linux distributions directly. The package suite / install script amdgpu-pro, distributed by AMD directly from

AMD Radeon Software Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California and maintains significant operations in Austin, Texas. AMD is a hardware and fabless company that des ...

, ships an AMDgpu kernel module somewhat reliably more up-to-date compared to that of kernels shipped in regular operating system distributions.

Community

The development of the kernel module happens between AMD and the Linux maintainers, discussions happen on the

freedesktop.org freedesktop.org (fd.o), formerly X Desktop Group (XDG), is a project to work on interoperability and shared base technology for free-software desktop environments for the X Window System (X11) and Wayland on Linux and other Unix-like operatin ...

mailing lists - freedesktop being home to major Linux graphics projects such as

Mesa A mesa is an isolated, flat-topped elevation, ridge, or hill, bounded from all sides by steep escarpments and standing distinctly above a surrounding plain. Mesas consist of flat-lying soft sedimentary rocks, such as shales, capped by a ...

, libdrm,

Xorg X.Org Server is the free and open-source implementation of the X Window System (X11) display server stewarded by the X.Org Foundation. Implementations of the client-side X Window System protocol exist in the form of ''X11 libraries'', which ...

, Wayland.

Support

AMDgpu officially supports cards built upon GCN 1.2 or higher, including new instruction sets such as RDNA1&2, CDNA.

Support issues

Though support for GCN 1.0/1.1 is incomplete, it can be enabled by a kernel parameter and some

Linux distributions A Linux distribution, often abbreviated as distro, is an operating system that includes the Linux kernel for its kernel (operating system), kernel functionality. Although the name does not imply distribution (marketing), product distribution pe ...

enabled it by default. Linux AMD graphics stack

References

External links

* AMD software Free device drivers Linux drivers {{Linux-stub