Development

AMDgpu is

AMD Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California, that develops computer processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets. While it initially manufact ...

's fully

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

unified

kernel driver In computing, 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, enabling operating systems and ot ...

for its GPUs on

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...

. It takes the form of a
in-tree

kernel module In computing, a loadable kernel module (LKM) is an object file that contains code to extend the 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/ ...

. 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: general-purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPU), high performance computing (HPC), heterogeneous c ...

, 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 ...

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 AMD Radeon Software is a device driver and utility software package for AMD's graphics cards and APUs. Its graphical user interface is built with Electron and is compatible with 64-bit Windows and Linux distributions. Software bundle Fun ...

, 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) 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 operating systems. It was founded by Havoc ...

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

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

, libdrm,

Xorg X.Org Server is the free and open-source implementation of the X Window System 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 serve ...

, 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 made from a software collection that includes the Linux kernel and, often, a package management system. Linux users usually obtain their operating system by downloading on ...

enabled it by default. Linux AMD graphics stack

References

External links

* {{Portal bar, Computer programming, Free and open-source software, Linux, Engineering, Electronics, Technology, Mathematics AMD software Linux drivers Free device drivers