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AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan

phoronix.com

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Re: AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan

#11

Post by badsectoracula »

baldfat wrote: post #6

AMD has been working for years to make them the most Linux friendly GPU option. Sadly the legacy of the Linux community talks like AMD doesn't work in Linux and NVIDIA is the only real choice. Kind of like Windows users complaining about AMD drivers when they haven't been an issue for over five years. I had AMD on my Linux boxes for eight years and I have haven't had an issue for the past six years.

While NVIDIA is far from the only choice and AMD has improved dramatically these days to the point where they are within NVIDIA's performance reach, NVIDIA still dominates the higher end side [1] and they do have by far the most complete and stable OpenGL implementation (with the Mesa front end on AMD you do not even get a compatibility profile - a major disaster IMO - whereas on the other hand NVIDIA not only gives you that but in some cases using it you can get a huge bang for your buck in terms of performance).

[1] https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=16way-gp...

Re: AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan

#12

Post by bryanlarsen »

Asooka wrote: post #8
baldfat wrote: post #6

AMD has been working for years to make them the most Linux friendly GPU option. Sadly the legacy of the Linux community talks like AMD doesn't work in Linux and NVIDIA is the only real choice. Kind of like Windows users complaining about AMD drivers when they haven't been an issue for over five years. I had AMD on my Linux boxes for eight years and I have haven't had an issue for the past six years.

The problem is AMD (and Intel) require a lot of moving pieces to come together to make a fully stable system, while nVidia is more of a complete packaged solution. For me, I tried AMD (neé ATI) once in 2003 and the experience was so bad, I just completely swore them off. I have literally never had nVidia's drivers crash and kill my X session, or hard-lock the kernel, which were frequent problems with both ATI's close…

My experience in 2017 is the complete opposite. The nVidia binary driver is the only thing I experience that causes me significant pain, including system lockups. Unfortunately we use CUDA, but as soon as ROCm matures, I'm going to be strongly advocating a switch away from nVidia.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15877262

Re: AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan

#13

Post by distances »

jhasse wrote: post #10
Asooka wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is AMD (and Intel) require a lot of moving pieces to come together to make a fully stable system, while nVidia is more of a complete packaged solution. For me, I tried AMD (neé ATI) once in 2003 and the experience was so bad, I just completely swore them off. I have literally never had nVidia's drivers crash and kill my X session, or hard-lock the kernel, which were frequent problems with both ATI's close…

> 2003 You had a problem with ATI's closed-source driver 14 years ago. AMD's open-source driver now is a COMPLETELY different story.

> You had a problem with ATI's closed-source driver 14 years ago. AMD's open-source driver now is a COMPLETELY different story.

Indeed. In 2003 no-one would have based their expectations on what happened in 1989. 14 years is an eternity in this field.

Re: AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan

#14

Post by StudentStuff »

Asooka wrote: post #8
baldfat wrote: post #6

AMD has been working for years to make them the most Linux friendly GPU option. Sadly the legacy of the Linux community talks like AMD doesn't work in Linux and NVIDIA is the only real choice. Kind of like Windows users complaining about AMD drivers when they haven't been an issue for over five years. I had AMD on my Linux boxes for eight years and I have haven't had an issue for the past six years.

The problem is AMD (and Intel) require a lot of moving pieces to come together to make a fully stable system, while nVidia is more of a complete packaged solution. For me, I tried AMD (neé ATI) once in 2003 and the experience was so bad, I just completely swore them off. I have literally never had nVidia's drivers crash and kill my X session, or hard-lock the kernel, which were frequent problems with both ATI's close…

Huh? Intel drivers have been fine for at least the past decade, when I was much younger I remember toting around a laptop with an A4 APU running the libre drivers just fine too.

Re: AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan

#15

Post by green7ea »

baldfat wrote: post #6

AMD has been working for years to make them the most Linux friendly GPU option. Sadly the legacy of the Linux community talks like AMD doesn't work in Linux and NVIDIA is the only real choice. Kind of like Windows users complaining about AMD drivers when they haven't been an issue for over five years. I had AMD on my Linux boxes for eight years and I have haven't had an issue for the past six years.

I couldn't agree more. I'm a full time Linux user and have recently switched to AMD because of their awesome open source support. My new system is the most responsive and stable Linux experience I've ever had.

I just recently build a full AMD system (Ryzen 5, Radeon RX 560) and I couldn't be happier. I've had Intel systems that were fine but couldn't keep up with GPU performance. I've also had nvidia systems that were fine performance wise but the closed nvidia driver has been more and more problematic lately (crashes, VSync is off, etc.).

Not only that but it's all free software. When freesync support lands I can't image ever using anything but AMD under Linux.

Re: AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan

#16

Post by rhaps0dy »

baldfat wrote: post #6

AMD has been working for years to make them the most Linux friendly GPU option. Sadly the legacy of the Linux community talks like AMD doesn't work in Linux and NVIDIA is the only real choice. Kind of like Windows users complaining about AMD drivers when they haven't been an issue for over five years. I had AMD on my Linux boxes for eight years and I have haven't had an issue for the past six years.

Semi-relatedly and unfortunately, AI research is locked-in to NVIDIA (on Linux) because all the big lienar algebra and autodifferentiation frameworks work only with CUDA.

Re: AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan

#17

Post by dijit »

baldfat wrote: post #6

AMD has been working for years to make them the most Linux friendly GPU option. Sadly the legacy of the Linux community talks like AMD doesn't work in Linux and NVIDIA is the only real choice. Kind of like Windows users complaining about AMD drivers when they haven't been an issue for over five years. I had AMD on my Linux boxes for eight years and I have haven't had an issue for the past six years.

This does not mirror my experience. I have a machine with amdgpu drivers installed. I specifically installed ubuntu instead of arch or something more exotic because i knew there would be issues. And i was right. I can use the OpenCL now but I can't use x11 because the driver uses old ABIs. My experience with Nvidias binary blobs even on systems like freebsd has been stellar in comparison.

Re: AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan

#18

Post by dijit »

dijit wrote: post #17
baldfat wrote: post #6

AMD has been working for years to make them the most Linux friendly GPU option. Sadly the legacy of the Linux community talks like AMD doesn't work in Linux and NVIDIA is the only real choice. Kind of like Windows users complaining about AMD drivers when they haven't been an issue for over five years. I had AMD on my Linux boxes for eight years and I have haven't had an issue for the past six years.

This does not mirror my experience. I have a machine with amdgpu drivers installed. I specifically installed ubuntu instead of arch or something more exotic because i knew there would be issues. And i was right. I can use the OpenCL now but I can't use x11 because the driver uses old ABIs. My experience with Nvidias binary blobs even on systems like freebsd has been stellar in comparison.

I should add that I generally dont like nvidia either. Intel is the GPU of choice generally, but sometimes you need the compute.

Re: AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan

#19

Post by lloeki »

rhaps0dy wrote: post #16
baldfat wrote: post #6

AMD has been working for years to make them the most Linux friendly GPU option. Sadly the legacy of the Linux community talks like AMD doesn't work in Linux and NVIDIA is the only real choice. Kind of like Windows users complaining about AMD drivers when they haven't been an issue for over five years. I had AMD on my Linux boxes for eight years and I have haven't had an issue for the past six years.

Semi-relatedly and unfortunately, AI research is locked-in to NVIDIA (on Linux) because all the big lienar algebra and autodifferentiation frameworks work only with CUDA.

This is totally not my field so it may very well be the stupidest question ever: is there technically anything that prevents implementing CUDA on top of non-NVIDIA hardware?

Re: AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan

#20

Post by FnuGk »

lloeki wrote: post #19
rhaps0dy wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Semi-relatedly and unfortunately, AI research is locked-in to NVIDIA (on Linux) because all the big lienar algebra and autodifferentiation frameworks work only with CUDA.

This is totally not my field so it may very well be the stupidest question ever: is there technically anything that prevents implementing CUDA on top of non-NVIDIA hardware?

CUDA is made by nvidia
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