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AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan

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Re: AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan

#41

Post by baldfat »

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…

> 2003

Read the offical documentation on Linux with SUSE and NVIDIA.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux_display_ia32_1.0-4363.htm...

Linux in 2003 is a totally different beast today. Tell me you got your wifi working or NVIDIA with a working desktop out of the box. I would sit in the terminal and have to install proprietary drivers just to see Gnome or KDE. I would have to sit by the Ethernet port for a while till I got wifi working.

Read this forum post I can post hundreds of these because I read them all trying to get my card to work. I had to edit my X11 configs by hand till around 2008???

https://www.opengl.org/discussion_boards/showthread.php/1575...

Re: AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan

#42

Post by baldfat »

Asooka wrote: post #34
jhasse wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yes, and it was bad enough that I decided to never ever buy from that company again. For the record, I did have the displeasure of using an AMD GPU in 2010, because that's what my employer at the time purchased, and it was only slightly more stable. I am absolutely convinced that nobody except nVidia can produce stable, working video drivers. The last 14 years haven't produced a counter-example.

Also do you also refuse to use RPM based distros due to dependency hell?

Also GOOD NEWS ATI is dead, it wasn't AMD that manufactured the Card or the Drivers! It was a company called ATI based in Canada. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATI_Technologies

AMD bought them 2006 and killed ATI brand 3 years later. Also I bet you only a handful of people actually still work on the technology.

Re: AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan

#43

Post by floatboth »

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'm using amdgpu on FreeBSD (-CURRENT, drm-next-kmod), with Vulkan (RADV) + Wayland, it's awesome :)

Yeah, OpenCL is a problem, clover crashes, the new AMD OpenCL driver is not ported yet (I guess it depends on kernel 4.15? we have amdgpu from 4.12 for now)...

I wish people started using Vulkan for compute instead of OpenCL!!

Re: AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan

#44

Post by bitL »

Tangentially related question - is there any good Vulkan tutorial/online class one can take that would allow learning how to build own 3D engine/VR/AR system from the scratch? I am in the mood... Thanks!

Re: AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan

#45

Post by arca_vorago »

floatboth wrote: post #43
dijit wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'm using amdgpu on FreeBSD (-CURRENT, drm-next-kmod), with Vulkan (RADV) + Wayland, it's awesome :) Yeah, OpenCL is a problem, clover crashes, the new AMD OpenCL driver is not ported yet (I guess it depends on kernel 4.15? we have amdgpu from 4.12 for now)... I wish people started using Vulkan for compute instead of OpenCL!!

Wait Vulkan is for compute like opencl is?

Re: AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan

#46

Post by badsectoracula »

vetinari wrote: post #31
badsectoracula wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm curious - what would you need OpenGL compatibility profile for?

Regardless of what i'd personally need it for, it is still something that NVIDIA's drivers provide and AMD/Mesa lack and thus a negative on Mesa's side (especially considering that NVIDIA not only provides all that extra stuff but they still manage to be faster than the implementations - like Mesa and Apple - that do not).

Now as for what I would need the compatibility profile, it is very simple: i just find it more convenient to use so i have a ton of code that uses it. The original idea for the separation of profiles was that the core profile would make implementing OpenGL easier and make it faster but neither of those actually happened (as i said, NVIDIA despite implementing the entirety of OpenGL is still the fastest implementation) while i really disagree with the idea of pushing the complex bits towards the end users (of the API) in order to avoid the implementors doing it. It is better to have 1 developer on the driver/implementation side handle the complexity that 1000 users (of the API) are going to enjoy than have each one of those 1000 users make 1000 individual solutions to that complexity, thus multiplying the time spent on the complexity by 1000 (this of course applies to all tech that by itself is "simple" only because it pushes the hard bits to its clients - see Wayland as another example).

Ok, so actually i have two reasons, one practical (i find it convenient) and one more ideological (pushing complexity upwards). Actually i have two ideological reasons, the second (and actually more important) is that i dislike backwards incompatible breakage in APIs and libraries (unless that API is meant for internal or utility use, of course, or is in beta/development stage). This is a much bigger issue though, so let's leave it at that :-P.

Re: AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan

#47

Post by monocasa »

arca_vorago wrote: post #45
floatboth wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm using amdgpu on FreeBSD (-CURRENT, drm-next-kmod), with Vulkan (RADV) + Wayland, it's awesome :) Yeah, OpenCL is a problem, clover crashes, the new AMD OpenCL driver is not ported yet (I guess it depends on kernel 4.15? we have amdgpu from 4.12 for now)... I wish people started using Vulkan for compute instead of OpenCL!!

Wait Vulkan is for compute like opencl is?

It does both compute and graphics.

Re: AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan

#48

Post by microtonal »

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 fully agree. My workstation came with an NVIDIA Quadro and it had a lot of driver issues. The proprietary drivers did not work with Wayland and with the open source drivers the screen would regularly flicker, not come out of display sleep, etc.

Based on the positive comments wrt. the amdgpu driver I bought an AMD FirePro W2100 (because its max TDP is 25W). And it's been excellent. Since GCN 1.0 and 1.1 are supported by both the radeon and amdgpu drivers, I use the kernel flags

  amdgpu.si_support=1 radeon.si_support=0 amdgpu.cik_support=1 radeon.ciksupport=0
to disable radeon and use the newer amdgpu drivers. Everything is incredibly smooth under Wayland in 4k@60Hz and I had no issues at all so far.

Re: AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan

#49

Post by foepys »

ensignavenger wrote: post #33
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 built a new system recently, Ryzen 7 with an AMD Vega 64... I've yet to get the Vega 64 to work right with Debian Testing (Or Ubuntu 17.10/16.04). I am hoping I have some time to fiddle with it and maybe get it working before Christmas :)

Vega cards will be supported in Linux 4.15 onwards with mesa drivers. Linux 4.12, 4.13, and 4.14 do support Vega cards but not for display output. You'll have to use AMD's proprietary drivers for now.
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