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AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan

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Re: AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan

#3

Post by michaellarabel »

Athas wrote: post #2

Is there also a useful open-source OpenCL implementation for AMD GPUs? I would find that even more useful.

https://github.com/RadeonOpenCompute/ROCm ROCm has open-source support for OpenCL 1.2 but doesn't yet work on all mainline components (i.e. Linux kernel and LLVM changes needed), but that should change in 2018, and also only works with relatively recent AMD GPUs.

Re: AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan

#4

Post by dmm »

Athas wrote: post #2

Is there also a useful open-source OpenCL implementation for AMD GPUs? I would find that even more useful.

You can use the in-kernel open source amdgpu driver with the proprietary opencl userspace by grabbing the tar and installing just the opencl .debs.

Check out https://math.dartmouth.edu/~sarunas/amdgpu.html

If you're on Debian instead of Ubuntu you can manually install the debs.

Re: AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan

#5

Post by Athas »

michaellarabel wrote: post #3
Athas wrote: post #2

Is there also a useful open-source OpenCL implementation for AMD GPUs? I would find that even more useful.

https://github.com/RadeonOpenCompute/ROCm ROCm has open-source support for OpenCL 1.2 but doesn't yet work on all mainline components (i.e. Linux kernel and LLVM changes needed), but that should change in 2018, and also only works with relatively recent AMD GPUs.

That looks very interesting. I'm OK with it only supporting recent AMD GPUs, but I hope the other changes will be upstreamed soon.

Re: AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan

#6

Post by baldfat »

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.

Re: AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan

#7

Post by katastic »

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.

>to make them the most Linux friendly GPU option.

Intel works quite fine. I'm pretty sure it's just nVidia that's the problem.

Re: AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan

#8

Post by Asooka »

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 closed-source drivers and Intel's open-source drivers. I don't see myself ever buying anything other than nVidia ever again.

Re: AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan

#9

Post by sammoth »

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…

Why would you base that decision solely on your experience 14 years ago? The driver is completely different now.

Re: AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan

#10

Post by jhasse »

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

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

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