Arch Linux

fommil

Member

Registered: 2016-07-16

Posts: 39

please use CONFIG_DRM_AMDGPU_CIK=Y by default

Hi all,

I have set up a new desktop computer and I got a Radeon R9 390X card

  https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/AMDGPU

but requires the kernel to be compiled with CONFIG_DRM_AMDGPU_CIK=Y

It would appear that enabling this flag only adds support for cards that would be otherwise unsupported by this driver, so should be harmless for anybody using a different driver (or this driver for an already supported card).

Do you think the default config file could be updated to have this option by default? It would make it a lot easier for people to use the FLOSS drivers for AMD cards if it was!

Best regards,
Sam

Gusar

Member

Registered: 2009-08-25

Posts: 3,605

Re: please use CONFIG_DRM_AMDGPU_CIK=Y by default

The amdgpu kernel driver is only relevant if you want to use AMDGPU-PRO. But as you mentioned FLOSS drivers, you must not be interested in AMDGPU-PRO, so you can simply use the radeon kernel driver.

headkase

Member

Registered: 2011-12-06

Posts: 1,976

Re: please use CONFIG_DRM_AMDGPU_CIK=Y by default

The amdgpu kernel driver is only relevant if you want to use AMDGPU-PRO. But as you mentioned FLOSS drivers, you must not be interested in AMDGPU-PRO, so you can simply use the radeon kernel driver.

The FLOSS AMDGPU driver is "xf86-video-amdgpu" and it's in the official repos.

Gusar

Member

Registered: 2009-08-25

Posts: 3,605

Re: please use CONFIG_DRM_AMDGPU_CIK=Y by default

The FLOSS AMDGPU driver is "xf86-video-amdgpu" and it's in the official repos.

That's the X driver, and it's quite unnecessary actually - it uses glamor for acceleration, same as the modesetting driver. So you don't gain anything by using it.

fommil

Member

Registered: 2016-07-16

Posts: 39

Re: please use CONFIG_DRM_AMDGPU_CIK=Y by default

The amdgpu kernel driver is only relevant if you want to use AMDGPU-PRO. But as you mentioned FLOSS drivers, you must not be interested in AMDGPU-PRO, so you can simply use the radeon kernel driver.

Interesting. I downgraded to the radeon (kernel) and ati (xfree86) drivers and everything seems to work (I must have fixed something else when setting up amdgpu)... but I've not done any stress tests on this. Are you sure there are no benefits to using the amdgpu drivers?

I would eventually like to do some OpenCL development on this card, but sadly it looks like there are no FLOSS implementation of OpenCL for AMD or NVIDIA cards (just Intel). If I want to use this card for something like linear algebra, I'll have to do some research on my options.

It's such a shame that there is no FLOSS high performance GPU environment to develop with.

fommil

Member

Registered: 2016-07-16

Posts: 39

Re: please use CONFIG_DRM_AMDGPU_CIK=Y by default

It's such a shame that there is no FLOSS high performance GPU environment to develop with.

Sidenote: I discovered the very-difficult-to-find Gallium project https://dri.freedesktop.org/wiki/GalliumCompute/ which seems to be using mesa to provide open cl. Unfortunately my card doesn't seem to be supported and luxmark (an opencl benchmarking app) spits out the error "PathOCLBase kernel compilation error"... I guess I'll try again in a few years.

Lone_Wolf

Member

From: Netherlands, Europe

Registered: 2005-10-04

Posts: 11,911

Re: please use CONFIG_DRM_AMDGPU_CIK=Y by default

Sidenote: I discovered the very-difficult-to-find Gallium project https://dri.freedesktop.org/wiki/GalliumCompute/ which seems to be using mesa to provide open cl.

that project is indeed not well known, but the packages that provide it (opencl-mesa and libclc ) have been around for a while .

if you do have libclc installed, look at /usr/lib/clc folder . It holds firmware blobs for the chipsets it supports.

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Disliking systemd intensely, but not satisfied with alternatives so focusing on taming systemd.

(A works at time B)  && (time C > time B ) ≠  (A works at time C)