Every article tag can be clicked to get a list of all articles in that category. Every article tag also has an RSS feed! You can customize an RSS feed too!
We do often include affiliate links to earn us some pennies. See more here.

AMD have now officially open-sourced their 'AMDVLK' Linux Vulkan driver

By - | Views: 17,363

Typical really, the day after I do a review of 2017 and mention how AMD announced they would finally release it, but still didn't, they then go and do it today. The 'AMDVLK' is now officially under the MIT license!

The announcement I saw came courtesy of Matthäus G. Chajdas from AMD on Twitter, which was retweeted by another developer I follow to end up in my timeline.

The curious thing now, is what will happen in the open source driver space for AMD GPUs. Since the Mesa RADV driver has come a long way, it will be interesting to see what happens between the two efforts. It is entirely seperate to Mesa, with it being built to work with AMD's Platform Abstraction Library (PAL). That's the awesome thing, their PAL is also now open source under the MIT license.

Since it confused me at first: the xgl repository has the Vulkan implementation that sits on top of the PAL code. The actual AMDVLK repository is information about it all.

AMD have listed support for these GPUs:

  • Radeon™ HD 7000 Series
  • Radeon™ HD 8000M Series
  • Radeon™ R5/R7/R9 200/300 Series
  • Radeon™ RX 400/500 Series
  • Radeon™ M200/M300/M400 Series
  • Radeon™ RX Vega Series
  • AMD FirePro™ Workstation Wx000/Wx100/Wx300 Series
  • Radeon™ Pro WX x100 Series
  • Radeon™ Pro 400/500 Series

AMD are only listing support for Ubuntu 16.04.3 and RedHat 7.4 right now, but hopefully now it's fully open work can be done to enable good support for a wider selection of distributions.

It sure took them a while, but with open source releases they do end up having to go through legal hoops to ensure there's nothing in the code that they're not actually allowed to open source. There's probably plenty of other checks it has to go through too, but it is fantastic that AMD have done this.

You can see the full repository on GitHub here. For some extra background info, see this article on the gpuopen website.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
17 Likes
About the author -
author picture
I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
See more from me
The comments on this article are closed.
17 comments
Page: 1/2»
  Go to:

STiAT Dec 22, 2017
Hmh, I don't see anything released ... am I missing the source code? There is none visible for me in the repo.

Seeing the PAL code though.


Last edited by STiAT on 22 December 2017 at 12:54 pm UTC
Liothe Dec 22, 2017
As far as I know my APU/dGPU laptop with a 8670M (HAINAN) doesn't have amdgpu kernel support (yet). Will have to try and see if this actually works.
Pecisk Dec 22, 2017
I think most important part is this

QuoteWe open sourced our @VulkanAPI driver for lots of Radeon GPUs! That includes PAL, our low-level abstraction that the Vulkan and D3D12 drivers are built on top of!

So it is basically AMD official driver open sourced for both Linux *and* Windows. People making graphics engines for cross platform certainly will like additional ways to debug their problems.
Eike Dec 22, 2017
View PC info
  • Supporter Plus
Nobody should mention this other website now...! ;)
Liam Dawe Dec 22, 2017
Quoting: STiATHmh, I don't see anything released ... am I missing the source code? There is none visible for me in the repo.

Seeing the PAL code though.
From the Telegram Group chat, the AMDVLK is just info. The xgl repo is the vulkan api implementation that works with the PAL code.
Guest Dec 22, 2017
Quoting: EikeNobody should mention this other website now...! ;)

Liam Dawe Dec 22, 2017
Quoting: EikeNobody should mention this other website now...! ;)
I'm assuming you mean Phoronix? I feel like I'm missing something?
STiAT Dec 22, 2017
Quoting: liamdawe
Quoting: STiATHmh, I don't see anything released ... am I missing the source code? There is none visible for me in the repo.

Seeing the PAL code though.
From the Telegram Group chat, the AMDVLK is just info. The xgl repo is the vulkan api implementation that works with the PAL code.

Ahh, ye, looks good. I'll start digging :-).
FireBurn Dec 22, 2017
It didn't build for me without some patches, it doesn't feel well tested
Shmerl Dec 22, 2017
Great. I wonder if radv can use some parts of amdvlk to fill the missing gaps, and other way around.
While you're here, please consider supporting GamingOnLinux on:

Reward Tiers: Patreon. Plain Donations: PayPal.

This ensures all of our main content remains totally free for everyone! Patreon supporters can also remove all adverts and sponsors! Supporting us helps bring good, fresh content. Without your continued support, we simply could not continue!

You can find even more ways to support us on this dedicated page any time. If you already are, thank you!
The comments on this article are closed.