Quoting: AnxiousInfusion*Cautiously points out that AMD GPUs require closed firmware blobs.

Just to clarify... AMD GPUs (like all modern GPUs) use closed microcode as part of the GPU hardware design. Calling it "firmware" sometimes makes people think the code runs on the CPU, which it does not.

Some chip vendors deliver microcode in ROMs on the chip, but most these days soft-load the microcode images into RAM at power up (even Intel is soft-loading microcode in recent GPUs). This can be done by VBIOS or by drivers; we do it in the drivers so you don't have to reflash your BIOS if a microcode update is required.

So it's not incorrect to say "AMD GPUs require closed firmware blobs" but it would be more correct to say "all modern GPUs require closed firmware blobs".

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Quoting: pete910Is that AMD-Bridgman ?

Yessir...

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Quoting: AnxiousInfusionSo is powerplay enabled by default in kernel 4.6 AMDGPU? There should be preliminary support for Polaris in 4.6 and this determines how soon I can get a Polaris based card.

You'll need 4.7 to get Polaris support.

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Quoting: TheRiddickI doubt a software patch will fix a fault with a dpm hardware issue on a microprocessor die! Unless they down-clock all 480 card (lol)

Remember those on-chip microcode images we load at power up that some people complain about ? If a software update is not sufficient and the DPM logic actually needs to change that just means an updated microcode image...

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Quoting: boltronics<wonderfully detailed answer>

Ahh, now I understand. I had been thinking more of an "I clicked on A instead of B" kind of answer :)

Quoting: boltronicsReally, the AMD deb packages should depend on all the packages they require so they will be installed automatically (or simply fail to install if the dependencies aren't available).

Yep, I believe that is the end goal. I expect we'll be closer by the time the driver hits production, but we're probably going to be dependent on some help from distro packagers to get all the way there in time.

Thanks !

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Quoting: boltronics...When this news hit, I grabbed a spare 120Gb SSD I had laying around and did a new clean minimal Ubuntu 14.04.4 install, installed Xfce, and finally installed the new AMD GPU-PRO driver package.
...
Also, I had the Ubuntu 4.4 "xenial" kernel installed, which apparently doesn't work. The AMD DKIM stuff doesn't support 4.4 yet, so I had to go back to the 4.2 "wily" kernel. The 14.04.4 default kernel is currently 3.13.0-83, which doesn't support my motherboard network card, but it turned out 3.13 isn't supported by AMD's new driver anyway.

Thanks for the note about multi-arch... I don't remember anyone running into that during testing but will check.

Sounds like you got a very different 14.04.4 HWE from what we downloaded from ubuntu.com. The stock 14.04.4 HWE image should have 4.2 kernel and associated graphics stack, not 4.4 or 3.13.

If you install 14.04.0 or 14.04.1 and apply the regular security/bug fix updates the distro version will show as 14.04.4 but it won't have the 14.04.4 HWE kernel or graphics stack.

Did you install the 4.4 kernel on top of the 14.04.4 install or did it come in automatically ? I'm wondering if ubuntu.com might be giving out different configurations in different locations or something.

Thanks,
John

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Quoting: TheRiddickPhoronix has already compared the AMD/NVIDIA performance. Nvidia is still %200-300 faster then AMD cards, so a long way to go yet!

Remember that was comparing amdgpu open source drivers against NVidia binary drivers, not apples-to-apples. AFAIK you should see somewhat different results when the production amdgpu hybrid stack arrives. The preview hybrid stack was focused on Vulkan, don't think it has the latest Catalyst OpenGL code yet.

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Quoting: SabunI think you've got the wrong idea about my post. My sole issue right now is with AMD, not with Nvidia. With AMD not being here right now, despite saying they would have a day-one proprietary driver for Linux yet not delivering showcases they have not put any plans into motion with a proper deadline.

Hi Sabun,

Just curious, when/where did we say that we would have a day-one proprietary driver with Linux ?

Thanks,
John

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