AMD (opens in new tab) has shared two massive information for the ROCm neighborhood. Not solely is the ROCm SDK coming to Home windows, however AMD has prolonged assist to the corporate’s client Radeon merchandise, that are among the many greatest graphics playing cards. In fact, there are some small compromises, however mainstream Radeon graphics card homeowners can experiment with AMD ROCm (5.6.0 Alpha), a software program stack beforehand solely out there with skilled graphics playing cards.
AMD launched Radeon Open Compute Ecosystem (ROCm) in 2016 as an open-source different to Nvidia’s CUDA platform. ROCm helps AMD’s CDNA and RDNA GPU architectures, however the listing is lowered to a choose variety of SKUs from AMD’s Intuition and Radeon Professional lineups. AMD graphics card homeowners have gotten different SKUs to work, however they typically solely accomplish that to a sure extent.
From the Intuition portfolio, now we have the Intuition MI250X, MI250, MI210, MI100, and MI50 that function full assist. In the meantime, solely the Radeon Professional W6800 and Radeon Professional V620 from the Radeon Professional’s ranks are on the listing. AMD has broadened the listing to assist the Radeon RX 6900 XT, Radeon RX 6600, and, surprisingly, the eight-year-old Radeon R9 Fury. Nonetheless, there’s a small catch. Solely the Radeon R9 Fury arrives with full software-level assist from the ROCm platform, whereas the opposite two RDNA 2 choices have partial assist. For example, the Radeon RX 6900 XT solely helps the Heterogeneous Interface for Portability (HIP) SDK; in the meantime, solely the HIP runtime is enabled on the Radeon RX 6600.
| GPU | Structure | SW Stage | LLVM Goal | Linux | Home windows |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Radeon RX 6900 XT | RDNA 2 | HIP SDK | gfx1030 | Supported | Supported |
| Radeon RX 6600 | RDNA 2 | HIP Runtime | gfx1031 | Supported | Supported |
| Radeon R9 Fury | Fiji | Full | gfx803 | Group | Unsupported |
AMD had initially designed ROCm to work with Linux. There have been workarounds to get ROCm to run on Home windows-based programs, like virtualization strategies like Docker or Home windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). Logically, there is a slight efficiency hit in comparison with working ROCm on a local Linux system. AMD has now embraced Home windows on ROCm, which customers have been asking for a very long time. Sadly, only some AMD SKUs are on the Home windows assist listing.
None of AMD’s Intuition accelerators assist ROCm on Home windows. Solely the Radeon Professional W6800, Radeon RX 6900 XT, and Radeon RX 6600 are on the listing for Home windows assist. The Radeon R9 Fury is a specific case. Whereas it has full ROCm software program assist, the Fiji-based graphics card solely works in Linux on a neighborhood degree. It principally signifies that AMD does not have the Radeon R9 enabled by default in its software program distributions. As a substitute, customers should allow the graphics card themselves manually.
It is nice to see AMD widening the ROCm ecosystem to incorporate client graphics playing cards. The chipmaker appears to be marching in the correct route, even when it takes a candy time to take action.