From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Jonathan Brielmaier Subject: Re: Have GPGPU support in guix? Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2018 08:21:40 +0200 Message-ID: <168a0afc-e446-3f76-705d-7df1537dd9c1@web.de> References: <87sh7jtdc0.fsf@elephly.net> <2e8cf2af-7a98-b099-d714-dbeb701c11eb@platen-software.de> <87a7tqejtv.fsf@gmail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:59276) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fBaHq-0005gS-UE for guix-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 26 Apr 2018 02:21:48 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fBaHn-00084N-PB for guix-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 26 Apr 2018 02:21:46 -0400 Received: from mout.web.de ([212.227.17.11]:42445) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.0:DHE_RSA_AES_128_CBC_SHA1:16) (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fBaHn-00083F-Ff for guix-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 26 Apr 2018 02:21:43 -0400 Received: from [192.168.178.195] ([89.247.127.140]) by smtp.web.de (mrweb103 [213.165.67.124]) with ESMTPSA (Nemesis) id 0LbrZ2-1eUmjw2Vsa-00jLWO for ; Thu, 26 Apr 2018 08:21:40 +0200 In-Reply-To: <87a7tqejtv.fsf@gmail.com> Content-Language: en-US List-Id: "Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: "Guix-devel" To: guix-devel@gnu.org On 04/26/2018 05:18 AM, Pierre Neidhardt wrote: > > Joshua Branson writes: > >> That's actually a really good point. I forgot about that. Isn't radeon >> close to having free drivers? > > I thought it was entirely free already, isn't it? > To my understanding, it's AMDGPU that is partly proprietary. > According to the latest Phoronix benchmarks, the free Radeon performs > really well. There is a bunch of entirely FOSS drivers for AMD Radeon cards: Kernel drivers: radeon: for older cards before GCN1.2 (kernel/drivers/gpu/drm/radeon) amdgpu: for the new cards since GCN1.2 (kernel/drivers/gpu/drm/amd/amdgpu) Userspace drivers: radeonsi: for almost all cards in the last decade (mesa/src/gallium/drivers/radeonsi) r600: for the ones before (mesa/src/gallium/drivers/r600) Vulkan drivers: RADV: written by the community (RedHat etc.), because AMD initially didn't make their Vulkan userspace FOSS (mesa/src/amd/vulkan) AMDVLK: AMDs Vulkan driver released as FOSS (https://github.com/GPUOpen-Drivers/AMDVLK) So your FOSS driver would consist of amdgpu + radeonsi + radv and is in almost all cases the best choice (performance, stability etc). Then there was always a propriatary driver by AMD nowadays it's called "Radeon Software for Linux", which bundles also free software like AMDVLK and ROCm. Other names before were "AMDGPU-PRO", "AMD Catalyst" and "fglrx"... I hope it's now less confusing then before :P Jonathan