AMDgpu (Linux kernel module)

Last updated
AMDgpu
Developer AMD
Initial release1.0 / 20 April 2015;10 years ago (2015-04-20) [1]
Stable release
5.11.32.21.40 / 17 September 2021;4 years ago (2021-09-17) [2]
Repository github.com/radeonopencompute/rock-kernel-driver
Written in C
Operating system Linux
Platform x86-64
Type Device driver
License MIT License

AMDgpu is an open source device driver for the Linux operating system developed by AMD to support its Radeon lineup of graphics cards (GPUs). It was announced in 2014 as the successor to the previous radeon device driver as part of AMD's new "unified" driver strategy, [3] and was released on April 20, 2015. [4]

Contents

Development

It takes the form of an in-tree kernel module.

As of 2022, AMD Kernel Fusion Driver (KFD) is now integrated in this one kernel module. AMD KFD development at AMD is part of ROCm, under the ROCk project.

Distribution

AMDgpu has been fully upstreamed and new developments continue to do so.

As AMDgpu is part of the monolithic Linux kernel, it is shipped by most Linux distributions directly. The package suite / install script amdgpu-pro, distributed by AMD directly from AMD Radeon Software, ships an AMDgpu kernel module somewhat reliably more up-to-date compared to that of kernels shipped in regular operating system distributions.

Community

The development of the kernel module happens between AMD and the Linux maintainers, discussions happen on the freedesktop.org mailing lists [5] [6] - freedesktop being home to major Linux graphics projects such as Mesa, libdrm, Xorg, Wayland.

Support

AMDgpu officially supports cards built upon GCN 1.2 or higher, including new instruction sets such as RDNA1&2, CDNA. It adds support for the Vulkan API.

Support issues

Support for GCN 1.0/1.1 was incomplete for several years, disabled by default and kept 'experimental'. [7] Support can be enabled with a couple of kernel parameters [8] [9] (essentially, disabling radeon driver support and force enabling AMDgpu support) and some Linux distributions enabled it by default. The driver lacks hardware video encoding (but does support decoding), sound over HDMI and analog output formats for these generations. [10]

Work was done over 2025 to enable first GCN 1.1 then GCN 1.0 by bringing AMDgpu at feature parity with the radeon driver, and was accepted for mainlining in Linux kernel 6.19 [11] which will reach final in early 2026. This, along with Mesa 25.1 and up, also allows these GPU to support shaders-based ray tracing [12] by using an environment variable, same as more recent hardware revisions [13] .

  1. ↑ "Initial amdgpu driver release". 20 April 2015.
  2. ↑ "AMDgpu version bump". GitHub . 17 September 2021.
  3. ↑ Larabel, Michael (October 8, 2014). "The Slides Announcing The New "AMDGPU" Kernel Driver". Phoronix. Retrieved April 11, 2023.
  4. ↑ Larabel, Michael (April 20, 2015). "AMD Releases New "AMDGPU" Linux Kernel Driver & Mesa Support". Phoronix. Retrieved April 11, 2023.
  5. ↑ "The dri-devel Archives" . Retrieved 2021-02-01.
  6. ↑ "The amd-gfx Archives" . Retrieved 2021-02-01.
  7. ↑ "Defaulting Radeon GCN 1.0/1.1 GPUs To Better Linux Driver Is Held Up By Analog Outputs". Phoronix. Archived from the original on 2020-08-05. Retrieved 2021-03-09.
  8. ↑ "AMD Unleashes Initial AMDGPU Driver Support For GCN 1.0 / Southern Islands GPUs". Phoronix. 2016-05-13. Retrieved 2017-04-05.
  9. ↑ "AMDgpu driver documentation". Freedesktop.org.
  10. ↑ "Mageia 8 RC1 Brings AMDGPU For GCN 1.0/1.1, NVIDIA GLVND, Linux 5.10 LTS". Phoronix. Archived from the original on 2021-02-07. Retrieved 2021-03-09.
  11. ↑ "AMD GCN 1.0/1.1 GPUs Will Default To AMDGPU Driver In Linux 6.19, SMART POWER OLED Added". www.phoronix.com. Retrieved 2025-12-07.
  12. ↑ Mitch074. "New Patch Moves AMD GCN 1.0 GPUs Over To AMDGPU Driver By Default - page 3, user posted experience with patch applied". Phoronix forums. Retrieved 2025-12-07.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  13. ↑ "RADV Driver Now Emulates Ray-Tracing By Default For Older AMD GPUs For A Newer Game". www.phoronix.com. Retrieved 2025-12-07.

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Linux device drivers for AMD hardware as of August 2016 Linux AMD graphics stack.svg
Linux device drivers for AMD hardware as of August 2016

See also

References

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