Not only did AMD ship the very powerful Ryzen 5000 “Zen 3” desktop processors and the first Radeon RX 6000 “Big Navi” graphics cards this year, but for exciting Linux users, timely open source support for the new GPUs was well in advance (and also already preparing for some graphics products for 2021), as well as more timely support around thermal support of Zen 3 and other additions. AMD’s open-source timing is still improving, although not yet optimally, but all in all, it has been a great year for AMD Linux users.
AMD’s hardware launches this year have been fantastic, with the Ryzen 5000 series continuing to impress Linux with their great performance and the Radeon RX 6000 series also delivering the best GPU performance for an open-source driver to date . With plenty of new open-source components, the new products would have run smoothly from day one – assuming you could get the hardware. But looking ahead, there is room for improvement as they could be even more punctual in their kernel activation work to facilitate users, especially business people who want to stick with LTS kernel versions. There are other things too, like the Zen 3 compiler’s support patches that don’t appear until after launch and still don’t lack an updated cost table, schedule model or other optimizations to date to really accommodate the updated processors. Intel is still leading the way when it comes to having their open-source support of compiler toolchains and kernel support well in advance of product launches, but AMD has been through an improvement trajectory.
Looking ahead to 2021, I’m damn excited for the next generation AND Ryzen mobile processors, the next generation Threadripper, and certainly for EPYC 7003 “Milan” … Stay tuned for benchmarks on both when the time comes. Plus a host of other interesting Zen 3 and RDNA 2 benchmarks still coming with evolving open source / Linux status.
The most viewed AMD open-source / Linux news articles for 2020 on Phoronix were:
Linus Torvalds switches to AMD Ryzen Threadripper after 15 years of Intel systems
An interesting anecdote shared in today’s Linux 5.7-rc7 announcement is that Linux creator and Git Linus Torvalds has switched its main installation to an AMD Ryzen Threadripper.
The AMD Radeon graphics driver makes up about 10.5% of the Linux kernel
Considering the upcoming release of Linux 5.9, I had some fun with cloc today and looked at the current lines of code count for this near-definitive Linux 5.9 kernel state.
AMD versus Intel contributions to the Linux kernel over the past decade
Driven by curiosity, here’s a look at how the total number of AMD and Intel developers contributed to the upstream Linux kernel in the 2010s, as well as the total number of commits per year from the respective hardware vendors.
Acer launches in Germany what could be a great AMD Ryzen 5 4500U Linux laptop
For those looking for an AMD Linux laptop powered by a Ryzen 4000 processor, Acer is poised to launch a new laptop in Germany at least that could prove quite attractive to Linux users.
I have used the AMD Ryzen 7 4700U + Ubuntu 20.04 as my main system
For about a month and a half I’ve been using the AMD Ryzen 7 4700U as my main laptop in conjunction with Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. It works really well because it’s not even the best AMD Renoir SKU. Here is some additional comment for those considering one of the new AMD laptops with Linux usage.
Benchmarks of Arch Linux’s Zen Kernel flavor
Following Liquorix’s recent Linux kernel tests and other scheduler discussions (and more), some requests came in from premium supporters to see the performance of Arch Linux’s Zen kernel package over the generic kernel. Here are those benchmark results.
A quick look at the Blender 2.82 performance on Intel + AMD CPUs
With Blender 2.82 released on Friday, this weekend we started benchmarking this new Blender release as the leading open-source 3D modeling solution currently available. Here are some preliminary v2.81 vs. v2.82 figures on various advanced Intel and AMD processors.
Ryzen CPUs on Linux Finally see CCD temperatures, current + voltage reporting
One of the few frustrations with the AMD Ryzen CPU support on Linux so far, in addition to the often delayed support for CPU temperature reporting, has been that the main kernel does not support voltage measurements and other additional sensors. But that’s finally changing as the “k10temp” driver expands with current and voltage reporting plus CCD temperature reporting on Zen 2 processors.
Rust-Written Redox OS boot from the 128-thread AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X
The Rust-focused Redox OS open-source operating system is now able to boot and run the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X 64-core / 128-thread processor with full multi-threading capabilities.
ASUS TUF laptops with Ryzen have now been patched to stop overheating on Linux
The AMD Ryzen Linux laptop experience continues to improve, albeit rather late on some elements of the support. In addition to the AMD Sensor Fusion Hub driver finally being released and current / voltage reporting for Zen CPUs on Linux, another step forward in Ryzen mobile support is a solution for ASUS TUF laptops with these processors.
LLVM / Clang 10.0 adds AMD Zen 2 Scheduler model for optimized code generation
It’s a shame it took so many months after the AMD Zen 2 based Ryzen and EPYC processors started shipping to see this compiler support, but the good news is that for the upcoming release of LLVM 10.0 now the Zen 2 planning model is is added to the “znver2” target.
AMD starts to deliver PowerPC builds of their “AOMP” GPU compiler
AOMP is the AMD GPU compiler for OpenMP and HIP support on GPUs as part of Radeon Open eCosystem 3.0 (ROCm 3.0). Now they have begun to provide PowerPC 64-bit LE builds of AOMP as part of enabling Radeon GPU compute on POWER9 systems.
A lot of ACO optimizations for the Radeon Vulkan driver landed in Mesa 20.0
The Valve-supported ACO compiler backend optionally used by the RADV Radeon Vulkan driver has continued to grow in popularity with Linux gamers and has also matured a lot for Mesa 20.0, which will be released later this quarter.
RenderDoc 1.6 released, NVIDIA + AMD + Intel All ready for Vulkan 1.2
This morning’s release of Vulkan 1.2 has started well.
Mesa 20.0 released with major improvements for Intel, AMD Radeon Vulkan / OpenGL
Mesa 20.0 has now been released as the first quarter of 2020 update for the Mesa 3D open-source graphics driver stack.
AMD Ryzen 4000 Mobile Series “Renoir” Graphics no longer experimental with Linux 5.5
While the Linux 5.5 kernel is expected to be released on Sunday as soon as possible, a last-minute change to the AMDGPU DRM driver means that the Renoir graphics are no longer considered experimental. With that, there is out-of-the-box open source support rather than being hidden behind a kernel module flag.
System76 may offer AMD Ryzen laptops when they start their own production
System76 is preparing to ship their new Lemur Pro laptop in early April. This will be their most open laptop yet, albeit still based on Intel. But it seems that as they move forward with their ambitious plans to start manufacturing their own devices, we can finally see a System76 AMD powered laptop.
FFmpeg 4.3 released with AMD AMF encoding, Vulkan support, AV1 encoding
FFmpeg 4.3 is out as the latest version of this important open-source multimedia library. FFmpeg 4.3 is a fairly large release.
AMD hires another leading Linux kernel developer to work on their graphics driver
If you have experience with upstream Linux kernel development, AMD will hire a leading Linux kernel developer.
Updated Linux k10temp driver for AMD CPUs to better handle power / temperature analysis
As we have eagerly discussed over the past week, the Linux kernel’s k10temp driver has been updated for better AMD CPU CCD temperatures and voltage / current reporting. Those improvements have evolved quickly thanks to the work of the open source community, with AMD unfortunately still keeping the datasheets related to the power / temperature registers close to their vest. Wednesday a new version of k10temp was sent.