AMD News Archives

The AMD Platform Management Framework (PMF) Linux driver is preparing to support a new but potentially controversial feature that's seen little public information so far: the Smart PC Solutions Builder.

AMD's GPUOpen team today released a number of updated components for graphics application/engine developers.

AMD on Thursday released ZenDNN 4.1 as the newest release of their Zen Deep Neural Network Library for accelerating inference workloads on AMD Ryzen and EPYC processors. The ZenDNN library remains API compatible with Intel's oneDNN library and helps for building out optimized AI workloads for use on AMD Zen processors.

AMD announced today that their Versal HBM adaptive SoCs have entered production for these newest wares with high bandwidth memory.

Since early this year AMD has been working on Linux enablement patches for Dynamic Boost Control (DBC). This is a new feature of some AMD SoCs that allow an "authenticated entity" to have greater control over certain SoC characteristics to improve the power/performance. AMD DBC was merged for Linux 6.6 just days ago while already new patches have been posted that extend the supported platforms for this Dynamic Boost Control functionality.

AMD today published version 1.2 of their Unified Inference Frontend (UIF) that is for supporting deep learning inference across AMD CPUs, GPUs, as well as Versal adaptive SoCs and FPGAs. AMD UIF aims to accelerate AI inference across all AMD compute platforms with machine learning frameworks like PyTorch and TensorFlow. With UIF 1.2 adds initial support for Radeon GPUs.

On the AMD CPU side of the house, one of the patch series we are looking forward to seeing upstreamed in the Linux kernel is the AMD Preferred Core functionality that was initially sent out this summer. This AMD Preferred Core handling is built onto the AMD P-State driver and has been undergoing a few rounds of iteration with the latest "v5" patches having been posted this week.

AMD by way of their Xilinx acquisition has been running the Open Hardware Competition since 2015 for helping to drive new innovations around FPGAs and the ACAP compute platform. The winners of the AMD Open Hardware Competition 2023 were recently announced.

One of the patches to be picked up by the Linux 6.6 kernel this week brings back REP MOSQ for user-access on CPUs without Enhanced REP MOVSB (ERMS) support. In turn this can equate to some performance benefits on AMD CPUs lacking ERMS.

While I have been eagerly following the AMD openSIL project for open-source CPU initialization that will eventually replace AGESA, today AMD announced a new open-source firmware drop: the SEV firmware has been made open-source.

While we are eagerly awaiting ROCm support for more RDNA3 GPUs said to be coming later this calendar year, shipping Tuesday night was ROCm 5.6.1 as the newest point release for this open-source GPU compute stack.

Over the summer AMD Linux engineers began sending kernel patches for Family 1Ah (Family 26) processors that almost surely are for next-gen Zen 5 processors. Among the initial bits sent out for this next-generation AMD CPU Family are HWMON temperature monitoring and EDAC reporting, which are now on their way for the Linux 6.6 kernel.

Back in April AMD Linux engineers posted enabling a new CPU feature called Dynamic Boost Control to be found with some unspecified Ryzen SoCs for tuning the processor cores for optimal performance. The Dynamic Boost Control functionality depends upon the AMD Cryptographic Co-Processor (CCP) / Platform Security Processor (PSP) and this functionality was submitted today as part of the crypto updates for Linux 6.6.

As part of the Reliability, Availability and Serviceability (RAS) updates submitted today for the Linux 6.6 kernel is adding a quirk/workaround for dealing with current AMD Zen systems where a processor bug could lead to erroneously increased error severity and unneeded kernel panics.

It looks like the further-tuned AMD Inception / SRSO (Speculative Return Stack Overflow) mitigation code will be submitted for the upcoming Linux 6.6 merge window.

Following AMD recently posting Linux graphics driver patches for enabling a GFX 11.5 graphics engine and new DCN 3.5 display block that are presumably for an RDNA3 refresh such as for the Ryzen 8000 series APUs, today AMD posted additional open-source driver patch series for enabling additional new IP.

While AMD has acquired a number of hardware companies in the past several years, software company acquisitions by AMD has been much more rare. This morning AMD announced the acquisition of Mipsology as an AI software company.

Earlier this month when the AMD Inception CPU vulnerability was disclosed the initial mitigation was merged to Linux kernel right away for what there is referred to as the Speculative Return Stack Overflow (SRSO). Within a day of that code being published there were already efforts to clean it up and merged last week for Linux 6.5-rc7 was that AMD Inception code cleaning. This week a new set of 22 patches were published for further improving the AMD Inception/SRSO mitigation code.

For those that have been eyeing an AMD Ryzen 7 7040 "Phoenix" series laptop for Linux use, over the coming weeks ahead there will be benchmarks and a review on the Lenovo ThinkPad P14s Gen4 with AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 7840U laptop. With this 8-core / 16-thread Zen 4 mobile processor clocking up to 5.1GHz, 64GB of LPDDR5x-6400 memory, 1TB NVMe SSD, and 2.8K OLED display it should be a real treat if the Linux support is all in good shape.

Earlier this month the AMD Inception vulnerability was disclosed and quickly mitigated within the mainline Linux kernel and back-ported to the stable kernels. In the rush to get the code merged and the mitigation being under embargo until the disclosure date, some bugs and clean-ups with the mitigation code were discovered. That revised code was now submitted today for merging ahead of the Linux 6.5-rc7 kernel release this weekend.

A few minutes ago AMD sent out the very first open-source Linux kernel graphics driver patches for enabling the "GFX 11.5" graphics engine.

AMD's Preferred Core feature continues working its way toward the Linux kernel for this functionality that's been around since Zen 2.

Following last week's AMD Inception vulnerability another AMD Zen CPU bug came to light and that was performing a divide by zero on Zen 1 could end up leaking data with this DIV0 speculation bug. The original workaround was performing a dummy division 0/1 within the #DE exception handler but that's now turned out to be inadequate.

AMD Linux engineers continue work on enabling the Family 1Ah CPU models for the Linux kernel as what would appear to almost surely be the next-gen Zen 5 processors.

After a rather busy Patch Tuesday with the AMD Inception vulnerability and Intel Downfall going public, the Linux kernel saw a new bug fix merged today for a different issue... It turns out original AMD Zen 1 processors could end up leaking data in certain conditions after a divide by zero occurs.

Following yesterday's disclosure of the AMD "Inception" security vulnerability and the Linux kernel patches merged for reporting the mitigation status as well as the kernel-based handling for earlier generation Zen CPUs, the Family 19h microcode mitigations have now been picked up by the linux-firmware.git repository.

A new set of patches have been posted for the Linux kernel that implement AMD P-State Preferred Core handling for the amd-pstate driver.

AMD has kicked off a busy Patch Tuesday by disclosing INCEPTION, a new speculative side channel attack affecting Zen 3 and Zen 4 processors that require new microcode while prior Zen CPUs require a kernel-based solution.

As a follow-up to the first-on-Phoronix article last month that highlighted Linus Torvalds' frustrated views on the AMD fTPM random number generator continuing to cause problems for users even with updated firmware/BIOS, as of today the Linux kernel has gone ahead and blanket disabled RNG use for all current AMD fTPMs.

An updated patch-set was sent out on Wednesday to address fixing wake-up problems for some AMD client platforms when going through a suspend/resume cycle.

Linux's cpupower utility lives within the Linux kernel source tree for reading and tuning various CPU power settings rather than poking at sysfs files directly or other means of adjusting your processor power-related tunables. With the upcoming Linux 6.6 kernel cycle the cpupower utility is adding support for adjusting new AMD P-State driver features.

Last weekend I wrote about Zen 4's Automatic IBRS security feature needing STIBP enabled for protecting user-space processes. Single-Threaded Indirect Branch Predictors though haven't been enabled up to now with the Auto IBRS functionality on Linux. But the x86/urgent pull request sent out today ahead of the Linux 6.5-rc4 tagging makes that change.

Going back to May I wrote about AMD's "k10temp" Linux temperature driver being updated to handle negative temperature readings and now finally merged on Friday as a fix ahead of Linux 6.5-rc4 is a change to that open-source driver for properly displaying negative temperatures.

AMD lifted the embargo this evening on the Ryzen 9 7945HX3D, their first mobile processor sporting 3D V-Cache technology for boosting gaming performance and other cache-happy workloads.

It looks like the updated Family 17h microcode this morning isin relation to a new Zen 2 CPU security vulnerability being disclosed. The Linux kernel has also just received a patch for this "Zenbleed" vulnerability for older AMD CPUs.

Both new AMD Zen CPU and Radeon GPU microcode/firmware have been published today to the linux-firmware.git tree.

Automatic IBRS is a new feature with AMD Zen 4 processors akin to Intel's Enhanced IBRS functionality. Linux 6.3 added Auto IBRS support but it turns out when that was being enabled an oversight was made.

Future AMD CPUs will be having larger microcode patches and thus the Linux kernel is now being adapted to better handle that increased microcode payload.

New patches posted to the Linux kernel mailing list prepare the AMD Error Detection and Correction (EDAC) driver for the upcoming AMD Instinct MI300 APUs.

Back in April I pointed out some new AMD patches at the time for enabling a new "Dynamic Boost Control" feature that hasn't been widely talked about by AMD yet for allowing more frequency/power controls around Ryzen SoCs. But making this power/performance feature controversial is that it requires authentication with the AMD Platform Security Processor (PSP) for activation with user-space blobs for tapping this greater control of the hardware. This AMD Dynamic Boost Control feature now looks like it is ready for merging into Linux 6.6.

AMD Linux engineers are working on extending the Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) subsystem used by their GPUs/accelerators to allow up to 128 DRM devices per system.

Last week we began seeing AMD engineers post Linux patches for "Family 26" (1Ah) CPU enablement that is more than likely for Zen 5 processors. This week the AMD "1Ah" work has carried forward with new patches having been merged into the Linux 6.5 kernel.

AMD has made available the FidelityFX SDK solution available via GPUOpen as their easy-to-integrate offering for FidelityFX technologies.

The AMD Compressonator open-source tool suite that is under the GPUOpen umbrella has now added AVX-512 support alongside other enhancements in its v4.4 update.

Besides Bcachefs missing out on Linux 6.5, another patch series that didn't get buttoned up in time for the v6.5 merge window was AMD's work on radio frequency interference (RFI) mitigation between WiFi 6/6e/7 hardware and AMD's newest SoCs with RDNA3 graphics.

AMD's GPUOpen team on Thursday released the newest version of their Advanced Media Framework "AMF" SDK for Linux and Windows developers.

It looks like the first patches have dropped today for early AMD bring-up around their next-generation "Zen 5" processors.

There's been a lot of AMD-Xilinx code going upstream in the Linux kernel over the past few months to benefit AMD's embedded efforts from the QDMA driver to CDX bus to XDMA and more. The latest hitting the kernel is an AMD-Xilinx Versal watchdog driver.

As I've written about a few times in recent months, AMD has been enhancing GPU support for use under Xen virtualization. Their interests in Xen weren't clear to this point given that KVM virtualization tends to be the dominant solution these days when it comes to open-source Linux virtualization. Now it's been revealed that the AMD GPU interests in Xen stem from an in-vehicle infotainment play.

Besides being curious about the Steam Survey results for indicating the size of the Linux gaming marketshare as an overall percentage, one of the interesting metrics we are curious about each month is the AMD vs. Intel CPU marketshare for Linux gaming. AMD has been on quite an upward trajectory among Linux gamers/enthusiasts in recent years not only for their Radeon graphics cards with their popular open-source driver stack but their Ryzen CPUs have become extremely popular with Linux users. With the new Steam Survey results for June, AMD CPUs are found on nearly 70% of Linux gaming systems polled by Steam.