AMD Brings ROCm to Consumer GPUs on Windows OS

[AleksandarK]

AMD has published an exciting development for its Radeon Open Compute Ecosystem (ROCm) users today. Now, ROCm is coming to the Windows operating system, and the company has extended ROCm support for consumer graphics cards instead of only supporting professional-grade GPUs. This development milestone is essential for making AMD's GPU family more competent with NVIDIA and its CUDA-accelerated GPUs. For those unaware, AMD ROCm is a software stack designed for GPU programming. Similarly to NVIDIA's CUDA, ROCm is designed for AMD GPUs and was historically limited to Linux-based OSes and GFX9, CDNA, and professional-grade RDNA GPUs.

However, according to documents obtained by Tom's Hardware (which are behind a login wall), AMD has brought support for ROCm to Radeon RX 6900 XT, Radeon RX 6600, and R9 Fury GPU. What is interesting is not the inclusion of RX 6900 XT and RX 6600 but the support for R9 Fury, an eight-year-old graphics card. Also, what is interesting is that out of these three GPUs, only R9 Fury has full ROCm support, the RX 6900 XT has HIP SDK support, and RX 6600 has only HIP runtime support. And to make matters even more complicated, the consumer-grade R9 Fury GPU has full ROCm support only on Linux and not Windows. The reason for this strange selection of support has yet to be discovered. However, it is a step in the right direction, as AMD has yet to enable more functionality on Windows and more consumer GPUs to compete with NVIDIA.



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[ZoneDymo]

Just a litle note and it might be me but:
"AMD ROCm is a software stack designed for GPU programming. Like CUDA, ROCm is designed for AMD GPUs"

This reads as if CUDA was designed for AMD gpu's

 

[AleksandarK]

Just a litle note and it might be me but:
"AMD ROCm is a software stack designed for GPU programming. Like CUDA, ROCm is designed for AMD GPUs"

This reads as if CUDA was designed for AMD gpu's

Thanks, I edited this piece!

 

[BoboOOZ]

Interesting, but would this means that this works on 6900XT and not on 6950XT? Or are we talking more about tiers instead of specific models?
Edit: read the Tom's article, it would seem indeed that only these models are concerned for now. I have a 6900XT so I might play with this at some point, but if I had a 6950XT I would feel betrayed.

 

[Vya Domus]

Interesting, but would this means that this works on 6900XT and not on 6950XT? Or are we talking more about tiers instead of specific models?
Edit: read the Tom's article, it would seem indeed that only these models are concerned for now. I have a 6900XT so I might play with this at some point, but if I had a 6950XT I would feel betrayed.

It will work on anything that is gfx1030, so everything from RX 6800 to RX 6950XT.

 

[Mahboi]

Very strange lineup as some have pointed out, the 6700s are currently not supported, or at least supposedly so (wouldn't be shocked if someone managed to make it work).
However this is excellent news. AMD's "Linux only" position wasn't truly helping them too much, and their CUDA needs to break through, if slowly.

Getting Windows on the grill is great news for all the AI dabblers that hesitated at buying AMD and now should see support start rolling out in the coming years. Nod.ai's Shark already did it with Vulkan, but that's apparently a special approach, we'll see if it gets more common.
ROCm should be pushed into all software that can take compute on Windows and Linux, so I can only say that this is a great first step forward.

Now waiting for the 7000s to get that same support, which considering the containers that have shown up online recently, shouldn't take months yet. They were on release candidate 4 two weeks ago. Even if it's only Linux support at first, I just want to see the things advance.

It will work on anything that is gfx1030, so everything from RX 6800 to RX 6950XT.

Then the gfx1031 should also work for all rx 6600, 6600 xt, 6650xt I take it?

 

[Dristun]

I'd buy a 7900XTX in a heartbeat if Stablediffusion and Automatic1111 worked out of the box on windows without shamanic dances and compromises

 

[P4-630]

Roc M Sock M...

 

[aciDev]

This development milestone is essential for making AMD's GPU family more competent with NVIDIA and its CUDA-accelerated GPUs.

Uh? Competent or competitive?

Not a native speaker here, but it sounds wrong to me, biased at least. Or is ROCm going to be compatible with CUDA? I'm confused.

 

[R0H1T]

Roc M Sock M...

RomCom ~ AMD's clearly behind the times!

Marketing is everything these days.

 

[Space Lynx]

im so glad i only game, i have no idea what any of this shit is and don't care to know

 

[Rexter]

AMD really have to get their *ss into highest gear on this, as right now with the massive popularity of AI and Machine Learning reaching an all time high (and doesnt seem to stop) among consumers, AMD cards are getting left behind.
I am honestly surprised they aren't giving this highest priority to compete against NVIDIA because right now they are facing practically zero competition in this space.

 

[demian_vi]

R9 Fury is community supported so its not that strange that the full ROCm is supported and only on Linux

 

[Guwapo77]

Roc M Sock M...

The first thing I thought of when I saw ROCm.

 

[Vya Domus]

Then the gfx1031 should also work for all rx 6600, 6600 xt, 6650xt I take it?

Yes. Technically everything that gets compiled for an RDNA2 GPU should work on any other RDNA2 GPU because they all have the same instruction set and compute capability.

 

[Mahboi]

Roc M Sock M...

All I thought about is:
HERE I AM
ROCM LIKE A HURRICANE

 

[Cheeseball]

Also, what is interesting is that out of these three GPUs, only R9 Fury has full ROCm support, the RX 6900 XT has HIP SDK support, and RX 6600 has only HIP runtime support.

This is because the R9 Fury was a GCN (CDNA now) card, which is still more efficient for compute-related tasks. RDNA and RDNA2 GPUs are aimed at consumers (gaming, content creation, etc.) and workstation (not compute-related) use.

Not sure why they didn't include the newer RDNA3 GPUs for HIP SDK support. RDNA3 is technically a newer version of RDNA2 with nothing removed, only refined.

 

[sam_86314]

Exciting.

Stable Diffusion on Windows, here we come!

I've been blown away with how much faster in Stable Diffusion my 6800 XT is in Linux compared to my GTX 1070 in Windows. 512x512 images take about 2 minutes to generate on the 1070, and only about 30 seconds on the 6800 XT.

I wonder how performance in Windows will compare to Linux.

 

[Luke357]

Exciting.

Stable Diffusion on Windows, here we come!

I've been blown away with how much faster in Stable Diffusion my 6800 XT is in Linux compared to my GTX 1070 in Windows. 512x512 images take about 2 minutes to generate on the 1070, and only about 30 seconds on the 6800 XT.

I wonder how performance in Windows will compare to Linux.

The reason the Linux version seems faster is because the 1070 is a far older card than the 6800XT. A better comparison would be the same card in Linux vs Windows.

 

[unwind-protect]

As long as they play stupid games such as excluding random cards or having cards with only runtime (not development) permission they can go where the sun don't shine.

For many years I've been using Cuda only being limited when an old and underpowered old not-even-gaming card didn't have enough VRAM.

 

[Mahboi]

As long as they play stupid games such as excluding random cards or having cards with only runtime (not development) permission they can go where the sun don't shine.

For many years I've been using Cuda only being limited when an old and underpowered old not-even-gaming card didn't have enough VRAM.

I don't think its permission, I think its official support.
Official support in AMD language is basically that it's been vetted on the same standards as their pro consumers (the datacenters who buy W cards). You can very well run on any of the other cards.

I'm not 100% sure of that though.

 

[Bruno__711]

hii i have just bought my new pc and it has a 6700 xt, im available to run ROCm?