Support for AMD's Smart Access Memory and the overarching Resizable BAR technologies has been removed from the RadeonSI Gallium3D OpenGL driver as of today's Mesa 22.3.7 release. The comment in the announcement simply reads, "Disable Smart Access Memory because CPU access has large overhead." The nail in the coffin seems to have been this bug ticket submitted last month for the game Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1, in which the user reported the game running oddly slow on their RX 6600 while previously they had no issues on the much older R9 380. The solution provided was to simply disable ReBAR/SAM either with radeonsi_disable_sam=true or via UEFI. In the comments of the ticket lead RadeonSI developer Marek Olšák states, "We've never tested SAM with radeonsi, and it's not necessary there."

Apparently the performance advantages weren't panning out for RadeonSI, and since direct optimizations of these features was not a primary goal the decision was made to cut them out. Attempts to optimize SAM with RadeonSI date as far back as December 2020 and Mesa 21.0, but support for SAM under Linux goes further back. None of the changes to RadeonSI will affect other drivers such as RADV, the open-source Radeon Vulkan driver, and this code change is limited to only the RadeonSI OpenGL driver.

Synology today revealed upcoming solutions that help businesses achieve more, become more resilient, and better resolve IT challenges through the power and flexibility of hybrid cloud architectures and an expanding ecosystem of tightly integrated solutions. Significant innovations across all products, spanning data management, data protection, and IT infrastructure security, set an even higher bar for reliability, security, and scalability.

An even more secure foundation: DSM 7.2, expected in early 2023, will introduce full-volume encryption, offering greater peace of mind while boosting storage performance by 48% over shared folder-based encryption. DSM 7.2 will also introduce "write once, read many" (WORM) folders. These tamper-proof folders prevent modification or deletion of data during a set period of time. And just like new immutable backups in Hyper Backup, which bar any changes after creation, they help protect data against ransomware and cyberthreats.

AMD today released the latest version of Radeon Software Adrenalin. Version 21.9.1 is feature-packed with stuff enthusiasts are bound to love. To begin with, it introduces Smart Access Memory (PCI Resizable BAR) support for AMD Radeon RX 5000 series (RDNA) graphics processors, when used with a compatible platform. Next up, it adds optimization for "Call of Duty Vanguard Open Beta," and "Deathloop." The drivers also add a handful Vulkan API extensions, including VK_KHR_zero_initialize_workgroup_memory, VK_KHR_shader_integer_dot_product, VK_EXT_shader_atomic_float2, and VK_EXT_load_store_op_none. Perhaps the biggest new feature addition is AMD Auto Overclock.

On machines with AMD Ryzen 5000 series processors and Radeon RX 6000 series graphics, the Auto-Overclock feature detects CPU load, and automatically overclocks it in increments of 50 MHz, beyond the processor's rated maximum boost frequency. Just like manual overclocking, this comes with sizable costs to power consumption and cooling. The feature also automatically overclocks your RX 6000 series GPU. Using the feature is as easy as pulling up the Tuning tab in Radeon Software, and clicking on "Auto Overclock" in the Tuning Control tab. Lastly, Adrenalin 21.9.1 adds support for the upcoming Windows 11 operating system. The software is released alongside AMD's latest 3.09.01.140 Chipset Software, which also add Windows 11 support. A handful bugs have also been fixed, as described below.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 21.9.1 | AMD Chipset Software 3.09.01.140

When AMD introduced its Smart Access Memory (SAM) technology, it was used as one of the key advertising points for its 5000 series of Ryzen processors based on Zen 3 architecture. At the time of launch, it was believed that only the latest generation of Ryzen processors can support it and only AMD GPUs can see a benefit in performance. However, later on, many of the motherboard makers have been playing with BIOS updates and have found a way to enable resizable BAR, the technology used for SAM, on non-AMD platforms. Today, thanks to the Reddit user Merich98 we have found out that ASUS has enabled resizable BAR support via BIOS update.

The user has used BIOS version 2409, released just a few days ago, on ASUS B450-PLUS motherboard. The feat is no extraordinary because it works on a B450 motherboard, it has been supported for a long time, but rather the feat is impressive because it works with the first generation AMD Ryzen 7 1700 processor. This contradicts the theory that SAM only needs 5000 series AMD Ryzen processors to run. However, the gains were not that great. On average, the average frame rate number has increased by a small +0.839%. This could be attributed to some margin of error, so it seems like SAM is not giving much performance uplift in this case.

BIOSTAR, a leading brand of motherboards, graphics cards, and storage devices, today announces BIOS updates for their Intel 400 series motherboards to support the AMD Smart Access Memory technology. AMD Smart Access Memory (SAM) allows the CPU to get full access to the GPU memory, users will gain up to 11% in gaming performance. BIOSTAR consumers can now enjoy an extra performance boost with their Intel 400 series motherboards pairing 10th Gen Intel Core processors and AMD Radeon RX 6000 series graphics cards.

AMD Ryzen 3000 "Matisse" processors based on the "Zen 2" microarchitecture, as well as older AMD processors based on "Zen+" and "Zen" microarchitectures, do not support the company's Smart Access Memory (SAM) feature being introduced with Radeon RX 6000 series graphics cards. SAM is essentially a branding of the Resizable Base-Address Register (Resizable-BAR) feature developed by the PCI-SIG; which enables a processor to see a graphics card's entire video memory as a single addressable block, rather than through 256-megabyte apertures. Apparently the PCI-Express root complex of Ryzen 5000 "Vermeer" processors introduce an instruction called full-rate _pdep_u32/64, which is required for resizable-BAR to work.

It gets more interesting—Intel processors have been supporting this feature since the company's 4th Gen Core "Haswell," which introduced it with its 20-lane PCI-Express gen 3.0 root-complex. This means that every Intel processor dating back to 2014 can technically support Resizable-BAR, and it's just a matter of motherboard vendors releasing UEFI firmware updates for their products (i.e. Intel 8-series chipsets and later). AMD extensively advertises SAM as adding a 1-2% performance boost to Radeon RX 6800 series graphics cards. Since this is a PCI-SIG feature, NVIDIA plans to add support for it on some of its GPUs, too. Meanwhile, in addition to AMD 500-series chipsets, even certain Intel 400-series chipset motherboards started receiving Resizable BAR support through firmware updates.

AMD's recently-introduced SAM (Smart Access memory) feature enables users pairing an RX 6000 series graphics card with a Ryzen 5000 series CPU to take advantage of a long-lost PCIe feature in the form of its Resizable Bar. However, AMD currently only markets this technology for that particular component combination, even though the base technology isn't AMD's own, but is rather included in the PCIe specification. It's only a matter of time until NVIDIA enables the feature for its graphics cards, and there shouldn't be any technical problem on enabling it within Intel's platform as well. Now, we have results (coming from ASCII.jp) from an Intel Z490 motherboard (ASUS ROG Maximus XII EXTREME) with firmware 1002, from November 27th, paired with AMD's RX 6800 XT. And SAM does work independently of actual platform.

Paired with an Intel Core i9-10900K, AMD's RX 6800 XT shows performance increases across the board throughout the test games - which are games AMD themselves have confirmed SAM is working with. This means testing was done with Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Forza Horizon 4, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Rainbow Six Siege. The results speak for themselves (SAM results are the top ones in the charts). There are sometimes massive improvements in minimum framerates, considerable gains in average framerates, and almost no change in the maximum framerates reported for these games on this given system. Do note that the chart for Forza Horizon 4 has an error, and the tested resolution is actually 1440p, not 1080p.