AMD flirting with open sourcing GPU firmware

[Borley]

A vendor has been deliberating with AMD about opening up GPU firmware. But possibly only for the 6x7900XTX model? And possibly only the scheduler and memory management bits? But the optimist in me wants to believe this could lead to the end of the nonfree firmware dilemma in choosing to install an add-in graphics card.


Conversation
the tiny corp
@__tinygrad__

Call went pretty well.

We are gating the commitment to 6x7900XTX on a public release of a roadmap to get the firmware open source. (and obviously the MLPerf training bug being fixed)

We aren't open source purists, it doesn't matter to us if the HDCP stuff is open for example. But we need the scheduler and the memory hierarchy management to be open. This is what it takes to push the performance of neural networks.

The Groq 500 T/s mixtral demo should be possible on a tinybox, but it requires god tier software and deep integration with the scheduler.

We also advised that the build process for amdgpu-dkms should be more open. While the driver itself is open, we haven't found it easy to rebuild and install. Easy REPL cycle is a key driver for community open source. We want the firmware to be easy to rebuild and install also.

Should have a go or no go decision by the end of next week. Confidence: 70%

the tiny corp
@__tinygrad__
·
Mar 6
Have a call with AMD tomorrow. Will they open source the MES?

[lepidotos]

I dunno about their motives, but even just from a performance standpoint, I imagine they have a point. AMD's own software is really bad, and I can't help but imagine their firmware could be improved upon too. Plus, being able to actually see what goes on in there is nice.

[Borley]

It seems to have fallen through with no change brought about by any of the dialogue.