AMD has updated their Linux Open Source Driver for Vulkan with support for Vulkan API 1.2.169.

The AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan is an open-source Vulkan driver for Radeon graphics adapters on Linux. It is built on top of AMD's Platform Abstraction Library (PAL), a shared component that is designed to encapsulate certain hardware and OS-specific programming details for many of AMD's 3D and compute drivers. Leveraging PAL can help provide a consistent experience across platforms, including support for recently released GPUs and compatibility with AMD developer tools.

Shaders that compose a particular VkPipeline object are compiled as a single entity using the LLVM-Based Pipeline Compiler (LLPC) library. LLPC builds on LLVM's existing shader compilation infrastructure for AMD GPUs to generate code objects compatible with PAL's pipeline ABI. Notably, AMD's closed-source Vulkan driver currently uses a different pipeline compiler, which is the major difference between AMD's open-source and closed-source Vulkan drivers.

Product Support

The AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan is designed to support the following AMD GPUs:

• Radeon HD 7000 Series
• Radeon HD 8000M Series
• Radeon R5/R7/R9 200/300 Series
• Radeon RX 400/500 Series
• Radeon M200/M300/M400 Series
• Radeon RX Vega Series
• Radeon RX 5700/5500 Series
• Radeon RX 6800 Series
• AMD FirePro Workstation Wx000/Wx100/Wx300 Series
• Radeon Pro WX x100 Series
• Radeon Pro 400/500 Series
• Radeon W5700/W5500 Series

Operating System Support

The AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan is designed to support following distros on both the AMDGPU upstream driver stack and the  AMDGPU Pro driver stack:

• Ubuntu 20.04 (64-bit version)
• Ubuntu 18.04 (64-bit version)
• RedHat 8.2 (64-bit version)
• RedHat 7.8 (64-bit version)

The driver has not been tested on other distros. You may try it out on other distros of your choice.

Note: To run the Vulkan driver with AMDGPU upstream driver stack on SI and CI generation GPUs, amdgpu.si_support and amdgpu.cik_support need to be enabled in kernel

2021-2-25 update

New feature and improvement

• Update API version to 1.2.169
• Mad Max: Performance tuning

Download AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan 2021.Q1.4