AMD ROCm™ v4.2 Release Notes
This document describes the features, fixed issues, and information about downloading and installing the AMD ROCm™ software. It also covers known issues and deprecations in this release.
ROCm Installation Updates
Supported Operating Systems
The AMD ROCm platform is designed to support the following operating systems:
- Ubuntu 20.04.2 HWE (5.4 and 5.6-oem) and 18.04.5 (Kernel 5.4)
- CentOS 7.9 (3.10.0-1127) & RHEL 7.9 (3.10.0-1160.6.1.el7) (Using devtoolset-7 runtime support)
- CentOS 8.3 (4.18.0-193.el8)and RHEL 8.3 (4.18.0-193.1.1.el8) (devtoolset is not required)
- SLES 15 SP2
Complete Installation of AMD ROCM V4.2 Recommended
Complete uninstallation of previous ROCm versions is required before installing a new version of ROCm. An upgrade from previous releases to AMD ROCm v4.2 is not supported. For more information, refer to the AMD ROCm Installation Guide at
https://rocmdocs.amd.com/en/latest/Installation_Guide/Installation-Guide.html
Note: AMD ROCm release v3.3 or prior releases are not fully compatible with AMD ROCm v3.5 and higher versions. You must perform a fresh ROCm installation if you want to upgrade from AMD ROCm v3.3 or older to 3.5 or higher versions and vice-versa.
Note: render group is required only for Ubuntu v20.04. For all other ROCm supported operating systems, continue to use video group.
-
For ROCm v3.5 and releases thereafter, the clinfo path is changed to /opt/rocm/opencl/bin/clinfo.
-
For ROCm v3.3 and older releases, the clinfo path remains /opt/rocm/opencl/bin/x86_64/clinfo.
ROCm Multi-Version Installation Update
With the AMD ROCm v4.2 release, the following ROCm multi-version installation changes apply:
The meta packages rocm-dkms are now deprecated for multi-version ROCm installs. For example, rocm-dkms3.7.0, rocm-dkms3.8.0.
-
Multi-version installation of ROCm should be performed by installing rocm-dev using each of the desired ROCm versions. For example, rocm-dev3.7.0, rocm-dev3.8.0, rocm-dev3.9.0.
-
The rock-dkms loadable kernel modules should be installed using a single rock-dkms package.
-
ROCm v3.9 and above will not set any ldconfig entries for ROCm libraries for multi-version installation. Users must set LD_LIBRARY_PATH to load the ROCm library version of choice.
NOTE: The single version installation of the ROCm stack remains the same. The rocm-dkms package can be used for single version installs and is not deprecated at this time.
Updated HIP Instructions for ROCm Installation
The hip-base package has a dependency on Perl modules that some operating systems may not have in their default package repositories. Use the following commands to add repositories that have the required Perl packages:
For SLES 15 SP2
sudo zypper addrepo
For more information, see
https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:languages:perl/SLE_15/devel:languages:perl.repo
For CentOS8.3
sudo yum config-manager --set-enabled powertools
For RHEL8.3
sudo subscription-manager repos --enable codeready-builder-for-rhel-8-x86_64-rpms
AMD ROCm Documentation Updates
AMD ROCm Installation Guide
The AMD ROCm Installation Guide in this release includes:
-
Supported Environments
-
Installation Instructions
-
HIP Installation Instructions
For more information, refer to the ROCm documentation website at:
https://rocmdocs.amd.com/en/latest/
AMD ROCm - HIP Documentation Updates
- HIP Programming Guide v4.2
https://github.com/RadeonOpenCompute/ROCm/blob/master/AMD%20HIP%20Programming%20Guide_v4.2.pdf
- HIP API Guide v4.2
https://github.com/RadeonOpenCompute/ROCm/blob/master/AMD_HIP_API_Guide_4.2.pdf
- HIP-Supported CUDA API Reference Guide v4.2
-
HIP FAQ
For more information, refer to
https://rocmdocs.amd.com/en/latest/Programming_Guides/HIP-FAQ.html#hip-faq
ROCm Data Center User and API Guide
-
ROCm Data Center Tool User Guide
- Reliability, Accessibility, and Serviceability (RAS) Plugin Integration
For more information, refer to the ROCm Data Center User Guide at,
https://github.com/RadeonOpenCompute/ROCm/blob/master/AMD_ROCm_DataCenter_Tool_User_Guide_v4.2.pdf
-
ROCm Data Center Tool API Guide
For more information, refer to the ROCm Data Center API Guide at,
https://github.com/RadeonOpenCompute/ROCm/blob/master/ROCm_Data_Center_Tool_API_Guide_v4.2.pdf
ROCm SMI API Documentation Updates
-
ROCm SMI API Guide
For more information, refer to the ROCm SMI API Guide at,
https://github.com/RadeonOpenCompute/ROCm/blob/master/ROCm_SMI_Manual_4.2.pdf
ROC Debugger User and API Guide
-
ROC Debugger User Guide https://github.com/RadeonOpenCompute/ROCm/blob/master/ROCm_Debugger_User_Guide_v4.2.pdf
-
Debugger API Guide https://github.com/RadeonOpenCompute/ROCm/blob/master/ROCm_Debugger_API_Guide_v4.2.pdf
General AMD ROCm Documentation Links
Access the following links for more information:
-
For AMD ROCm documentation, see
-
For installation instructions on supped platforms, see
https://rocmdocs.amd.com/en/latest/Installation_Guide/Installation-Guide.html
-
For AMD ROCm binary structure, see
https://rocmdocs.amd.com/en/latest/Installation_Guide/Software-Stack-for-AMD-GPU.html
-
For AMD ROCm Release History, see
https://rocmdocs.amd.com/en/latest/Current_Release_Notes/ROCm-Version-History.html
What's New in This Release
HIP Enhancements
HIP Target Platform Macro
The platform macros are updated to target either the AMD or NVIDIA platform in HIP projects. They now include corresponding headers and libraries for compilation/linking.
-
HIP_PLATFORM_AMD is defined if the HIP platform targets AMD. Note, HIP_PLATFORM_HCC was used previously if the HIP platform targeted AMD. This is now deprecated.
-
HIP_PLATFORM_NVIDIA is defined if the HIP platform targets NVIDIA. Note, HIP_PLATFORM_NVCC_ was used previously if the HIP platform targeted NVIDIA. This is now deprecated.
For example,
#if (defined(__HIP_PLATFORM_AMD__)) && !(defined(__HIP_PLATFORM_NVIDIA__))
#include <hip/amd_detail/hip_complex.h>
#elif !(defined(__HIP_PLATFORM_AMD__)) && (defined(__HIP_PLATFORM_NVIDIA__))
#include <hip/nvidia_detail/hip_complex.h>
Updated HIP 'Include' Directories
In the ROCm4.2 release, HIP include header directories for platforms are updated as follows:
-
amd_detail/ - includes source header details for the ‘amd’ platform implementation. In previous releases, the "hcc_detail" directory was defined, and it it is now deprecated.
-
nvidia_detail/ - includes source header details for the ‘nvidia’ platform implementation. In previous releases, the "nvcc_detail" directory was defined, and it is now deprecated.
HIP Stream Memory Operations
The ROCm v4.2 extends support to Stream Memory Operations to enable direct synchronization between Network Nodes and GPU. The following new APIs are added:
- hipStreamWaitValue32
- hipStreamWaitValue64
- hipStreamWriteValue32
- hipStreamWriteValue64
For more details, see the HIP API guide at
https://github.com/RadeonOpenCompute/ROCm/blob/master/AMD_HIP_API_Guide_4.2.pdf
HIP Events in Kernel Dispatch
HIP events in kernel dispatch using hipExtLaunchKernelGGL/hipExtLaunchKernel and passed in the API are not explicitly recorded and should only be used to get elapsed time for that specific launch.
Events used across multiple dispatches, for example, start and stop events from different hipExtLaunchKernelGGL/hipExtLaunchKernel calls, are treated as invalid unrecorded events. In such scenarios, HIP will display the error "hipErrorInvalidHandle" from hipEventElapsedTime.
For more details, refer to the HIP API Guide at
https://github.com/RadeonOpenCompute/ROCm/blob/master/AMD_HIP_API_Guide_4.2.pdf
Changed Environment Variables for HIP
In the ROCm v3.5 release, the Heterogeneous Compute Compiler (HCC) compiler was deprecated, and the HIP-Clang compiler was introduced for compiling Heterogeneous-Compute Interface for Portability (HIP) programs. In addition, the HIP runtime API was implemented on top of Radeon Open Compute Common Language Runtime (ROCclr). ROCclr is an abstraction layer that provides the ability to interact with different runtime backends such as ROCr.
While the HIP_PLATFORM=hcc environment variable was functional in subsequent releases, in the ROCm v4.1 release, the following environment variables were changed:
-
HIP_PLATFORM=hcc to HIP_PLATFORM=amd
-
HIP_PLATFORM=nvcc to HIP_PLATFORM=nvidia
Therefore, any applications continuing to use the HIP_PLATFORM=hcc variable will fail. You must update the environment variables to reflect the changes as mentioned above.
ROCm Data Center Tool
RAS Integration
The ROCm Data Center (RDC) Tool is enhanced with the Reliability, Accessibility, and Serviceability (RAS) plugin.
For more information about RAS integration and installation, refer to the ROCm Data Center Tool User guide at:
https://github.com/RadeonOpenCompute/ROCm/blob/master/AMD_ROCm_DataCenter_Tool_User_Guide_v4.2.pdf
ROCm Math and Communication Libraries
rocBLAS
Enhancements and fixes:
-
Added option to install script to build only rocBLAS clients with a pre-built rocBLAS library
-
Supported gemm ext for unpacked int8 input layout on gfx908 GPUs
-
Added new flags rocblas_gemm_flags::rocblas_gemm_flags_pack_int8x4 to specify if using the packed layout
-
Set the rocblas_gemm_flags_pack_int8x4 when using packed int8x;, this should be always set on GPUs before gfx908
-
For gfx908 GPUs, unpacked int8 is supported. Setting of this flag is no longer required
-
Notice the default flags 0 uses unpacked int8 and changes the behaviour of int8 gemm from ROCm 4.1.0
-
-
-
Added a query function rocblas_query_int8_layout_flag to get the preferable layout of int8 for gemm by device
For more information, refer to
https://rocblas.readthedocs.io/en/master/
rocRAND
- Performance fixes
For more information, refer to
https://rocrand.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
rocSOLVER
Support for:
-
Multi-level logging functionality
-
Implementation of the Thin-SVD algorithm
-
Reductions of generalized symmetric- and hermitian-definite eigenproblems:
- SYGS2, SYGST (with batched and strided_batched versions)
- HEGS2, HEGST (with batched and strided_batched versions)
-
Symmetric and hermitian matrix eigensolvers:
- SYEV (with batched and strided_batched versions)
- HEEV (with batched and strided_batched versions)
-
Generalized symmetric- and hermitian-definite eigensolvers:
- SYGV (with batched and strided_batched versions)
- HEGV (with batched and strided_batched versions)
For more information, refer to
https://rocsolver.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
rocSPARSE
Enhancements:
- SpMM (CSR, COO)
- Code coverage analysis
For more information, refer to
https://rocsparse.readthedocs.io/en/latest/usermanual.html#rocsparse-gebsrmv
hipSPARSE
Enhancements:
- Generic API support, including SpMM (CSR, COO)
- csru2csr, csr2csru
For more information, refer to
https://rocsparse.readthedocs.io/en/latest/usermanual.html#types
Fixed Defects
Performance Impact for LDS-BOUND Kernels
The following issue is fixed in the ROCm v4.2 release.
The compiler in ROCm v4.1 generates LDS load and stores instructions that incorrectly assume equal performance between aligned and misaligned accesses. While this does not impact code correctness, it may result in sub-optimal performance.
Known Issues
The following are the known issues in this release.
Upgrade to AMD ROCm v4.2 Not Supported
An upgrade from previous releases to AMD ROCm v4.2 is not supported. Complete uninstallation of previous ROCm versions is required before installing a new version of ROCm.
The hip-base package has a dependency on Perl modules that some operating systems may not have in their default package repositories. Use the following commands to add repositories that have the required Perl packages:
For SLES 15 SP2
sudo zypper addrepo
For more information, see
https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:languages:perl/SLE_15/devel:languages:perl.repo
For CentOS8.3
sudo yum config-manager --set-enabled powertools
For RHEL8.3
sudo subscription-manager repos --enable codeready-builder-for-rhel-8-x86_64-rpms
Modulefile Fails to Install Automatically in ROCm Multi-Version Environment
The ROCm v4.2 release includes a preliminary implementation of environment modules to enable switching between multi versions of ROCm installation. The modulefile in /opt/rocm-4.2/lib/rocmmod fails to install automatically in the ROCm multi-version environment.
This is a known limitation for environment modules in ROCm, and the issue is under investigation at this time.
Workaround
Ensure you install the modulefile in /opt/rocm-4.2/lib/rocmmod manually in a multi-version installation environment.
For general information about modules, see http://modules.sourceforge.net/
Issue with Input/Output Types for Scan Algorithms in rocThrust
As rocThrust is updated to match CUDA Thrust 1.10, the different input/output types for scan algorithms in rocThrust/CUDA Thrust are no longer officially supported. In this situation, the current C++ standard does not specify the intermediate accumulator type leading to potentially incorrect results and ill-defined behavior.
As a workaround, users can:
- Use the same types for input and output
Or
- For exclusive_scan, explicitly specify an InitialValueType in the last argument
Or
- For inclusive_scan, which does not have an initial value argument, use a transform_iterator to explicitly cast the input iterators to match the output’s value_type
Precision Issue in AMD RADEON™ PRO VII and AMD RADEON™ VII
In AMD Radeon™ Pro VII AND AMD Radeon™ VII, a precision issue can occur when using the Tensorflow XLA path.
This issue is currently under investigation.
Deprecations
This section describes deprecations and removals in AMD ROCm.
Compiler Generated Code Object Version 2 Deprecation
Compiler-generated code object version 2 is no longer supported and has been completely removed. Support for loading code object version 2 is also deprecated with no announced removal release.
Deploying ROCm
AMD hosts both Debian and RPM repositories for the ROCm packages.
For more information on ROCM installation on all platforms, see
https://rocmdocs.amd.com/en/latest/Installation_Guide/Installation-Guide.html
Machine Learning and High Performance Computing Software Stack for AMD GPU
For an updated version of the software stack for AMD GPU, see
Hardware and Software Support
ROCm is focused on using AMD GPUs to accelerate computational tasks such as machine learning, engineering workloads, and scientific computing. In order to focus our development efforts on these domains of interest, ROCm supports a targeted set of hardware configurations which are detailed further in this section.
Note: The AMD ROCm™ open software platform is a compute stack for headless system deployments. GUI-based software applications are currently not supported.
Supported GPUs
Because the ROCm Platform has a focus on particular computational domains, we offer official support for a selection of AMD GPUs that are designed to offer good performance and price in these domains.
Note: The integrated GPUs of Ryzen are not officially supported targets for ROCm.
ROCm officially supports AMD GPUs that use following chips:
-
GFX9 GPUs
-
"Vega 10" chips, such as on the AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 and Radeon Instinct MI25
-
"Vega 7nm" chips, such as on the Radeon Instinct MI50, Radeon Instinct MI60 or AMD Radeon VII, Radeon Pro VII
-
-
CDNA GPUs
- MI100 chips such as on the AMD Instinct™ MI100
ROCm is a collection of software ranging from drivers and runtimes to libraries and developer tools. Some of this software may work with more GPUs than the "officially supported" list above, though AMD does not make any official claims of support for these devices on the ROCm software platform.
The following list of GPUs are enabled in the ROCm software, though full support is not guaranteed:
- GFX8 GPUs
- "Polaris 11" chips, such as on the AMD Radeon RX 570 and Radeon Pro WX 4100
- "Polaris 12" chips, such as on the AMD Radeon RX 550 and Radeon RX 540
- GFX7 GPUs
- "Hawaii" chips, such as the AMD Radeon R9 390X and FirePro W9100
As described in the next section, GFX8 GPUs require PCI Express 3.0 (PCIe 3.0) with support for PCIe atomics. This requires both CPU and motherboard support. GFX9 GPUs require PCIe 3.0 with support for PCIe atomics by default, but they can operate in most cases without this capability.
The integrated GPUs in AMD APUs are not officially supported targets for ROCm. As described below, "Carrizo", "Bristol Ridge", and "Raven Ridge" APUs are enabled in our upstream drivers and the ROCm OpenCL runtime. However, they are not enabled in the HIP runtime, and may not work due to motherboard or OEM hardware limitations. As such, they are not yet officially supported targets for ROCm.
For a more detailed list of hardware support, please see the following documentation.
Supported CPUs
As described above, GFX8 GPUs require PCIe 3.0 with PCIe atomics in order to run ROCm. In particular, the CPU and every active PCIe point between the CPU and GPU require support for PCIe 3.0 and PCIe atomics. The CPU root must indicate PCIe AtomicOp Completion capabilities and any intermediate switch must indicate PCIe AtomicOp Routing capabilities.
Current CPUs which support PCIe Gen3 + PCIe Atomics are:
- AMD Ryzen CPUs
- The CPUs in AMD Ryzen APUs
- AMD Ryzen Threadripper CPUs
- AMD EPYC CPUs
- Intel Xeon E7 v3 or newer CPUs
- Intel Xeon E5 v3 or newer CPUs
- Intel Xeon E3 v3 or newer CPUs
- Intel Core i7 v4, Core i5 v4, Core i3 v4 or newer CPUs (i.e. Haswell family or newer)
- Some Ivy Bridge-E systems
Beginning with ROCm 1.8, GFX9 GPUs (such as Vega 10) no longer require PCIe atomics. We have similarly opened up more options for number of PCIe lanes. GFX9 GPUs can now be run on CPUs without PCIe atomics and on older PCIe generations, such as PCIe 2.0. This is not supported on GPUs below GFX9, e.g. GFX8 cards in the Fiji and Polaris families.
If you are using any PCIe switches in your system, please note that PCIe Atomics are only supported on some switches, such as Broadcom PLX. When you install your GPUs, make sure you install them in a PCIe 3.1.0 x16, x8, x4, or x1 slot attached either directly to the CPU's Root I/O controller or via a PCIe switch directly attached to the CPU's Root I/O controller.
In our experience, many issues stem from trying to use consumer motherboards which provide physical x16 connectors that are electrically connected as e.g. PCIe 2.0 x4, PCIe slots connected via the Southbridge PCIe I/O controller, or PCIe slots connected through a PCIe switch that does not support PCIe atomics.
If you attempt to run ROCm on a system without proper PCIe atomic support, you may see an error in the kernel log (dmesg):
kfd: skipped device 1002:7300, PCI rejects atomics
Experimental support for our Hawaii (GFX7) GPUs (Radeon R9 290, R9 390, FirePro W9100, S9150, S9170) does not require or take advantage of PCIe Atomics. However, we still recommend that you use a CPU from the list provided above for compatibility purposes.
Not supported or limited support under ROCm
Limited support
- ROCm 4.x should support PCIe 2.0 enabled CPUs such as the AMD Opteron, Phenom, Phenom II, Athlon, Athlon X2, Athlon II and older Intel Xeon and Intel Core Architecture and Pentium CPUs. However, we have done very limited testing on these configurations, since our test farm has been catering to CPUs listed above. This is where we need community support. If you find problems on such setups, please report these issues.
- Thunderbolt 1, 2, and 3 enabled breakout boxes should now be able to work with ROCm. Thunderbolt 1 and 2 are PCIe 2.0 based, and thus are only supported with GPUs that do not require PCIe 3.1.0 atomics (e.g. Vega 10). However, we have done no testing on this configuration and would need community support due to limited access to this type of equipment.
- AMD "Carrizo" and "Bristol Ridge" APUs are enabled to run OpenCL, but do not yet support HIP or our libraries built on top of these compilers and runtimes.
- As of ROCm 2.1, "Carrizo" and "Bristol Ridge" require the use of upstream kernel drivers.
- In addition, various "Carrizo" and "Bristol Ridge" platforms may not work due to OEM and ODM choices when it comes to key configurations parameters such as inclusion of the required CRAT tables and IOMMU configuration parameters in the system BIOS.
- Before purchasing such a system for ROCm, please verify that the BIOS provides an option for enabling IOMMUv2 and that the system BIOS properly exposes the correct CRAT table. Inquire with your vendor about the latter.
- AMD "Raven Ridge" APUs are enabled to run OpenCL, but do not yet support HIP or our libraries built on top of these compilers and runtimes.
- As of ROCm 2.1, "Raven Ridge" requires the use of upstream kernel drivers.
- In addition, various "Raven Ridge" platforms may not work due to OEM and ODM choices when it comes to key configurations parameters such as inclusion of the required CRAT tables and IOMMU configuration parameters in the system BIOS.
- Before purchasing such a system for ROCm, please verify that the BIOS provides an option for enabling IOMMUv2 and that the system BIOS properly exposes the correct CRAT table. Inquire with your vendor about the latter.
Not supported
- "Tonga", "Iceland", "Vega M", and "Vega 12" GPUs are not supported.
- We do not support GFX8-class GPUs (Fiji, Polaris, etc.) on CPUs that do not have PCIe 3.0 with PCIe atomics.
- As such, we do not support AMD Carrizo and Kaveri APUs as hosts for such GPUs.
- Thunderbolt 1 and 2 enabled GPUs are not supported by GFX8 GPUs on ROCm. Thunderbolt 1 & 2 are based on PCIe 2.0.
In the default ROCm configuration, GFX8 and GFX9 GPUs require PCI Express 3.0 with PCIe atomics. The ROCm platform leverages these advanced capabilities to allow features such as user-level submission of work from the host to the GPU. This includes PCIe atomic Fetch and Add, Compare and Swap, Unconditional Swap, and AtomicOp Completion.
ROCm support in upstream Linux kernels
As of ROCm 1.9.0, the ROCm user-level software is compatible with the AMD drivers in certain upstream Linux kernels. As such, users have the option of either using the ROCK kernel driver that are part of AMD's ROCm repositories or using the upstream driver and only installing ROCm user-level utilities from AMD's ROCm repositories.
These releases of the upstream Linux kernel support the following GPUs in ROCm:
- 4.17: Fiji, Polaris 10, Polaris 11
- 4.18: Fiji, Polaris 10, Polaris 11, Vega10
- 4.20: Fiji, Polaris 10, Polaris 11, Vega10, Vega 7nm
The upstream driver may be useful for running ROCm software on systems that are not compatible with the kernel driver available in AMD's repositories. For users that have the option of using either AMD's or the upstreamed driver, there are various tradeoffs to take into consideration:
Using AMD's rock-dkms package |
Using the upstream kernel driver | |
|---|---|---|
| Pros | More GPU features, and they are enabled earlier | Includes the latest Linux kernel features |
| Tested by AMD on supported distributions | May work on other distributions and with custom kernels | |
| Supported GPUs enabled regardless of kernel version | ||
| Includes the latest GPU firmware | ||
| Cons | May not work on all Linux distributions or versions | Features and hardware support varies depending on kernel version |
| Not currently supported on kernels newer than 5.4 | Limits GPU's usage of system memory to 3/8 of system memory (before 5.6). For 5.6 and beyond, both DKMS and upstream kernels allow use of 15/16 of system memory. | |
| IPC and RDMA capabilities are not yet enabled | ||
Not tested by AMD to the same level as rock-dkms package |
||
| Does not include most up-to-date firmware |
Disclaimer
AMD®, the AMD Arrow logo, AMD Instinct™, Radeon™, ROCm® and combinations thereof are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
Linux® is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the U.S. and other countries.
PCIe® is a registered trademark of PCI-SIG Corporation. Other product names used in this publication are for identification purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective companies.
Google® is a registered trademark of Google LLC.
Ubuntu and the Ubuntu logo are registered trademarks of Canonical Ltd.
Other product names used in this publication are for identification purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective companies.
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