Changes/ROCm6.2

ROCm 6.2

This is a proposed Change for Fedora Linux.
This document represents a proposed Change. As part of the Changes process, proposals are publicly announced in order to receive community feedback. This proposal will only be implemented if approved by the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee.

Summary

The latest ROCm release in sync with AMD's latest upstream release. Builds on the math libraries released in F40 to also include packages to run AI workloads. Has been integrated with Fedora's PyTorch.

Owner

• Name: Tom Rix
• Email: trix@redhat.com

• Name: Jeremy Newton
• Email: Jeremy.Newton@amd.com

Current status

• Targeted release: Fedora Linux 41
• Last updated: 2024-07-17
• [Announced]
• [<will be assigned by the Wrangler> Discussion thread]
• FESCo issue: <will be assigned by the Wrangler>
• Tracker bug: <will be assigned by the Wrangler>
• Release notes tracker: <will be assigned by the Wrangler>

Detailed Description

ROCm 6.2 is the latest iteration of AMD's compute libraries that work with the linux kernel to allow users to run compute workloads on their GPU's. As many GPU's as possible are enabled so open acceleration is available and easy for to as wide an audience as possible.

ROCm 6.2 has not been released yet, but upstream has confirmed it will happen long before Fedora 41 code freeze.

Benefit to Fedora

By providing system level acceleration, the challenges for developers to sync out of tree kernel drivers with complicated software stacks is removed. Developers can focus on solving their problems, not the problems of the getting hardware acceleration working.

Moving to ROCm 6.2 means newer features and bug fixes. It also means moving to LLVM 18, which includes bugfixes, new hardware support, and reduces package maintenance of using an older LLVM package.

Scope

• Proposal owners: ROCm Packagers Sig has to update the current set from 6.1.2 to 6.2.0

• Other developers: Fedora tools has to release compat packages for llvm18 because ROCm 6.2 is not compatible with llvm19 which is slated for inclusion with F41 (this is already planned and on their schedule). The ROCm upstreams need to finalize the 6.2 release which is expected prior to F41's release

• Release engineering: N/A (not needed for this Change)

• Policies and guidelines: N/A (not needed for this Change)

• Trademark approval: N/A (not needed for this Change)

• Alignment with the Fedora Strategy: "Innovation & Leadership in Technology: We integrate programming language stack ecosystems" by including the latest release of the ROCm ecosystem, Fedora is better enabling heterogeneous computation and supporting the latest hardware for ROCm.

Upgrade/compatibility impact

There should be no backwards incompatible changes for this upgrade, it is a minor release.

Early Testing (Optional)

Do you require 'QA Blueprint' support? N

How To Test

AMD GPU hardware is needed. Most of the ROCm packages have option test subpackages which need to be built locally for a single specific AMD shader family (e.g gfx1100). These will be built and run.

Contingency Plan

The current ROCm set 6.1.2 has all of the current packages expected in 6.2 llvm17 will be maintained by the ROCm packagers sig (Tom Rix)

• Contingency mechanism: (What to do? Who will do it?) N/A (not a System Wide Change)
• Contingency deadline: N/A (not a System Wide Change)
• Blocks release? N/A (not a System Wide Change), Yes/No

Documentation

N/A (not a System Wide Change)