radeon: Force loading with no microcode - will it damage any hardware?

[Michel Dänzer]

On 2018-05-13 06:22 AM, Damien Zammit wrote:
> Can someone with some AMD gpu hardware expertise please advise whether
> forcing cards to continue loading regardless if microcode is missing
> will do damage to hardware long term, for the cards supported by
> 'radeon' driver?
> 
> I have heard from someone that it might just be for the 3d CP unit only,
> which might just disable 3d graphics if the microcode is missing on r600
> and rv770.

The drivers fail without the microcode because they can't work without
it, it's nothing to do with damaging hardware.


> I want to know if it's okay so we can get basic 2D support in libre
> kernels where the microcode is deblobbed, even though I know it's
> generally not recommended to omit microcode for all kinds of reasons.

There is no 2D-only acceleration support in >= R600 hardware anyway.


-- 
Earthling Michel Dänzer               |               http://www.amd.com
Libre software enthusiast             |             Mesa and X developer