Please consider Open-source OpenCL support in amdgpu/mesa

[Luís Mendes]

Hi,

I am an Aparapi project developer that has been struggling for two
years to get an RX 5700 properly running OpenCL applications.

First of all, as an end consumer, I would like to congratulate the
open-source amdgpu driver for its stability and performance, as well
as the team behind it! Unfortunately I cannot say the same for the
closed source, proprietary drivers which have been a nightmare in
terms of quality and stability and currently the only way to have
OpenCL... which in reality is not the case, because it does not have
any stability.

The open-source driver has been superior in terms of OpenGL and Vulkan
stability and performance, it just misses OpenCL to be complete.

I am not expecting any reply on this, nor that it will make the
Open-source OpenCL support for AMD graphics cards a reality... I just
want to share this reality that I am experiencing for two years, with
many amdgpu-pro driver versions tested and also the new deb based
amdgpu-install drivers. None of them provided a working solution,
neither legacy based, nor rocr based ones. The machine starts running
a few OpenCL jobs, which after a few seconds lead to a black screen,
followed by GPU reset and machine hanging. The same OpenCL jobs run
fine on a GT 1030. There is also a big issue when running the RX 5700
as a secondary GPU, aside with the GT 1030 as the primary card, which
causes the amdgpu driver to fail to load and renders the RX 5700
unusable. I just wanted to share my experience with this card and hope
for a better future.

Please consider Open-source OpenCL support in amdgpu/mesa.

Best regards,
Luís Mendes