https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/05/amd_mes_open_source/

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2 comment bubble on white

AMD to open source Micro Engine Scheduler firmware for Radeon GPUs

2 comment bubble on white

And it was all thanks to peer pressure

icon Matthew Connatser
Fri 5 Apr 2024 // 17:00 UTC
#
   
  

AMD plans to document and open source its Micro Engine Scheduler
(MES) firmware for GPUs, giving users more control over Radeon
graphics cards.

It's part of a larger effort AMD confirmed earlier this week about
making its GPUs more open source at both a software level in respect
to the ROCm stack for GPU programming and a hardware level. Details
were scarce with this initial announcement, and the only concrete
thing it introduced was a GitHub tracker.

However, yesterday AMD divulged more details, specifying that one of
the things it would be making open source was the MES firmware for
Radeon GPUs. AMD says it will be publishing documentation for MES
around the end of May, and will then release the source code some
time afterward.

[systems]

For one George Hotz and his startup, Tiny Corp, this is great news.
Throughout March, Hotz had agitated for AMD to make MES open source
in order to fix issues he was experiencing with his RX 7900
XTX-powered AI server box. He had talked several times to AMD
representatives, and even the company's CEO, Lisa Su.

  * Standardization could open door to third-party chiplets in AMD
    designs
  * Kaby Lake-G chip back from the grave, now on modest
    firewall-router-NAS mobo
  * TSMC's 3nm node powers up, setting stage for tech giants'
    next-gen chips
  * Tiny Corp launches Nvidia-powered AI computer because 'it just
    works'

While Hotz was initially "70 percent confident" that MES would be
made open source, after his conversation with Su in late March he
figured it wasn't going to happen after all. This would have killed
the AMD-powered TinyBox, which uses six RX 7900 XTXs, but the project
was saved thanks to the discovery of a single "umr" repository that
made the box work well enough.

Still, Tiny Corp had reluctantly decided to launch an RTX
4090-powered TinyBox anyway since it offered a solution that "just
works." An Intel version might also be in the pipeline, though the
performance of Intel's best GPU, the Arc A770, would be a significant
concern since it comes nowhere near either the RX 7900 XTX and RTX
4090.

[systems]

Yet Hotz's 70 percent confidence level was right in the end as AMD is
seemingly doing exactly what he was asking for. Though making the MES
firmware open source is a strange conclusion to the saga, and it's
unclear why AMD seems to have changed course now.

"Spoke with them for months and months and got nothing, despite the
public engagement you saw. I think it was treated as a PR problem,
not a GPU problem," Hotz speculated on X before AMD announced its
open source efforts.

[systems]

Hotz has not yet responded to AMD's announcement, and we've asked him
and AMD to comment. (r)

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