AMD Uploads RDNA 4m Firmware to linux-firmware Ahead of GPU Announcement

AMD wrapped up the workweek with a major code drop: alongside patches adding UALink support for the Linux kernel and the AMDGPU driver, all the binary firmware needed by the open-source graphics stack to initialize the upcoming RDNA 4m graphics cards — codenamed “GFX 11.7” — was uploaded to the linux-firmware.git repository.

Work on enabling the GFX 11.7 graphics IP has been underway in the Linux drivers for several months now. This block sits between RDNA 3.5 (GFX 11.5) and RDNA 4 (GFX 12.0); in the AMDGPU LLVM documentation it is called RDNA 4m — the “M” presumably pointing to a mobile application. Support has spread across the AMDGPU kernel driver, the AMDGPU LLVM shader compiler backend, and the RadeonSI and RADV drivers, where new instructions and support for several GPU models have been added on top of the GFX 11.5 capabilities.

The last missing piece

All of the open-source driver code is already in the mainline branches of the respective projects, but the one thing missing for it to actually work was the firmware. Its presence in linux-firmware.git lets distribution developers package the binaries and get systems ready to boot. AMD has traditionally released such files only at the time the hardware launched or afterward, but lately the company has been trying to do it ahead of time — so that users get everything working correctly “out of the box” right at the start of sales.

On Friday, that milestone was reached. For the first time, the repository received firmware for GFX 11.7.0 and GFX 11.7.1 (there is no 11.7.2 version yet), along with the PSP 15.0.0 and PSP 15.0.9 security firmware, SDMA 6.1.4, and the VPE 2.0.0 engine. DCN 4.2 is expected to follow. Since all the images were uploaded at once, it is reasonable to assume that RDNA 4m will get the new VPE 2.0 video engine and the Display Core Next 4.2 display block, while the move to PSP 15.0 will mark a notable step for AMD’s platform security processor.

After this commit, the open-source driver stack appears to be fully ready for the upcoming RDNA 4m graphics cards. A good starting point for supporting them will be the Linux 7.3 kernel and Mesa versions 26.2–26.3. How well all of this works in practice will become clear once the hardware actually ships and can be tested under Linux.

Source: Phoronix