Does ROCr support GUI-based software applications officially or not?

[KristijanZic]

In light of the new direction AMD is taking in regards to OpenCL support for graphical use cases with https://github.com/RadeonOpenCompute/ROCm/commit/6fb55e6f459ca2bcddba6c9b7ac39345fa7a51b7

It's important for us to know how this affects ROCr? Does ROCr now officially not support the GUI-based software applications use case?

[skeelyamd]

No, ROCr works with GUI applications and so does OpenCL. The RadeonPro Linux OpenCL is also (along with ROCm OCL) ROCr based and many GUI applications are known important supported apps.

[KristijanZic]

Is there an official support? It seems to me if ROCm does not support it so doesn't the RadeonPro. They are both,as you said, ROCr based. If this is not correct then maybe AMD jumped the gun with the RadeonOpenCompute/ROCm@6fb55e6 ? In which case this change should be reverted asap.

[johnbridgman]

Not sure I understand the question. This is not a new direction, and is not a change. The ROCm stack has never included graphics userspace components (eg Mesa) and ROCm stack releases have never gone through graphics testing.

That said, there is nothing in the ROCm components preventing use with graphical apps - the messaging applies to the ROCm stack as published in Github, not to the individual components, and as you note we are integrating more of the ROCm components in our graphics stack releases.

Our direction is towards more integration of graphics and compute, not less. The message only documents the current state, which has also been the state of the stack from the start (ie many years).

It does seem that we need to revisit the message, since it is definitely being interpreted differently from the way it was intended.

EDIT - I think I see the problem - the README talks about the ROCm "open software platform" rather than specifically about the stack releases. I have requested that we change the message.