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Radeon Open Compute (5.0.2) packages for NixOS

This Overlay is Obsolete

Most of what this overlay provided is available in nixpkgs. Please check there for your ROCm needs!

Do I Need This Overlay?

Parts of this overlay have been upstreamed into nixpkgs. If all you need is OpenCL support for AMD GPUs, you can follow the instructions in a new-enough version of the NixOS manual, and do not require this overlay. If you want to use the HIP compiler for CUDA portability, any middleware libraries built atop that, or any of the broader ROCm ecosystem, you will need this overlay.

Changes

4.3 -> 4.5

  • The hipify-perl script is no longer part of the hip package. Include the hipify-perl package in your environment if you need this component.

Installation

This overlay should work with the latest nixos-unstable channel. To use these packages, clone this repo somewhere and then add (import /path/to/this/repo) to nixpkgs.overlays in configuration.nix, or in ~/.config/nixpkgs/overlays.nix (see the manual for more information on overlays). To specify GPU compilation targets, your ~/.config/nixpkgs/config.nix can include a rocmTargets field that lists GPU targets. An example fragment is shown here; the essential line is the definition of the rocmTargets field. The list shown here is the default list of targets used if you do not include this definition in your config.nix.

{
  allowUnfree = true;
  rocmTargets = ["gfx803" "gfx900" "gfx906"];
  packageOverrides = ...
}

The named GPU targets are the common ones for RX480/RX580 GPUs, Vega 10, and Vega 20. You can include only the specific one you need if you prefer.

As of ROCm 1.9.0, mainline kernels newer than 4.17 may be used with the ROCm stack.

Add these lines to configuration.nix to enable the ROCm stack:

  boot.kernelPackages = pkgs.linuxPackages_5_4;
  hardware.opengl.enable = true;
  hardware.opengl.extraPackages = [ pkgs.rocm-opencl-icd ];

After a nixos-rebuild and a reboot, both of these should work:

  nix-shell -p rocminfo --run rocminfo
  nix-shell -p rocm-opencl-runtime --run clinfo

OpenCL applications should work, and glxinfo should report that the Mesa stack is running hardware-accelerated on an AMD gpu.

Using the Cachix Binary Cache

Using cachix is highly recommended! See here for complete instructions. The short and sweet is that, if you have cachix installed, you can just type cachix use nixos-rocm and you will download compiled ROCm components rather than have to build them yourself. The binary cache is built against nixos-unstable at least once every day.

rocblas, rocfft, and the Sandbox

The rocblas and rocfft packages (and those that depend upon them) require a bit of additional configuration. The nix builder sandbox must be expanded to allow for build-time inspection of the current system for these packages to build. This may be achieved by adding the following lines to your /etc/nixos/configuration.nix (with the caveat that your AMD GPU may not be at /dev/dri/renderD128):

  nix.settings.extra-sandbox-paths = [ 
    "/dev/kfd" 
    "/sys/devices/virtual/kfd" 
    "/dev/dri/renderD128"
  ];

GPU Target Customization

As of ROCm 2.8, using the rocm_agent_enumerator program that is part of the rocminfo package no longer works for nix builds. Among other checks, the program must be run by a user in the video group. Rather than trying to make all nixbld users satisfy these requirements, the new arrangement is that we manually specify the GPU targets we are building for. This mechanism already exists as part of rocm_agent_enumerator to support CI configurations that may not have all the required hardware, and so probably also makes sense for nix builds. To this end, we now provide a list of GPU targets for the ROCm overlay in the nixpkgs.config.rocmTargets field.

Hardware support

So far, this has been tested with Radeon Vega Frontier Edition, RX 580, and Radeon VII GPUs. Other cards supported by the upstream ROCm should also work, but have not been tested. Please let us know if we can expand the list of expected-to-work hardware!

Independent of NixOS, the ROCm software stack has a particular hardware requirement for gfx803 (aka Polaris, aka RX570/580/590 GPUs) that is not universally enjoyed: PCI Express 3.0 (PCIe 3.0) with PCIe atomics. This requires that both the CPU and motherboard support atomic operations all the way from the CPU to the GPU (including any PCIe risers or splitters in which the GPU is installed). See the ROCm documentation for more information.

Highlights of Included Software

Libraries and compilers for:

Miscellaneous Notes and Workarounds

The ROCm suite of libraries and compilers is still somewhat immature and changing rapidly. This brings with it some irregularities due to upstream quirks, and means that our packaging is always racing to keep up with the rapid rate of change. These are notes on problems you may run into as a ROCm user.

  • When running things like pytorch or tensorflow that rely upon MIOpen on a gfx803 GPU, you may need to set the environment variable MIOPEN_DEBUG_CONV_IMPLICIT_GEMM=0 to avoid an error like Failed to get function: gridwise_convolution_implicit_gemm_v4_nchw_kcyx_nkhw_lds_double_buffer.