AMD has been investing a lot into the ROCm compute stack to make it a more formidable contender against the NVIDIA CUDA software ecosystem. From better documentation and improved application/API coverage to expanding their range of supported AMD GPUs, there’s been a lot going on. So with this morning’s much anticipated Radeon RX 9070 series launch announcement ahead of product availability next week, you are probably wondering about Radeon RX 9000 series support for ROCm too… Here’s what I know so far.
One of the items I was most curious about going into the Radeon RX 9070 briefings was about ROCm support for RDNA4 GPUs… In a briefing otherwise dominated by Windows-based gaming and Windows driver improvements for RDNA4 GPUs, during the Q&A I asked a question about ROCm support for RDNA4. The answer basically amounted to that it’s coming but not for launch day. Admittedly, given all the talk in recent months around AMD working on (ROCm) software improvements and better engaging with the developer community, etc, I had personally hoped that during the RDNA4 briefings there was going to be some (miraculous) announcement of same-day ROCm support and better commitment to ROCm support on their consumer GPUs or something to that effect.
The answer was rather vague and I attempted to follow up via email but unfortunately have yet to receive any response clarifying the ROCm support in advance of today’s announcement embargo. Not for launch day, but does it mean ROCm will officially be out for RDNA4 days/weeks later or is it more like months later? That is my main concern as if it’s just going through QA/validation and needs a couple extra days, that’s not bad but it would be more frustrating if it’s along the lines of months down the road. As of writing this article, unfortunately, no further information has been provided to elaborate beyond that it’s coming but not on “launch day” for next week.
Hopefully it will be here sooner rather than later. After all we know the AMDGPU LLVM back-end is in good shape, there’s been RDNA4 work going into the AMDGPU and AMDKFD kernel drivers for months, the cards seem to be launching later than originally anticipated and thus more time for software efforts, etc. So hopefully ROCm support won’t be too far behind for Radeon RX 9070 graphics cards on Linux. But it’s really a shame that in 2025 the ROCm support for new AMD products isn’t yet immediate and ubiquitous… Hopefully it becomes that way with AMD’s unified AI with MLIR/IREE.
Part of the issue may be how AMD classifies “supported” graphics processors by ROCm. After all, the current ROCm compatibility matrix for Radeon GPUs only lists the RX 7900 XTX, RX 7900 XT, RX 7900 GRE, and Radeon VII as the “supported GPUs” of the consumer line. But other RDNA3 graphics cards for example have worked to varying degrees with ROCm as have other graphics cards. There’s a difference in their ROCm “supported” validated GPUs to what “may work” or unofficially supported. It would be a huge help in general if AMD would mention such unofficial / “community” supported GPU models or the like with their documentation to help in this regard. Given this precedence, it’s possible RDNA4 support could be working sooner on ROCm than when AMD officially proclaims the Radeon RX 9000 series as supported. This was also the case with the RX 7900 series where the support was “working” on ROCm prior to being officially recognized.
Considering CUDA has long been supported on launch day for NVIDIA GPUs as just a given and they maintain this level of support for many generations, the much narrower window of ROCm support is unfortunate and when it’s not ready on launch day. For some perspective, shortly after the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50 Blackwell launch I ran a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 through GeForce RTX 5080 / 5090 GPU compute / CUDA benchmark comparison without any troubles on Linux. That range of GPU support or as close-to-launch support simply isn’t feasible right now with AMD GPUs on ROCm.
In any event, stay tuned to learn more about the AMD Radeon RX 9000 series on Linux and benchmarks soon. Hopefully nice RDNA4 ROCm support will be here sooner rather than later.
