AMD and CIQ jointly announced today that AMD-optimized Rocky Linux builds are being worked on for this RHEL-derived operating system. The AMD-optimized Rocky Linux will focus on AI and HPC workloads and be nicely integrated with ROCm.
While Intel formally maintained Clear Linux as their high performance Linux showcase for their wares, AMD hasn’t ventured into their own in-house Linux distribution or collaborated as much around a Linux distribution catered specifically toward their platforms — well, many years ago, they did bet on MeeGo Linux after Intel during their Fusion days. CIQ and AMD are working on a multi-phase collaboration for AMD-optimized Rocky Linux with a focus on Instinct hardware with their ROCm software stack:
“The collaboration begins with AMD-optimized Rocky Linux from CIQ builds featuring validated AMD drivers, ROCm support, and day-zero deployment capability, with plans to integrate AMD optimizations throughout CIQ’s infrastructure stack.
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The collaboration aims to deliver an AMD-optimized Rocky Linux build that enterprises can deploy at scale with day-zero capability, while reducing technical complexity and procurement barriers. Free enterprise access also enables AMD to deliver optimizations to the broadest possible user base. For customers deploying AMD datacenter solutions for large language model training, scientific simulation and data-intensive analytics, this provides a reproducible, enterprise-grade Linux foundation designed to unlock peak accelerator performance without custom integration work.
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Following general availability of the AMD-optimized image, CIQ plans to incorporate ongoing AMD performance enhancements and extend support for AMD Instinct GPUs and the AMD ROCm software platform across its infrastructure portfolio, including Warewulf Pro for cluster management, Ascender Pro for IT automation, Apptainer for containerization, and Fuzzball for workload orchestration. The companies expect to continue advancing joint ecosystem initiatives throughout 2026 and beyond in response to customer demand.”
More details via today’s press release.
Beyond this Rocky Linux engagement, AMD also has been supporting AlmaLinux as a community-minded downstream of Red Hat Enterprise LInux.
It will be interesting to try out and benchmark this AMD-optimized Rocky Linux build once it’s actually available. It sounds like it will be more tuning on the Instinct/ROCm side than on the CPU side with EPYC, but we can hope there will be plenty of CPU optimizations too like there was with Intel’s Clear Linux. No word on exactly when the initial GA builds will be available for AMD-optimized Rocky Linux.
