AMD’s Advancing AI 2025 event last week was very busy with announcing the Instinct MI350X and MI355X, the ROCm 7.0 preview, and debuting the AMD Developer Cloud. In addition, they held pre-briefs around the Ryzen Threadripper 9000 series and buried in as part of that was another new disclosure: Radeon Test Drive. Radeon Test Drive was brought up as something that’s coming later this summer from AMD partnering with different hardware vendors to make it easier for developers/customers to try out ROCm on Radeon GPUs.
Complementing the announcement of the AMD Developer Cloud for making it quick and easy for trying out ROCm with Instinct GPUs in the cloud, Radeon Test Drive is coming as similar lines for trying out ROCm on Radeon (PRO) GPUs. Basically being able to remotely try out Radeon (PRO) GPUs and likely paired as part of Ryzen Threadripper workstations/servers.
AMD is initially partnering up with hardware vendors Colfax and System76 for the ROCm on Radeon Test Drive as a cloud/remote way of being able to test ROCm with Radeon class hardware.
The Colfax page describes it as a way to try out Radeon PRO W7800/W7900 equipped systems (or coming soon the Radeon AI PRO R9700) with ROCm software. Colfax for their part is using their ProEdge TRX5400R 4U rackmount server platform and ProEdge TRX5400WS workstations powered by AMD Radeon PRO and Threadripper CPUs for demonstrating ROCm + Radeon and in turn could lead to new customer sales.
The System76 Advancing AI page is also showing a “coming soon” for trying out AMD Ryzen Threadripper and Radeon PRO R9700 hardware. System76 offers their excellent System76 Thelio workstations with Threadripper and Radeon options. With the System76 Thelio workstations there can be up to four Radeon PRO GPUs. With Radeon Test Drive you will be able to have a live, remote demo for seeing how well ROCm on Radeon works for your system. In AMD partnering with these hardware vendors, it will potentially lead to new sales as well for those considering Radeon-powered servers or workstations. We have been testing and benchmarking System76 Thelio Linux workstations since they debuted them and they are wonderfully built — and extremely powerful — systems.
For a look at the current-generation System76 Thelio powered by the Threadripper 7000 series, see the prior review System76 Thelio Major Powered By AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7000 Series Performance.
Radeon Test Drive is nice for those wanting to evaluate the potential of AMD Ryzen Threadripper paired with Radeon PRO prior to having to make any initial hardware investment. At least for the “ROCm on Radeon” aspect though that’s part of the nice thing if/when finding universal Radeon hardware support by ROCm is the much lower buy-in by developers. Being able to pair a few hundred dollar Radeon GPU with ROCm for kick-starting development in AMD’s open ecosystem is much less of a challenge than if needing to go the Instinct or Radeon PRO route. In any event for those considering a workstation/server purchase this Radeon Test Drive will hopefully prove effective for trying out a powerful hardware combination while also opening more consumers to the likes of System76 with their pre-built Linux PCs.
With this “Radeon Test Drive” announcement coming just after the AMD Developer Cloud announcement for trying out ROCm on Instinct hardware, it seems rather fragmented in their different cloud/trial offerings… Just as there have been multiple other AMD clouds in the past. One of my big frustrations with the lack of unification for showcasing the different AMD hardware/software efforts. For that, I’ll end this article by simply saying “stay tuned.”
