The past number of months has seen work by AMD Linux driver engineers in enabling cleaner shader functionality for various generations of GPUs to help ensure user/application isolation. Being merged overnight as part of the AMDGPU “fixes” for Linux 6.16 is cleaner shader support for more AMD GFX9 / CDNA hardware, notably to benefit various Instinct accelerators with this security feature.
The AMD cleaner shader functionality helps ensure data isolation between GPU workloads. The cleaner shader will clear the Local Data Store (LDS), Vector General Purpose Registers (VGPRs), and Scalar General Purpose Registers (SGPRs) to prevent any potential data leakage between processes. Besides the security benefits, the cleaner shader can help ensure a consistent GPU state for the registers across workloads.
In prior Linux kernel releases cleaner shader support arrived for AMD RDNA3 GPUs, various RDNA2 GPUs, and other graphics processors. Of the GFX9 generation there was cleaner shader support for GFX9.4.2 for what is the AMD Instinct MI300 series.
Now in Linux 6.16 Git today is cleaner shader support for other GFX9 GPUs including GFX 9.0.1, 9.1.0, 9.2.1, 9.2.2, 9.3.0, and 9.4.0.
This means cleaner shader support is now in place for various AMD Ryzen APUs with Vega/GFX9 graphics as well as older AMD Instinct MI50 / MI100 / MI200 series accelerators. There isn’t yet cleaner shader support for GFX 9.5.0 as the new Instinct MI350 series but will presumably be coming soon.
The cleaner shader support for more CDNA/GFX9 GPUs was merged via drm-fixes-2025-06-28 along with other AMDGPU fixes as well as some Intel driver fixes for the week too. Expanding the cleaner shader support to more GPUs doesn’t fall entirely under “fixes” but presumably was merged in the name of increased security.
Beyond this cleaner shader support, there are also many other new features coming in Linux 6.16.
