AMD OpenCL 2.0 drivers on Ubuntu 16.04

Question

I have a private workstation that uses Ubuntu 14.04 and has an AMD FirePro W7000 graphics card installed. AMD released a Catalyst driver update for all GCN-based cards that upgrades their OpenCL capability to 2.0.

The way I understand it, the proprietary AMD fglrx driver is no longer available in Ubuntu 16.04. What will happen to the OpenCL 2.0 capability of my graphics card if I upgrade my system?

Solution

If you have another spare graphics card to run the X desktop, or you run in headless mode, you can try this solution: Experimental OpenCL driver for Ubuntu 16.04

Basically, this is a OpenCL-only fglrx driver and it does not conflict with other graphics drivers. You can install a low-end GPU for desktop only, and use your FirePro just for compute. In my case I have a HD 6450 for X desktop (using the opensource radeon driver) and a R9 280X for OpenCL, and it works flawlessly.

Comments

[Wilf]

You may be able to check whether it is supported by the open source drivers - I think there is AMDGPU and Radeon drivers available as alternatives.- there is also a Pro version of the AMDGPU driver (in beta probably). See also: askubuntu.com/q/777792/178596

[Wilf]

OpenCL 2 support seems to be available in the AMDGPU PRO driver phoronix.com/… The beta version seems to support 16.04

[Prototype700]

Thanks for the hint to the both of you. I read about the AMDGPU Pro driver, but assumed that it would not support the FirePro cards, as it is named "Radeon" and all supported card to this point are from the gaming line of GPUs. Apparently, the final AMDGPU Pro driver is supposed to support FirePro cards and should even work with GCN 1.0 architecture, once it's released. At this point (5/2016), it does not seem safe to upgrade though.

[Wilf]

thats what I was going to write as the answer once I found out what OpenCL versions are available :) Anyway, you can test 16.04, even from the Live installer DVD (without installing), or by installing to a spare USB/disk drive (carefully).

[Admin]

Keep using Ubuntu 14.04 till you know for sure that OpenCL 2.0 works for your card -it doesn't for mine at this point (7/2016; Radeon HD 6670), I am at OpenCL 1.1 at the moment.