Hi,

this is a very similar question than the one asked yesterday. But the
focus is on opensource drivers.

I need a new graphic card. So I searched the manual and mailing list
what are the options, but I'm still unsure. A lot of information is or
might be outdated. Although this questions has been asked a dozen times
already, I couldn't find a definite recent answer.

My needs

- opensource drivers (if at all possible)
- should work out-of-the-box with no (or little) fiddling

My system:

- Debian stable (might be able to upgrade to testing, if required)
- currently kernel 4.19
- Xeon E-2288G
- 16GiB RAM

The manual¹ states:

  The OpenCL compiler is normally shipped as part of the proprietary
  graphics driver…

So this indicates that opensource drivers might not work at all
(meaning: no opencl) and proprietary drivers are mandatory. But maybe
not, the manual is vague stating “normally”.

Alex wrote²:

  When you use Ubuntu 18.04 you can consider the AMD Graphic  for
  darktable. Darktable needs extended open-cl support which is not part
  of the open source amdgpu- driver package. It runs only with the
  gpupro-driver which is accessable via amd-webiste:
  https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/release-notes/rn-prorad-lin-18-20

So this also indicates that there is no opensource opencl support (at
least with AMD).

However, Šarūnas wrote³:

  > * Which works better in Linux - Nvidia or AMD?

  Both work well. In case of AMD there is an open source option.

  > * Which drivers work (best) for using OpenCL in darktable? Are the
  > open-source drivers okay or do I need the binary drivers from AMD or
  > Nvidia?

  Open source drivers are okay (ROCm for AMD), including upstream
  kernels. Just tested with 5.3 RC8.

So there seems to be a solution with AMD. But checking ROCm on Debian,
I only found the package rocm-smi (AMD ROCm System Management
Interface) in experimental. Given that Šarūnas post is over a year old,
and it's not even included in Debian sid yet, maybe that's not an
option. But I don't know this piece of software, never heard of it.

Guillermo wrote⁴:

  > * Which drivers work (best) for using OpenCL in darktable? Are the
  >   open-source drivers okay or do I need the binary drivers from AMD
  or >   Nvidia?

  For NVidia you need the binary drivers, the open source ones are
  missing some OpenCL capabilities required by darktable.

So this rules out NVidia. And the current state for AMD cards is still
unclear (to me).

A post from Mikhail⁵:

  In case of AMD you will need a new enough GPU so that it works with
  the "amdgpu" open source kernel driver, not the "radeon" driver.

This sounds good, but he also wrote⁶:

  AMDGPU is fully open source nowadays and is in the mainline kernel.
  Everything (except OpenCL for now, unfortunately) works out of the
  box on Linux.

So this also renders AMD opensource drivers unsuitable.

He suggests searching on phoronix.com, but the most recent post⁷ I
found was from 2016, so I don't know if the situation has changed since.

To conclude:

Guillermo + manual:
  - no opensource solution for Nvidia

Alex + Mikhail:
  - amdgpu opensource drivers lack required opencl component

I know the posts are kind of old, so my question is, if anything has
changed in the mean time? I have the gut feeling that AMD should be the
way to go. But is there an opensource solution to get opencl to work
with darktable (on a Debian system)?

If yes, could you recommend any specific adapters/chipsets?

Marco

1 https://darktable.gitlab.io/doc/en/darktable_and_opencl_activation.html
2 https://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg08659.html
3 https://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg07916.html
4 https://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg07917.html
5 https://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg07922.html
6 https://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg07929.html
7 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Darktable-27-Results
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