Blender 3.0 is taking support for AMD GPUs to the next level with the latest Blender 3.0 beta. There is now improved AMD GPU rendering support for Cycles (aka Cycles X).
Blender 3.0
In December, Blender is planning to release version 3.0 of its popular 3D digital content creation (DCC) software suite. The new 3.0 version will support GPU rendering in Blender using the open-source AMD HIP (heterogeneous-computing interface for portability) C++ Runtime API and kernel language, which enables users to take full advantage of all the enhancements of the Blender Cycles X rendering engine on AMD GPUs.
The new rendering engine for Blender removed OpenCL support for GPU rendering on AMD GPUs for technical and performance reasons. AMD supported Blender’s physically-based path tracer, supported on the OpenCL framework. However, the Blender folks are focused on streamlining development in the areas of GPU rendering wherein OpenCL code could be merged with C++ CPU and CUDA code. AMD’s open-source solution handles just that task via HIP.
With the updates to AMD Driver and the Beta version of Blender 3.0 in the preferences users can select HIP for Cycles Render Devices.
HIP is a C++ runtime API and kernel language that allows developers to create portable applications for AMD and NVIDIA GPUs from single source code. Another benefit of HIP is it allows the easy migration from existing CUDA code to something more generic.
Beta Driver Now
AMD has support for Blender 3.0 Beta. To tap into the power of Cycles X rendering under the beta version of Blender with AMD graphics cards, an updated AMD Radeon Software driver is needed. This week AMD released a beta driver for Blender 3.0 beta users.
You can download the AMD Radeon Software Beta driver here. And you can download Blender 3.0 Beta here.
Reader Comments
But AMD’s HIP support for what generation of AMD GPUs as I’m reading that it may be for RDNA1/RDNA2 later AMD GPUs/Graphics on Linux and there are tons of AMD Ryzen based laptops sold from Q1 2019 that shipped with Polaris discrete Mobile GPUs in addition to the Vega integrated graphics that comes included with all Ryzen APUs.
AMD’s Vega Discrete Mobile GPUs only found use in Apple’s Macbook line of laptops and RDNA1/RDNA2 is AMD’s focus now but what about 5 generations of Ryzen APUs that use Vega Graphics.
Cycles-X, like the original Cycles in Blender, sees AMD only coming in late and after the fact and skipping too much of the AMD Polaris/Vega Graphics hardware that’s still more numerous than any Ryzen Laptops sporting RDNA1/RDNA2 discrete mobile GPUs. I Think that Eevee rendering and Vulkan Accelerated Ray Tracing may be the only option for older AMD Polaris/Vega graphics and currently Vega Integrated graphics is the only integrated graphics on any AMD APUs.
The MESA folks on Linux need an OpenCL over Vulkan compute layer so folks can more easily run AMD’s GPUs/Graphics under Blender 2.8 up to but not including Blender 3.0 where OpenCL support is not included.
Hopefully there can be some attention paid to Polaris and Vega graphics on Laptops because Nvidia still dominates on Discrete Mobile and Discrete graphics in general if one goes over to Techgage and reads the latest RDNA2 Pro Graphics Cards reviews where AMD’s got some work to do with Blender just enabling hardware ray tracing via some API there. AMD’s competing with Nvidia on some limited workflows but for rendering with ray tracing via Nvidia’s OptiX Nvidia is the clear winner there!
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