2024/11/24
That the GPU I have in the Ubuntu workstation in my office isn’t compatible with ROCm, AMD’s GPU compatibility layer, or Vulkan. I was trying to run the binary for tabby locally. First, I looked up my graphics card:
; lshw -c video
# *-display
# description: VGA compatible controller
# product: Turks PRO [Radeon HD 7570]
# vendor: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI]
# physical id: ...
# bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0
# logical name: /dev/fb0
# version: 00
# width: 64 bits
# clock: 33MHz
# capabilities: vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom fb
# configuration: depth=32 driver=radeon latency=0 resolution=2048,1080
# resources: irq:42 memory:e0000000-efffffff memory:f0020000-f003ffff ioport:e000(size=256) memory:c0000-dffff
I followed a few false starts, during which I learned:
- CUDA is more or less NVIDIA-only
- using an incompatible video driver can stall Ubuntu boots :/
These are obvious in hindsight, but here are some of the commands I learned figuring out how I shot myself in the foot:
grep 'GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX' /etc/default/grub
sudo vi /etc/default/grub # edit kernel flags
cat /proc/cmdline # display kernel flags in **current** session
update-grub # actually apply edited settings
inxi -G # display graphics hardware
sudo apt install inxi
sudo apt install vulkan-tools
vulkaninfo # display vulkan config.
I finally found the smoking gun in a 2020 wiki post on old GPUs. Turns out the 7570 came out in 2012 – while Vulkan was only standardized in 2016.
This is a bummer, but there’s a nonzero chance one of my other salvaged boxes have newer chips.