AMDKFD -- AMD HSA On Linux -- Will Not Support 32-Bit Linux

Written by Michael Larabel in AMD on 10 December 2014 at 02:35 AM EST. 25 Comments
AMD
This really shouldn't come as a huge surprise, but AMD won't support HSA on 32-bit Linux.

Given that all of AMD's processors of the last several years have supported x86_64, software in general is beginning to focus on 64-bit only, and that within their binary drivers for matters like OpenCL 2.0 is 64-bit Linux only, the open-source HSA stack is being limited to 64-bit Linux.

The new AMDKFD driver needed for open-source HSA on Linux is being introduced with the Linux 3.19 kernel. In a later commit, support is being explicitly disabled for 32-bit user processes. This was done due to an internal AMD decision to remove support for 32-bit user processes on Linux for its Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA) stack.

If you are running a modern AMD APU on Linux, you really should be running the 64-bit Linux version of your preferred distribution.
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