AMD ROCm Looks Like It Will Finally Be Supporting OpenCL 3.0 Soon

The OpenCL 3.0 compute specification has been out in finalized form since September 2020. Since then NVIDIA's official Windows/Linux drivers have been exposing OpenCL 3.0 going back to 2021, the Intel Compute Runtime stack has also been exposing OpenCL 3.0 support for years, and even with Mesa's Rusticl open-source OpenCL implementation it's beginning to see Gallium3D drivers with conformant OpenCL 3.0. Yet if installing the AMD ROCm compute stack right now, you'll see OpenCL 2.1. But it looks like OpenCL 3.0 will soon be here for ROCm.

A Phoronix reader alerted me to some recent GitHub activity that seemingly indicates OpenCL 3.0 is soon expected for the AMD ROCm compute stack. Granted, OpenCL 3.0 was introduced largely around making some OpenCL 2 features optional but still it's unfortunate four years after it was introduced the AMD ROCm compute stack is sticking to OpenCL 2.1 while the other GPU driver vendors -- including NVIDIA -- have advanced to OpenCL 3.0 conformance.

Going back to October 2023 has been this GitHub ticket for ROCm inquiring about OpenCL 3.0 support. Without any activity since, last month an AMD engineer updated the ticket that it was "under investigation". That was followed by another AMD engineer commenting:

"We are currently looking into upgrading to opencl 3.0. Please keep an eye out for announcements/updates in the future for more details. Thanks!"

Following that this OpenCL 3.0 ticket has been "closed as completed".

We'll see how long before an AMD ROCm release rolls out with OpenCL 3.0 being exposed rather than OpenCL 2.1, but at least based on this recent GitHub activity, that milestone may finally be near.

UPDATE (21 October): AMD has now clarified in a message to Phoronix that they are exploring the possibility of supporting OpenCL 3.0 headers but the support isn't yet part of their official roadmap.