AMD Has Open-Source Ryzen AI Demo Code - But Only For Windows

One of the most interesting aspects of the new AMD Ryzen 7040 series laptop processors is the new "Ryzen AI" capabilities with the new XDNA AI engine capabilities built into the SoC, leveraging IP from their Xilinx acquisition. Linux support details remain scarce but at least one of their (Windows) demos for showcasing Ryzen AI is open-source.

So far I haven't received any information from AMD on Linux support expectations for Ryzen AI in its initial form with the new Ryzen 7040 series laptops coming to market. All the communications have only referenced Microsoft Windows 11 support, so the Linux support may be lacking but at the same time we've seen a lot of AMD-Xilinx code going upstream into the Linux kernel in recent months albeit not explicitly mentioning Ryzen AI. In any event once being able to find an interesting Ryzen 7040 series laptop for purchase, I plan on picking one up for Linux testing due to the interesting nature of the 7040 series and Ryzen AI being among the areas to investigate. (If you too are interested in the Ryzen 7040 mobile series, consider joining Phoronix Premium or making a tip to help offset the costs - going on right now is also the Phoronix birthday deal; unfortunately no laptop review samples from AMD.)

While trying to find more about the Ryzen AI potential for Linux this weekend, I was pleased to see that AMD did publish some Ryzen AI demo code as open-source. To showcase the local AI performance of Ryzen AI compared to relying on remote AI in the cloud (Microsoft Azure), AMD has a "RyzenAI-cloud-to-client-demo" as open-source though at this point catered just for Windows 11. The demo is a collection of Python scripts, a Qt interface, and other bits. With Ryzen AI supporting ONNX Runtime, that does bode well for the Linux support once the necessary kernel pieces are in order.

Those wanting to checkout the Ryzen AI open-source demo code can find it under AMD's GitHub repository.