AMD GPUs use HIP (Heterogeneous-Compute Interface for Portability) and OpenCL (Open Computing Language) to run compute workloads, similar to CUDA on NVIDIA GPUs. In order to use HIP and OpenCL, ROCm (the Radeon Open Compute modules) must be installed. The ROCm package interfaces with the AMDGPU driver built into the default Pop!_OS kernel, and does not require installing any DKMS packages.

The below instructions correspond with the necessary steps from AMD's installation documentation for Ubuntu.

Installation on Pop!_OS 22.04

First, add AMD's official ROCm repository to the system and set the appropriate apt pin priority using the below commands:

wget https://repo.radeon.com/rocm/rocm.gpg.key -O - | gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /etc/apt/keyrings/rocm.gpg > /dev/null
echo "deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/rocm.gpg] https://repo.radeon.com/rocm/apt/6.1 jammy main" | sudo tee --append /etc/apt/sources.list.d/rocm.list
echo -e 'Package: *\nPin: release o=repo.radeon.com\nPin-Priority: 600' | sudo tee /etc/apt/preferences.d/rocm-pin-600

Next, update the package lists and install the rocm package:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install rocm

Finally, add the current user to the render group so the user has permission to run compute workloads:

sudo usermod -a -G render $USER

It will be necessary to restart any applications utilizing ROCm before they will detect the GPU(s). If in doubt, reboot the system to ensure the new group membership takes effect.

Testing the Installation

To check if ROCm is installed, run the rocminfo command. The output should list the ROCm-compatible GPUs (which may also include CPU-integrated graphics) present in the system:

system76@pop-os:~$ rocminfo
ROCk module is loaded
...        
==========
HSA Agents               
==========               
*******                  
Agent 1                  
*******                  
  Name:                    AMD Ryzen 7 6800U with Radeon Graphics
  Uuid:                    CPU-XX                             
  Marketing Name:          AMD Ryzen 7 6800U with Radeon Graphics
  Vendor Name:             CPU                                
...
  Device Type:             CPU                                
...              
*******
Agent 2                  
*******                  
  Name:                    gfx1035                            
  Uuid:                    GPU-XX                             
  Marketing Name:          AMD Radeon Graphics                
  Vendor Name:             AMD                                
...
  Device Type:             GPU                                
...                        
*** Done ***             
system76@pop-os:~$ 

Blender Compatibility

The default Blender .deb package in Pop!_OS 22.04, which is provided by Ubuntu, does not support HIP workloads. The Blender flatpak package may be unable to properly detect the GPU(s) due to sandboxing restrictions. Therefore, for GPU rendering with HIP in Blender, it's recommended to download Blender directly from blender.org. (After extracting the .tar.xz file, simply double-click the blender executable to run the program.)