Nice. This is why I only buy AMD gear. Support those who support you, people!
this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2023
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Can someone ELI5 what that means for me as an AMD GPU Linux user?
Is this in any way related to the firmware files that I get with the kernel which get direct-loaded on boot when the amdgpu module is loaded?
fwupd is an easy way for firmware updates to be distributed and applied, this is for flashing the chips on the card not drivers loaded in the kernel
I use fwupd to update the bios on my Dell laptop for example
Seriously what does any of this lingo even mean?
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Fwupd
Sounds like FW Updater here is adding support for NAVI 3x which is the 5nm / RDNA 3 chips, AKA Ryzen RX 7000 series (for example RX 7600). Does this mean you can now update the firmware for the chip? Does it mean FWUpd will automatically handle firmware updates for you?
Bonus challenge if you wanna talk to me about what some of the linux firmware lingo means.
It's exciting that with Fwupd 1.9.6+ it's now possible to update AMD discrete graphics card firmware under Linux rather than having to resort to Windows or other environments. This new Fwupd plug-in works with Navi 3x on recent versions of the Linux kernel where the AMDGPU driver has the necessary interfaces to make the firmware updating happen. Specifically this firmware updating is focused on flashing the graphics card's Integrated Firmware Image (IFWI).
Quoted from the article.
So you could not update the firmware on Navi 3x before this update arrived to Fwupd? Err you could update the card outside of Linux by booting up windows?
You could do it in Windows before. With this update, now you can do it in Linux.
Okay got it. Thank you! I just started using desktop linux, I'm on Nobara so I have some expectation that things will be handled for me and I'm not always sure about when I need to tweak things. The extent of my troubleshooting so far is using ProtonDB.
I'll add that firmware updates for GPUs are pretty uncommon (my current card has had zero in the 3 years since it was launched). And an AMD driver dev confirmed as much, that it is just there in case it's needed.
And fwupd is a standard way to update firmware etc on a variety of hardware that doesn't require DOS boot drives or using Windows, more commonly used on laptops and some servers and prebuilt clients. Which is obviously quite nice from a Linux user's perspective.
Adding to other comments, fwupd is integrated into Gnome Software and probably other software centers. There's also a systemd servivce or fwupd can be run from the terminal.
So as far as I know it's not necessarily run automatically on all distros.