AMD unveils ROCm 7 — new platform boosts AI performance up to 3.5x, adds Radeon GPU support

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AMD's software stack for AI keeps improving.

AMD
(Image credit: AMD)

AMD this week introduced the 7th version of its ROCm (Radeon open compute) open-source software stack for accelerated computing that substantially improves the performance of AI inference on existing hardware compared to ROCm 6, as well as adds support for distributed workloads, and expands to Windows and Radeon GPUs. In addition, ROCm 7 adds support for FP4 and FP6 low-precision formats for the latest Instinct MI350X/MI355X processors. 

The biggest change brought by ROCm 7 for client PCs is the extension of ROCm to Windows and Radeon GPUs, which allows the use of discrete and integrated GPUs for AI workloads, but only on Ryzen-based PCs. Starting in the second half of 2025, developers will be able to build and run AI programs on Ryzen desktops and laptops with Radeon GPUs, which could be a big deal for those who want to run higher-end AI LLMs locally.

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Anton Shilov
Anton Shilov
Contributing Writer

Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.

6 Comments Comment from the forums
  • virgult
    ...yet there's no mention of which Radeon GPUs are supported. There's conflicting information on the website. Here this "hardware spec" list seems to imply that the stack supports most modern Radeons down to the 6600 (plus Vega, the only arch ever really supported by ROCm anyway):
    https://rocm.docs.amd.com/en/latest/reference/gpu-arch-specs.html
    But this page only mentions Radeon Pro W 7000 as the cards one should buy to run ROCm 7:
    https://www.amd.com/en/developer/resources/rocm-hub/dev-ai.html#tabs-d13ff37f6d-item-94bf1a0f36-tab
    Let's see if AMD has chosen to be competitive with Nvidia from 2020 or still prefers to be stuck in 2017.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    virgult said:
    ...yet there's no mention of which Radeon GPUs are supported.
    The place to look will be in the release notes. I don't yet see them for release 7, but here's the place in the 6.4.1 release notes, where hardware compatibility is specified:
    https://rocm.docs.amd.com/projects/install-on-linux/en/latest/reference/system-requirements.html
    Reply
  • ejolson
    I think "but only Ryzen-based PCs" means the integrated GPUs on Ryzen processors are the only ones that work with ROCm 7. The need to say such an obvious thing makes more sense when one considers that HIP is cross-platform with backends to target both Nvidia and AMD accelerators.

    Note also AMD had a line of APUs with integrated Radeon graphics before Ryzen that could to some extent be used for GPGPU computing. These will not work with ROCm.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    abufrejoval said:
    "The biggest change brought by ROCm 7 for client PCs is the extension of ROCm to Windows and Radeon GPUs, which allows the use of discrete and integrated GPUs for AI workloads, but only on Ryzen-based PCs."

    I wonder where that comes from and if it will in fact be true.
    Perhaps the "only on Ryzen-based PCs" was meant as a qualification only applying to the integrated GPUs?
    Reply
  • bit_user
    ejolson said:
    The need to say such an obvious thing makes more sense when one considers that HIP is cross-platform with backends to target both Nvidia and AMD accelerators.
    HIP is designed as a cross-platform solution, but I have no idea about the current state of its support for running atop Intel iGPUs.

    I consider HIP a vendor-specific API, even though the theoretical (and maybe rather real) possibility exists to use it atop other hardware. We cannot depend on them to maintain other backends with the same attention to quality, reliability, accuracy, and functional completeness as they do for their own hardware.

    If I truly wanted a hardware-agnostic solution, I would opt for something that's not backed by a specific vendor, because they're always going to be biased towards their own hardware.
    Reply
  • DS426
    abufrejoval said:
    "The biggest change brought by ROCm 7 for client PCs is the extension of ROCm to Windows and Radeon GPUs, which allows the use of discrete and integrated GPUs for AI workloads, but only on Ryzen-based PCs."

    I wonder where that comes from and if it will in fact be true. There is no technical reason why you shouldn't be able to run ROCm 7 workloads on an RX 9000 dGPU using an Intel CPU underneath.
    ...
    Another possibility is that ROCm 7 just doesn't support Intel CPU's. This doesn't mean it wouldn't work and most likely wouldn't be an issue at all. If this is the case and not the Radeon iGPU theory, there needs to be pushback on this as vendor lock-in is something we need to get away from in the world of AI compute (yes, I'm attacking CUDA) and compute in general.

    ROCm 7 is apparently still in preview, and I'm not seeing a lot of new details and clarifications from AMD since this news article was posted.
    Reply