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Re: upcoming Blender 4.4 ROCm driver requirements



Hi Jakub,

On 2025-01-27 07:38, JJ wrote:
Thou we work in completely different fields I know how it feels to be burned out. I wish you a quick return to form.

Ah. I see that you are an artist. That seems like it would be quite a stressful line of work these days. I've not really examined your portfolio in much detail, but it seems quite technically complex.

My knowledge of the art world is very limited, going only about as far as being able to recognize famous paintings and art movements. Although, I've actually named quite a few of the continuous integration systems for Debian after paintings. For a while, AMD was using painters for APU code names, so I've enjoyed learning about each painter as I set up their machine:

gfx902 (Picasso): guernica [8]
gfx90c (Renoir): daydream [9]
gfx90c (Cezanne): cardplayers [10]
gfx90c (Cezanne): threeskulls [11]
gfx1033 (van Gogh): starrynight [12]
gfx1035 (Rembrandt): nightwatch [13]

As we don't get many artists on the Debian AI mailing list, I wonder if you might share your thoughts on how the development of AI affects your work? I'm well aware that the work I do in computing may ultimately be used for either good or bad purposes. I build tools that can be used by anyone. That includes you, but also includes a broad array of other developers and artists. It would be immoral for me to attempt to seize power for myself and dictate how other people use the tools I create. Still, I would like to better understand the implications of my work.

AI may be a particularly thorny topic, but there are moral questions involved in any computing project. Even something as obviously beneficial as Wikipedia raises the occasional concern. It has practically put commercial encyclopedias out of business and now the world depends on an encyclopedia that anyone can edit. It's surprising how well that works given how difficult it is to truly verify anything over the internet. In any case, the point is that even for highly beneficial projects, there is always both good and bad to be discussed.

Your perspective would be appreciated, though you're obviously not obligated to share it. I'm thankful for your patches and technical contributions regardless.

On 2025-01-27 07:38, JJ wrote:
I was thinking about automatic Blender tests for a while actually. Blender has a testing suite for all kinds of stuff, but AFAIK it's not used outside of Blender Foundation infrastructure. The repo for tests that could be relevant to GPUs is here [1]. There are specific Cycles [2] EEVEE [3] and Workbench (viewport renderer) [4] test sets and a lot, lot more. Test data repository (scenes and reference images) is here [5] - it takes around 2GB. It should be easily tailored for ROCm related features.

This is helpful information. Thank you.

Sincerely,
Cory Bloor

[1] https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/src/branch/main/tests/python [2] https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/src/branch/main/tests/python/cycles_render_tests.py [3] https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/src/branch/main/tests/python/eevee_next_render_tests.py [4] https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/src/branch/main/tests/python/workbench_render_tests.py
[5] https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender-test-data
[6] https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/issues/126458
[7] https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/issues/131773
[8] https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/issues/112084

[8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guernica_(Picasso)
[9]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_Dream_(Renoir)
[10]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Card_Players
[11]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_of_Skulls#/media/File:Les_Trois_Cr%C3%A2nes,_par_Paul_C%C3%A9zanne.jpg
[12]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Starry_Night
[13]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Night_Watch


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