science application + opencl/rocm + AMD GPU?

[Mo Zhou <lumin@debian.org>]

Hi science team,

I'd like to request the team for sharing some experience on this topic:
"scientific application + opencl/rocm + AMD GPU".  Any experience will
be very helpful to me in terms of the being-investigated ROCm
integration[1] to Debian.

I'd like to ask you the following questions:

1. how's everything going without the amdgpu-pro[2] driver, especially
   the opencl/rocm programs? Most importantly, can OpenCL work without
   any non-free component?

2. how does the consumer-grade AMD gpu perform in terms of scientific
   computing or other opencl/rocm applications?

3. do you think AMD GPU can be a practical alternative to Nvidia/CUDA
   in at least a few applications?


[1] https://salsa.debian.org/rocm-team
[2] non-free, https://www.amd.com/en/support/gpu-pro-eula