Given the rising popularity of gaming on the Linux OS, game developers are increasingly in search of tools that can assist with solving their complex issues and increase performance on this platform.
With this is mind, AMD is proud to announce the general availability of Radeon™ Memory Visualizer (RMV) for Linux. RMV is a powerful tool that allows users to analyze video memory usage on AMD Radeon GPUs.
The June 2022 release of the Radeon Developer Tool Suite, which includes the latest version of RMV, opens the door to memory analysis of Vulkan®-based applications running on Linux with Radeon hardware. Starting with version 2.6.1 of Radeon Developer Panel (RDP), memory traces of Vulkan applications running on the Linux platform can be captured.
Radeon™ Memory Visualizer (RMV) is a tool to allow you to gain a deep understanding of how your application uses memory for graphics resources.
RDP and RMV officially support version 20.04 of the Ubuntu® Linux distribution. The screenshot below shows RDP running on Ubuntu. Other Linux distributions may require additional dependencies to be installed.
The user experience and workflow of RDP and RMV on Linux closely resembles that of the Microsoft Windows-based version. To capture a memory trace, simply start RDP, then start the Vulkan application to be tested, navigate to the Memory trace pane on the Panel and click the Dump trace button. This will dump the memory trace to a file. One difference to be aware of when running RDP on Linux is that a setup script must be run each time the PC is rebooted in order to enable Linux permissions. For more information, see the RDP documentation.
Viewing memory traces
Once the memory trace has been dumped to a file, it can be loaded into RMV for analysis. In RMV v1.4.1+ developers now have a choice of viewing memory traces on either Windows or Linux. All RMV features currently available for Windows can be utilized on Linux with the same consistent user experience. Memory traces taken on Windows can be loaded into RMV running on Linux and vice versa. The screenshots below show the different panes in RMV on Ubuntu.
Conclusion
More developers are taking advantage of the Linux platform for their game titles. Memory management is an important aspect of game development that needs to be addressed for peak performance. Whether your primary development environment is Windows or Linux, RMV can help optimize memory usage to provide the best gaming experience possible.
Download RMV 1.4.1 for Linux or Windows today!
The latest version of RMV and RDP are available for download as part of the Radeon Developer Tool Suite.
Radeon™ Memory Visualizer (RMV) is a tool to allow you to gain a deep understanding of how your application uses memory for graphics resources.
The RDP provides a communication channel with the Radeon™ Adrenalin driver. It generates event timing data used by the Radeon™ GPU Profiler (RGP), and the memory usage data used by the Radeon™ Memory Visualizer (RMV).
Separate packages for Linux and Windows are available for download. More detailed information on RMV can be found in the online documentation.
RMV Open Source Code
For those wishing to build RMV from scratch, the source code is available on the GPUOpen RMV GitHub repository. Instructions for building on both Windows and Linux Ubuntu are included.
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This tutorial explains how to take advantage of the functionality in RDP v2.1 onwards, which unifies the RMV and RGP functionality from earlier versions to provide a unified workflow.
Radeon™ Developer Panel
The RDP provides a communication channel with the Radeon™ Adrenalin driver. It generates event timing data used by the Radeon™ GPU Profiler (RGP), and the memory usage data used by the Radeon™ Memory Visualizer (RMV).
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