Summary

The website provides a comprehensive guide for unlocking GPU memory allocation on AMD Ryzen™ APUs to enable the use of the built-in Radeon 680M for running stable diffusion on an Asus Zenbook S13 OLED laptop.

Abstract

The guide begins with a background on the author's intent to utilize the Radeon 680M GPU within an Asus Zenbook S13 OLED for stable diffusion, which is hindered by the default 512MB GPU memory allocation set by Asus. The author aims to allocate 8GB of system memory to the GPU for smoother operation. The guide includes a basic system check using damico's script to verify compatibility, instructions for installing the AMD driver on Ubuntu, updating PyTorch, and preparing a bootable USB drive with UniversalAMDFormBrowser to modify BIOS settings for increased GPU memory allocation. The process involves formatting a USB drive with FreeDOS using Rufus, extracting UniversalAMDFormBrowser to the USB drive, booting from the USB drive, and navigating through the BIOS to adjust the GPU configuration settings.

Opinions

The author suggests that the Asus Zenbook S13 OLED with AMD Ryzen™ 7 6800U has the potential to run stable diffusion effectively with increased GPU memory allocation.
The use of damico's script is recommended for verifying system compatibility with ROCM (Radeon Open Compute) before proceeding with driver installation and BIOS modifications.
The guide emphasizes the importance of running the verification script after installing the AMD driver and PyTorch to ensure proper functionality.
The author provides specific instructions and visual aids for using Rufus to create a bootable USB drive and for navigating the BIOS settings to adjust the GPU memory allocation.
The guide is tailored for users with an Asus Zenbook S13 OLED laptop running Ubuntu and aims to empower users to unlock their GPU's potential for machine learning tasks like stable diffusion.

Unlocking GPU Memory Allocation on AMD Ryzen™ APU?

1. Background 2. Guide — Basic system check — Prepare the bootable USB drive — Boot the USB drive

Background:

I want to run stable diffusion on my Asus Zenbook S13 OLED laptop, which runs AMD Ryzen™ 7 6800U. I would like to use the built-in Radeon 680M to run stable diffusion. However Asus locked the GPU memory allocation in BIOS setting and by default it only allocate 512MB memory to GPU. So in this guide, I will reveal how to unlock the GPU memory allocation, allocate 8GB of system memory as dedicated memory, and run stable diffusion smoothly.

Guide:

Basic system check

Before making modification, please make sure that your system could is supported and configured.

Verify

I would use the damico’s script to verify

# Install Python

# Download test script
$ wget https://gist.githubusercontent.com/damico/484f7b0a148a0c5f707054cf9c0a0533/raw/43c317bfbde626d9112d44462d815613194988e0/test-rocm.py
# Run test script
$ HSA_OVERRIDE_GFX_VERSION=10.3.0 python test-rocm.py

The following snippet is the result of my system passing the test:

Checking ROCM support...
GOOD: ROCM devices found:  2
Checking PyTorch...
GOOD: PyTorch is working fine.
Checking user groups...
GOOD: The user winston is in RENDER and VIDEO groups.
GOOD: PyTorch ROCM support found.
Testing PyTorch ROCM support...
Everything fine! You can run PyTorch code inside of: 
--->  AMD Ryzen 7 6800U with Radeon Graphics  
--->  gfx1030

If you pass the verification process. Then you could go to Prepare the bootable USB drive section directly.

Install AMD Driver on Ubuntu

# Install AMD Driver
TEMP_FOLDER="/tmp"
TEMP_DRIVER_HTML="amd-driver.html"
DISTRO_CODENAME=$(lsb_release --codename --short)

# Find the package URL from AMD website
AMD_DRIVER_URL="https://www.amd.com/en/support/linux-drivers"
URL_RESPONSE=$(wget -U 'Mozilla/5.0' -qO- ${AMD_DRIVER_URL})
AMD_DEB_URL=$(echo $URL_RESPONSE | grep -o 'https://[^ "<]*.deb' | grep $DISTRO_CODENAME | head -1)
FILENAME=$(basename $AMD_DEB_URL)

# Download and install the driver package
wget -P $TEMP_FOLDER $AMD_DEB_URL
sudo dpkg -i $TEMP_FOLDER/$FILENAME
rm $TEMP_FOLDER/$FILENAME

amdgpu-install -y --usecase=rocm

# Add user to the render group if you're using Ubuntu20.04
usermod -a -G render root

# To add future users to the video and render groups, run the following command:
echo 'ADD_EXTRA_GROUPS=1' | sudo tee -a /etc/adduser.conf
echo 'EXTRA_GROUPS=video' | sudo tee -a /etc/adduser.conf
echo 'EXTRA_GROUPS=render' | sudo tee -a /etc/adduser.conf

Install/Update PyTorch

This is the script for installing PyTorch 2.1.1. Please check their website for latest version

# Install PyTorch
pip install --upgrade torch torchvision torchaudio --index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/rocm5.6

After successfully install AMD Driver and PyTorch installation, please run the verification script again.

Prepare the bootable USB drive

Prepare an empty USB thumb drive with at least 128MB, plug the USB drive to your laptop
Download UniversalAMDFormBrowser
Download Rufus Go to official page, go to download section and download the Portable version

Rufus Official Page, download the Portable version

Format USB Drive - Open Rufus - Select the USB Drive - In Boot selection, select FreeDOS - Press Start - Close Rufus after the format process is finished

In file explorer, open UniversalAMDFormBrowser.zip and extract everything to USB drive

Your bootable USB drive is now ready

Boot the USB drive

Reboot your system and go to BIOS
Go to Boot menu and select USB Drive as the first boot device. Then you should be able to boot to UniversalAMDFormBrowser
Go to Device Manager→AMD CBS→NBIO Common Option→GFX Configuration - In Integrated Graphics Controller, select Forces - In UMA Mode, select UMA_SPECIFIED - In UMA Frame Buffer Size, select your desired VRAM value (8G for Stable Diffusion) - Press F10 to save your settings

GFX Configuration in UniversalAMDFormBrowser

Press Esc several times to go back to the main menu
Select Continue to reboot your laptop