Screen artifacts on recent amd gpu with kernel > 5.11.0-11

[Rob Vandeweyer]

This is my first time filing a bug report, so apologies in advance for any mistakes and please feel free to point me in the right direction. I'm posting this for the kernel package because the problem is reliably eliminated by downgrading to 5.11.0-11 and reliably returns by upgrading to any greater version.

I've been testing Hirsute as my daily driver for a couple of weeks on my PC with one of the recent AMD GPU's (6700XT). Everything was running flawlessly until the kernel upgrade from 5.11.0-11 to 5.11.0-13. After the upgrade I had a lot of artifacts (flashing squares of either the background or random colors) on the screen. Example picture attached.

* I suspect it's only in parts that are being hardware-accelerated. Turning off hardware acceleration in chrome, eliminated them in the content part of the browser, but the windows title bar continues to be affected.
* The gnome panels and application menu also have random square artifacts appearing and disappearing.
* The issue exists both in X11 and Wayland sessions.
* I see nothing out of the ordinary in dmesg or journalctl -r.
* Downgrading to kernel 5.11.0-11 eliminates the issue.
* I tried installing the latest mainline kernel (5.12-rc6), the issue returned, so I downgraded to 5.11.0-11 again (which fixed it).
* To see if other packages I installed may be causing the issue, I did a clean install of the latest daily iso (20210407) and can confirm the issue is also in there.

I'm happy to provide more information or testing.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 21.04
Package: linux-image-5.11.0-13-generic 5.11.0-13.14
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.11.0-13.14-generic 5.11.7
Uname: Linux 5.11.0-13-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu61
Architecture: amd64
AudioDevicesInUse:
 USER PID ACCESS COMMAND
 /dev/snd/controlC2: rob 1654 F.... pulseaudio
 /dev/snd/controlC1: rob 1654 F.... pulseaudio
 /dev/snd/controlC0: rob 1654 F.... pulseaudio
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Wed Apr 7 20:48:15 2021
InstallationDate: Installed on 2021-04-07 (0 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 21.04 "Hirsute Hippo" - Beta amd64 (20210407)
MachineType: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. MS-7C84
ProcFB: 0 amdgpudrmfb
ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-5.11.0-13-generic root=UUID=66ca562a-996d-408a-a49b-6225bfb86cb6 ro quiet splash vt.handoff=7
RelatedPackageVersions:
 linux-restricted-modules-5.11.0-13-generic N/A
 linux-backports-modules-5.11.0-13-generic N/A
 linux-firmware 1.196
SourcePackage: linux
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
dmi.bios.date: 03/01/2021
dmi.bios.release: 5.17
dmi.bios.vendor: American Megatrends International, LLC.
dmi.bios.version: 1.61
dmi.board.asset.tag: To be filled by O.E.M.
dmi.board.name: MAG X570 TOMAHAWK WIFI (MS-7C84)
dmi.board.vendor: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd.
dmi.board.version: 1.0
dmi.chassis.asset.tag: To be filled by O.E.M.
dmi.chassis.type: 3
dmi.chassis.vendor: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd.
dmi.chassis.version: 1.0
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnAmericanMegatrendsInternational,LLC.:bvr1.61:bd03/01/2021:br5.17:svnMicro-StarInternationalCo.,Ltd.:pnMS-7C84:pvr1.0:rvnMicro-StarInternationalCo.,Ltd.:rnMAGX570TOMAHAWKWIFI(MS-7C84):rvr1.0:cvnMicro-StarInternationalCo.,Ltd.:ct3:cvr1.0:
dmi.product.family: To be filled by O.E.M.
dmi.product.name: MS-7C84
dmi.product.sku: To be filled by O.E.M.
dmi.product.version: 1.0
dmi.sys.vendor: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd.

[Ubuntu Kernel Bot (ubuntu-kernel-bot)]

This change was made by a bot.

[Rob Vandeweyer (robvdw)]

It turned out to be a weird interaction with mesa.

Upgrading from mesa 21.0.1 included in the main repo to 21.0.3 resolves the problem.