vp9 hw decode broken on modern AMD apus, needs amdgpu update

[Andrea Agnolin]

Current version of amdgpu binaries in linux-firmware shipped with ubuntu 22.04 (jammy) and ubuntu 23.10 (mantic) create various problems when decoding VP9 content with the iGPU on modern AMD mobile processor (rembrant and phoenix, i.e. 6xxxU/H, 7x40U/H and 7x35U/H processor).

The issue has been reported and solved upstream:

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/issues/8044

[EDIT: fixed link]

Solution dates to the end of February: https://gitlab.com/kernel-firmware/linux-firmware/-/commit/977332782302476e1c863b09b840f463d0378807

Ubuntu 24.04 already ships the updated binaries and should not be affected.

Steps to reproduce:
* on an affected system play a VP9 video with hardware decoding

Additional links:
* https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git/commit/?id=977332782302476e1c863b09b840f463d0378807
* https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2267714
* https://www.phoronix.com/news/AMDGPU-Firmware-Fixes-VP9

Workaround:
* download the amdgpu folder from upstream linux-firmware repos
* compress each file with zstd
* copy into /lib/firmware/amdgpu
* regenerate the initrd

I'm currently running ubuntu 23.10 (mantic) with binaries from upstream and the issue is solved.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Andrea Agnolin (agno94)]

Any news? Pulling firmware from upstream is enough to solve this issue.

[Timo Aaltonen (tjaalton)]

update pending review

[Andrea Agnolin (agno94)]

For anyone still on 23.10 (and I presume also on 22.04) beware: the recent apt upgrade 20230919.git3672ccab-0ubuntu2.10 of the linux-firmware package does not contains any update to the amdgpu vcn firmware from upstream. So, if you updated, you have to re-copy the ones from upstream (see workaround section above).

In my case the dmesg reported VCN version reverted to:
`[ 2.889013] [drm] Found VCN firmware Version ENC: 1.19 DEC: 7 VEP: 0 Revision: 0 `

EDIT: Apparently 20230919.git3672ccab-0ubuntu2.10 was dated back to 22-Mar-2024. Don't know why but I was on 20230919.git3672ccab-0ubuntu2.9 until yesterday.

[Timo Aaltonen (tjaalton)]

Hello Andrea, or anyone else affected,

Accepted linux-firmware into jammy-proposed. The package will build now and be available at https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-firmware/20220329.git681281e4-0ubuntu3.31 in a few hours, and then in the -proposed repository.

Please help us by testing this new package. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation on how to enable and use -proposed. Your feedback will aid us getting this update out to other Ubuntu users.

If this package fixes the bug for you, please add a comment to this bug, mentioning the version of the package you tested, what testing has been performed on the package and change the tag from verification-needed-jammy to verification-done-jammy. If it does not fix the bug for you, please add a comment stating that, and change the tag to verification-failed-jammy. In either case, without details of your testing we will not be able to proceed.

Further information regarding the verification process can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/PerformingSRUVerification . Thank you in advance for helping!

N.B. The updated package will be released to -updates after the bug(s) fixed by this package have been verified and the package has been in -proposed for a minimum of 7 days.

[Andrea Agnolin (agno94)]

Sadly I've updated this morning to Ubuntu 24.04 noble.

I have a snapshot taken before upgrading that I can eventually clone. But I've never tried booting from another dataset so I'm not 100% confident.

I can also try using this proposed firmware in noble.

Or maybe we can wait for someone that still run on jammy to do the testing.

Let me know what you think. I think I might have some free time this week.

By the way I've been running since the end of March until yesterday with the firmware from upstream downloaded iirc on the 19/03/24. Those solved the issue for sure.

[Mario Limonciello (superm1)]

I just tested on a Phoenix based laptop and tested video playback on OEM-6.5 (1022) with VP9 content in mpv and things look good to me.