AMD releases Micro Engine Scheduler (MES) firmware documentation for RDNA3 GPUs

AMD MES firmware documentations now available

AMD continues its ‘open source’ efforts by opening the documentation for its firmware.

In small steps, AMD is allowing developers to gain a better understanding of how AMD architecture works. The company is engaging with the open-source community by addressing the most requested features to make them available for understanding. These efforts gained momentum when Tiny Corp, a company of George Hotz, raised concerns about the lack of documentation for the MES issues they encountered. The company eventually put the plan to launch Radeon AI systems on hold.

However, as promised, AMD is addressing those concerns by releasing full documentation on its Micro Engine Scheduler. The MES specs and architecture overview should be very interesting for developers who encounter problems with their software running on RDNA3 GPUs. However, it should have little interest to consumers and gamers.

AMD MES firmware
Micro engine scheduler (MES) firmware is responsible for the scheduling of the graphics and compute work on the AMD RDNA™ 3 GPUs.

This document provides an overview of the AMD RDNA 3 scheduling architecture by describing the key scheduler firmware (MES) and hardware (Queue Manager) components that participate in the scheduling.

This document is intended to introduce the reader to the overall scheduling architecture and is not meant to serve as a programming guide.

The documentation is not attached to any open-source firmware yet, but it is expected that AMD will release the firmware as well once it completes its legal reviews.