Ubuntu To Ship Newer AMD ROCm Updates Via SRUs

Canonical announced plans to ship newer AMD ROCm versions as stable release updates (SRUs) for Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, addressing the current inclusion of the months-old ROCm 7.1. The company aims to deliver ROCm 7.2 in the short term and evaluate ROCm 7.13+ or ROCm 8.0 for longer-term support, while also packaging Lemonade AI components for leveraging ROCm and AMD NPUs.

Ubuntu To Ship Newer AMD ROCm Updates Via SRUs As noted back in April, with Ubuntu 26.04 LTS it's There is an Ubuntu blog post today about running AI with AMD ROCm on Ubuntu 26.04+. Frustratingly, in Ubuntu 26.04 so far is ROCm 7.1 that is already months behind the current The blog post states they will end up shipping newer ROCm versions as Ubuntu SRUs: Short-term they hope to have ROCm 7.2 in Ubuntu 26.04 LTS while longer-term are looking at ROCm 7.13+ or what is likely to become ROCm 8.0 stable. Canonical has also packaged up the Lemonade Server and Lemonade Desktop for leveraging ROCm and AMD NPUs on Ubuntu. These Lemonade AI components are available both in Debian/APT and Snap packaging form. More details on the ROCm support in Ubuntu Linux via now possible to simply "apt install rocm" on Ubuntu Linux https://www.phoronix.com/news/Ubuntu-26.04-With-ROCm for installing AMD's open-source GPU compute stack. But as prominently noted there, what's shipped right now in Ubuntu 26.04 LTS is already months out of date compared to upstream ROCm. Fortunately, Canonical shared today that moving forward they plan to ship newer ROCm versions as stable release updates SRUs .There is an Ubuntu blog post today about running AI with AMD ROCm on Ubuntu 26.04+. Frustratingly, in Ubuntu 26.04 so far is ROCm 7.1 that is already months behind the current ROCm 7.2 https://www.phoronix.com/search/ROCm+7.2 stable series or the higher versions that are tech previews where it's currently at ROCm 7.13 https://www.phoronix.com/search/ROCm+7.13 .The blog post states they will end up shipping newer ROCm versions as Ubuntu SRUs: "With ROCm 7.1 now released in Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, we are focusing on delivering newer ROCm versions through Stable Release Updates SRU . This process allows us to provide support for the latest AMD hardware and new ROCm features without requiring users to wait for a completely new Ubuntu release. We are currently working on packaging ROCm 7.2, as well as expanding the range of hardware support we build and test for. The main reason for starting here and not jumping directly to the 7.13+ branches is to work out the in-place upgrade complexities for ROCm and ensure that we have everything ready to issue updates cleanly and smoothly. Because these updates are automatically rolled out when users update their system with apt upgrade or with Landscape , this merits caution. One of the big challenges we face any time we try to update versions of a package in-place is if there are changes to the ABI “Application Binary Interface”, or essentially the interfaces that programs use to access and use the functionality of the library. These changes risk breaking applications built for older versions of ROCm. By convention, minor and patch version changes the x and y in v.x.y version numbers shouldn’t contain any ABI changes that break systems, and should be fully backwards compatible with other releases in the same major version the first number of the version . However, with the pace of AI software development, sometimes breaking changes are introduced into minor version changes, meaning we have to find creative ways to solve the challenges that may create. After all, our value is in providing solutions that are rock solid and that you can depend on, and which don’t break installations that were running just fine on older software. We are currently evaluating this with ROCm 7.13 and later, which includes major restructuring of the libraries in preparation for ROCm 8 “The Rock” . This will be a significant uplift, and we will choose the release path that provides the best user experience, flexibility, and reliability for the future." Short-term they hope to have ROCm 7.2 in Ubuntu 26.04 LTS while longer-term are looking at ROCm 7.13+ or what is likely to become ROCm 8.0 stable. Canonical has also packaged up the Lemonade Server and Lemonade Desktop for leveraging ROCm and AMD NPUs on Ubuntu. These Lemonade AI components are available both in Debian/APT and Snap packaging form. More details on the ROCm support in Ubuntu Linux via