Documentation / gpu / amdgpu / amdgpu-glossary.rst


Based on kernel version 6.17. Page generated on 2025-10-03 10:04 EST.

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===============
AMDGPU Glossary
===============

Here you can find some generic acronyms used in the amdgpu driver. Notice that
we have a dedicated glossary for Display Core at
'Documentation/gpu/amdgpu/display/dc-glossary.rst'.

.. glossary::

    active_cu_number
      The number of CUs that are active on the system.  The number of active
      CUs may be less than SE * SH * CU depending on the board configuration.

    BACO
      Bus Alive, Chip Off

    BOCO
      Bus Off, Chip Off

    CE
      Constant Engine

    CIK
      Sea Islands

    CB
      Color Buffer

    CP
      Command Processor

    CPLIB
      Content Protection Library

    CS
      Command Submission

    CSB
      Clear State Indirect Buffer

    CU
      Compute Unit

    DB
      Depth Buffer

    DFS
      Digital Frequency Synthesizer

    ECP
      Enhanced Content Protection

    EOP
      End Of Pipe/Pipeline

    FLR
      Function Level Reset

    GART
      Graphics Address Remapping Table.  This is the name we use for the GPUVM
      page table used by the GPU kernel driver.  It remaps system resources
      (memory or MMIO space) into the GPU's address space so the GPU can access
      them.  The name GART harkens back to the days of AGP when the platform
      provided an MMU that the GPU could use to get a contiguous view of
      scattered pages for DMA.  The MMU has since moved on to the GPU, but the
      name stuck.

    GC
      Graphics and Compute

    GDS
      Global Data Share

    GE
      Geometry Engine

    GMC
      Graphic Memory Controller

    GPUVM
      GPU Virtual Memory.  This is the GPU's MMU.  The GPU supports multiple
      virtual address spaces that can be in flight at any given time.  These
      allow the GPU to remap VRAM and system resources into GPU virtual address
      spaces for use by the GPU kernel driver and applications using the GPU.
      These provide memory protection for different applications using the GPU.

    GTT
      Graphics Translation Tables.  This is a memory pool managed through TTM
      which provides access to system resources (memory or MMIO space) for
      use by the GPU. These addresses can be mapped into the "GART" GPUVM page
      table for use by the kernel driver or into per process GPUVM page tables
      for application usage.

    IH
      Interrupt Handler

    HQD
      Hardware Queue Descriptor

    IB
      Indirect Buffer

    IMU
      Integrated Management Unit (Power Management support)

    IP
        Intellectual Property blocks

    KCQ
      Kernel Compute Queue

    KFD
      Kernel Fusion Driver

    KGQ
      Kernel Graphics Queue

    KIQ
      Kernel Interface Queue

    MC
      Memory Controller

    MCBP
      Mid Command Buffer Preemption

    ME
      MicroEngine (Graphics)

    MEC
      MicroEngine Compute

    MES
      MicroEngine Scheduler

    MMHUB
      Multi-Media HUB

    MQD
      Memory Queue Descriptor

    PA
      Primitive Assembler / Physical Address

    PFP
      Pre-Fetch Parser (Graphics)

    PPLib
      PowerPlay Library - PowerPlay is the power management component.

    PSP
        Platform Security Processor

    RB
      Render Backends. Some people called it ROPs.

    RLC
      RunList Controller. This name is a remnant of past ages and doesn't have
      much meaning today. It's a group of general-purpose helper engines for
      the GFX block. It's involved in GFX power management and SR-IOV, among
      other things.

    SC
      Scan Converter

    SDMA
      System DMA

    SE
      Shader Engine

    SGPR
      Scalar General-Purpose Registers

    SH
      SHader array

    SI
      Southern Islands

    SMU/SMC
      System Management Unit / System Management Controller

    SPI (AMDGPU)
      Shader Processor Input

    SRLC
      Save/Restore List Control

    SRLG
      Save/Restore List GPM_MEM

    SRLS
      Save/Restore List SRM_MEM

    SS
      Spread Spectrum

    SX
      Shader Export

    TA
      Trusted Application

    TC
      Texture Cache

    TOC
      Table of Contents

    UMSCH
      User Mode Scheduler

    UVD
      Unified Video Decoder

    VCE
      Video Compression Engine

    VCN
      Video Codec Next

    VGPR
      Vector General-Purpose Registers

    VMID
      Virtual Memory ID

    VPE
      Video Processing Engine

    XCC
      Accelerator Core Complex

    XCP
      Accelerator Core Partition