Debugging the AMD GPU
Although Robert F. Kennedy gets the credit for popularizing it, George Bernard Shaw said: “Some men see things as they are and say, ‘Why?’ I dream of things that never were and say, ‘Why not?'” Well, [Hadz] didn’t wonder why there weren’t many GPU debuggers. Instead, [Hadz] decided to create one.
It wasn’t the first; he found some blog posts by [Marcell Kiss] that helped, and that led to a series of experiments you’ll enjoy reading about. Plus, don’t miss the video below that shows off a live demo.
It seems that if you don’t have an AMD GPU, this may not be directly useful. But it is still a fascinating peek under the covers of a modern graphics card. Ever wonder how to interact with a video card without using something like Vulkan? This post will tell you how.
Writing a debugger is usually a tricky business anyway. Working with the strange GPU architecture makes it even stranger. Traps let you gain control, but implementing features like breakpoints and single-stepping isn’t simple.
We’ve used things like CUDA and OpenCL, but we haven’t been this far down in the weeds. At least, not yet. CUDA, of course, is specific to NVIDIA cards, isn’t it?
youtube.com/embed/HDMC9GhaLyc?…
hackaday.com/2025/12/16/debugg…
