enable-baffin-CUs.sh script  

Thanks to findings of okrasit and Fl0r!an, I was intrigued to write a small script that unleashes the full power of R9 Nano and RX 480 for calculation tasks on macOS 10.12.2. Nearly doubled clpeak single-precision compute results (GFLOPS) and Indigo Renderer Benchmark score.

The script is written only for experimental and educational purposes, I don’t take any responsibility if something goes wrong, and since this is a binary hack, I don’t see any continuity.

A word of warning, please do not edit PP_DisablePowerContainment key. It doubled OpenCL float4-float16 OpenCL computing performance with the RX 480, but it can also fry your Akitio. The total power consumption of RX 480 eGPU exceeded 190W! (I use custom boards).

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/313977-r9-nano/?p=2332854
https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/enable-all-cores-r9-fury-cards.209892/#post-1393445

RX 480 (clpeak):

Device: AMD Radeon HD Baffin Unknown Prototype Compute Engine
    Driver version  : 1.2 (Dec  9 2016 21:43:55) (Macintosh)
    Compute units   : 36
    Clock frequency : 1266 MHz

    Global memory bandwidth (GBPS)
      float   : 202.40
      float2  : 212.20
      float4  : 215.84
      float8  : 129.97
      float16 : 60.01

    Single-precision compute (GFLOPS)
      float   : 5644.43
      float2  : 5634.59
      float4  : 5608.17
      float8  : 5574.38
      float16 : 5517.69

R9 Nano (clpeak):

Device: AMD Radeon HD Baffin Unknown Prototype Compute Engine
    Driver version  : 1.2 (Dec  9 2016 21:43:55) (Macintosh)
    Compute units   : 64
    Clock frequency : 1000 MHz

    Global memory bandwidth (GBPS)
      float   : 402.93
      float2  : 439.91
      float4  : 419.14
      float8  : 196.41
      float16 : 109.40

    Single-precision compute (GFLOPS)
      float   : 7180.09
      float2  : 6990.68
      float4  : 6820.10
      float8  : 6769.77
      float16 : 6657.53

chmod +x enable-baffin-CUs.sh

For R9 Nano:

sudo ./enable-baffin-CUs.sh fiji 64 

For RX 480:

sudo ./enable-baffin-CUs.sh ellesmere 36

#!/bin/sh
#
# Script (enable-baffin-CUs.sh) by Goalque ([email protected])
# Credit to okrasit and Fl0r!an:
#  http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/313977-r9-nano/?p=2332854 
#  https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/enable-all-cores-r9-fury-cards.209892/#post-1393445 

first_argument="$1"
second_argument="$2"
init_function=""
CU_count=""

pattern1="s/(\x48\xB8)(\x02)(\x00\x00\x00\x01\x00\x00\x00\x48\x89\x43\x54\xC7\x43\x7C)(\x08)(\x00\x00\x00)"

pattern2="s/(\x0F\x42\xC8)(\x89\x8B\x80\x00\x00\x00\x44\x88\xB3\x99\x00\x00\x00\x44\x88\x73\x20)"

pattern3="s/(\xE8)(\x49\x85\xFE\xFF)(\xBE\x48\x01\x00\x00\x4C\x89\xF7)"

if [[ "$first_argument" == "ellesmere" ]]then
	init_function="\x46\xE4\x00\x00"
elif [[ "$first_argument" == "fiji" ]]then
	init_function="\x73\x02\x01\x00"
elif [[ "$first_argument" == "baffin" ]]then
	init_function="\x49\x85\xFE\xFF"
fi

if [[ "$second_argument" == 36 ]]then
	CU_count="\x04\3\x12\5"
elif [[ "$second_argument" == 64 ]]then
	CU_count="\x04\3\x20\5"
fi

if [[ "$init_function" != "" ]] && [[ "$CU_count" != "" ]]then

	rsync -a /System/Library/Extensions/AMDRadeonX4100.kext/Contents/MacOS/AMDRadeonX4100 /tmp/AMDRadeonX4100
	cat /tmp/AMDRadeonX4100 | perl -pe "$pattern1"$"/\1"$CU_count"/g" | perl -pe "$pattern2"$"/\x90\x90\x90\2/g" | perl -pe $pattern3$"/\1"$init_function"\3/g" > /tmp/AMDRadeonX4100_modified

	rsync -a --delete /tmp/AMDRadeonX4100_modified /System/Library/Extensions/AMDRadeonX4100.kext/Contents/MacOS/AMDRadeonX4100

	chown -R root:wheel /System/Library/Extensions/AMDRadeonX4100.kext/Contents/MacOS/AMDRadeonX4100

	chmod -R 755 /System/Library/Extensions/AMDRadeonX4100.kext/Contents/MacOS/AMDRadeonX4100

	rm /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/System/Library/PrelinkedKernels/prelinkedkernel 2>/dev/null

	rm /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.kext.caches/Startup/kernelcache 2>/dev/null

	touch /System/Library/Extensions
	echo "Rebuilding caches..."
	kextcache -q -update-volume /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD
	echo "Ready."
else
	echo "Invalid parameters."
fi