You may hate the idea of AI coding, but it could keep your old AMD GPU alive if you run Linux

Vibe coding is becoming ever-more prevalent, as you may have noticed, and now AI has crept into graphics driver maintenance in Linux.

2

Phoronix.com reports (via Tom's Hardware) that a fresh effort to tidy up code for the AMD R600 Linux GPU drivers witnessed a bunch of commits (from Gert Wollny) assisted by GitHub Copilot.

This fact was clearly highlighted, with Wollny stating: "This series does a lot of refactoring to make the sfn shader compiler code a bit cleaner. The refactoring was done with the help of Copilot (auto mode)."

This pertains to really old AMD Radeon graphics cards, mind you, the most recent of which is the Radeon HD 6000 series - and that range came out in 2010.

Obviously supporting such old, niche GPUs isn't going to be high on the Linux priority list. And so while you may not like the idea of AI getting involved in any coding related to the platform, the truth is that AI assistance along these lines could help keep your ancient GPU relevant and working okay in your distro of choice.

Not everyone is impressed with the idea, of course, and a developer in the comments on Phoronix points out that the work by the AI needs going over and checking very carefully - while noting that it's likely that rapidly increasing token costs could make this kind of work less common in the future.

For now, though, it seems there's a place for AI in assisting with certain aspects of the maintenance of Linux drivers.