Canonical announced an expanded collaboration with AMD to package and maintain AMD ROCm software directly in Ubuntu. AMD ROCm is described as an open software platform that includes runtimes, compilers, libraries, kernel components, and drivers that accelerate industry standard frameworks such as PyTorch, Tensorflow, Jax and more on supported AMD GPUs and APUs. Canonical has formed a dedicated team of engineers to package the AMD ROCm software libraries, and it will also submit these packages for consideration on Debian. The work is intended to simplify delivery of AMD Artificial Intelligence solutions in data centers, workstations, laptops, Windows Subsystem for Linux, and edge environments.
The packaging plan aims to make AMD ROCm software available in Ubuntu starting with Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, with updates available in every subsequent Ubuntu release. Packages will be available as a dependency for any Debian package, snap, or Docker image (OCI) build, and the announcement highlights that performance fixes and security patches will automatically be available to production systems. Canonical said users will be able to install ROCm more simply with “apt install rocm” or have it included as an automatic dependency for other projects like ollama-amd. The collaboration promises both stable LTS and fresh ROCm versions every six months, easier security fixes via “apt upgrade”, and Up to 15 years of support for AMD ROCm in Ubuntu LTS versions under Ubuntu Pro; personal Ubuntu Pro subscriptions are free.
The release frames ROCm packaging as part of Canonical’s broader work with silicon partners to integrate required software drivers and kernel patches and to test and certify Ubuntu for supported devices. AMD emphasized the benefits for developers and enterprises: “AMD ROCm software enables open, high-performance acceleration for AI and HPC on AMD hardware. Working with Canonical to package AMD ROCm for Ubuntu makes it easier for developers and enterprises to deploy AMD solutions on supported systems,” said Andrej Zdravkovic, Senior Vice President, GPU Technologies and Engineering Software and Chief Software Officer at AMD. “We are delighted to work alongside AMD and the community to package AMD ROCm libraries directly into Ubuntu,” said Cindy Goldberg, SVP of Silicon and Cloud Alliances at Canonical.
