Nvidia releases open GPU kernel drivers

[marcih]

Hell has frozen over.

[Naib]

nice! moving on

[otw-refugee]

*hmm*

Nice comments

Unfuck Nvidia

It is funny, I recently reviewed all "future" supercomputer projects and most (all?) of them were AMD-GPU or Intel based ... Apparently this arrived to the hears of Nvidia's CEO who changed point of view on open-source driver. The move is appreciated here !

Userspace still closed source…

But that's a huge step in the right direction.

As long as the userspace will be closed source, I would still default to AMD

Rememeber guys, this is still useless without:

1. Redistributeable firmware
2. Display driver
3. userspace.

The use of the open source kernel driver is
dependent upon the GPU System Processor (GSP). [...] The GSP is binary-only firmware loaded at run-time.
The open-source kernel driver explicitly depends upon the GSP-supported graphics processors.
So... we move from an open source "shim" around a binary blob running on the main CPU, to and open source "driver" requiring a binary blob running on a separate CPU.

Is it really such a big improvement ?

So it really doesn't sound like it's all that, just more "phoronix" clickbait hype.

[marcih]

So it really doesn't sound like it's all that, just more "phoronix" clickbait hype.

Many commenters also pointed out that this shift could mean nouveau becoming useable and Mesa the de facto renderer for Nvidia instead of their proprietary reimplementations. Yes, the userspace components remain closed and the modules in their current state are not upstreamable, but I say give both Nvidia and nouveau developers time; the real improvement for desktop users comes from ditching Nvidia's libs for Mesa.

As for the GSP comment: I fail to see how this is different to AMD's nonfree firmware that needs to be loaded on every boot.

[otw-refugee]

The problem re nvidia, is they still aren't releasing any specs so nouveau is still at a standstill, still can't set fan speed, performance, etc, except in a very few cases.

[marcih]

Isn't releasing the kernel module's source, for all intents and purposes, the same as releasing formal specifications? What's stopping nouveau devs from doing the same the Nvidia module is? Genuine question, I can't see anything stopping them lifting code from the new kernel driver and getting to function parity when it comes to clocks and fan speeds, the thing that's currently holding them back.