NVIDIA Transitions Fully Towards Open-Source Linux GPU Kernel Modules

Post by p_l » Wed, Jul 17, 2024, 8:18 PM UTC

vlovich123 wrote: post #28

stkdump wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the firmware runs directly on the hardware, right? So they effectively rearchitected their system to move what used to be 'above' the kernel to 'below' the kernel, which seems like a huge effort.

It’s some effort but I bet they added a classical serial CPU to run the existing code. In fact, [1] suggests that’s exactly what they did. I suspect they had other reasons to add the GSP so the amortized cost of moving the driver code to firmware was actually not that large all things considered and in the long term reduces their costs (eg they reduce the burden further of supporting multiple OSes, they can improve p…

Post by chasil » Wed, Jul 17, 2024, 8:31 PM UTC

Workaccount2 wrote: post #35

sqeaky wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but the drivers work very consistently for me The problem with comments like this is that you never know if you will be me or you on your graphics card or laptop. I have tried nvidia a few times and kept getting burnt. AMD just works. I don't get the fastest ML machine, but I am just a tinkerer there and OpenCL works fine for my little toy apps and my 7900XTX blazes through every wine game. If you need it professio…

It also depends heavily on the user. A mechanic might say "This car has never given me a problem" because the mechanic doesn't consider cleaning an idle bypass circuit or adjusting valve clearances to be a "problem". To 99% percent of the population though, those are expensive and annoying problems because they have no idea what those words even mean, much less the ability to troubleshoot, diagnose, and repair.

Post by mepian » Wed, Jul 17, 2024, 8:33 PM UTC

p_l wrote: post #51

vlovich123 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s some effort but I bet they added a classical serial CPU to run the existing code. In fact, [1] suggests that’s exactly what they did. I suspect they had other reasons to add the GSP so the amortized cost of moving the driver code to firmware was actually not that large all things considered and in the long term reduces their costs (eg they reduce the burden further of supporting multiple OSes, they can improve p…

That's exactly what happened - Turing microarchitecture brought in new[1] "GSP" which is capable enough to run the task. Similar architecture happens AFAIK on Apple M-series where the GPU runs its own instance of RTOS talking with "application OS" over RPC. [1] Turing GSP is not the first "classical serial CPU" in nvidia chips, it's just first that has enough juice to do the task. Unfortunately without recalling the…

Post by asyx » Wed, Jul 17, 2024, 8:36 PM UTC

JasonSage wrote: post #50

snailmailman wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better as of extremely recently. Explicit sync fixes most of the issues with flickering that I’ve had on Wayland. I’ve been using the latest (beta?) driver for a while because of it. I’m using Hyprland though so explicit sync support isn’t entirely there for me yet. It’s actively being worked on. But in the last few months it’s gotten a lot better

> Better as of extremely recently. Yup. Anecdotally, I see a lot of folks trying to run wine/games on Wayland reporting flickering issues that are gone as of version 555, which is the most recent release save for 560 coming out this week. It's a good time to be on the bleeding edge.

Post by kabes » Wed, Jul 17, 2024, 8:45 PM UTC

dralley wrote: post #21

bradyriddle wrote: post #5

I remember Nvidia getting hacked pretty bad a few years ago. IIRC, the hackers threatened to release everything they had unless they open sourced their drivers. Maybe they got what they wanted. [0] https://portswigger.net/daily-swig/nvidia-hackers-allegedly-...

I doubt it. It's probably a matter of constantly being prodded by their industry partners (i.e. Red Hat), constantly being shamed by the community, and reducing the amount of maintenance they need to do to keep their driver stack updated and working on new kernels. The meat of the drivers is still proprietary, this just allows them to be loaded without a proprietary kernel module.