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Nvidia releases open-source GPU kernel modules

developer.nvidia.com

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Re: Nvidia releases open-source GPU kernel modules

#251

Post by hedora »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #104
marcodiego wrote: post #48

For those who didn't use Nvidia on linux in the old times: The driver was a proprietary binary. Since a kernel module requires interfacing with the kernel API, it could be considered a derivative work and a breach of the GPL license. So, Nvidia provided a small open source shim which interfaced between the kernel and the proprietary module. You had to compile that shim yourself with the right arcane command line inca…

> I used and recommended ATI and INTEL for most of the people I could for a long time because of this. Same here but recently I somehow got a 3700X and there's no integrated GPU so I had to look for a GPU. I like my PC not just quiet but nearly silent, so a GPU with a fan was a big no-no. I couldn't find any single GPU able to drive 3840x1600 without a fan... Except for a NVidia one. Of course the proprietary Linux d…

I bought some midrange AMD graphics card a few years back, picked for idle wattage, linux support and quiet cooling.

The card isn't silent, but it's quieter than the high end, low wattage PSU fan, which is needed to dissipate heat from everything else.

Anyway, eliminating the video card fan would probably make my desktop louder, which was counterintuitive to me at the time.

(The setup is extremely quiet, FWIW.)

Re: Nvidia releases open-source GPU kernel modules

#252

Post by user_7832 »

paulmd wrote: post #200
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s pretty damn stunning how quite an AIO 2x 140mm cooler can be. And graphics cards with those big triple fans are silent until needed. I’ve been through a couple 12th gens. I like them, but unless you need the machine updated right now, 13th gen is 6 months out.

AIO performance on CPUs is largely limited by thermal transfer through the coldplate/IHS (Integrated Heat Spreader), not by radiator size. Basically the radiator is keeping the fluid very cool already, but heat can't move through the IHS quickly enough. So it takes a large improvement in fluid temperature to make a small improvement in die temperature - you are "pushing on a string" as the expression goes. Almost no…

Thanks for the detailed write up, I learnt something new today.

I sometimes feel I should stop wasting so much time on the internet, but sometimes I realize that it means missing out on such comments that distill a lot of/important information.

Re: Nvidia releases open-source GPU kernel modules

#253

Post by amluto »

mzs wrote: post #172
amluto wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they? I thought the “OS-agnostic” part was historically only available as a binary. Maybe that changed since last time I looked. On quick inspection, this is a complete, MIT-licensed kernel driver.

>Note that the kernel modules built here must be used with gsp.bin firmware and user-space NVIDIA GPU driver components from a corresponding 515.43.04 driver release. This can be achieved by installing the NVIDIA GPU driver from the .run file using the --no-kernel-modules option.

Closed source firmware is acceptable for Linux. See:

https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/lin...

It would not be much of a stretch at all for nvidia to include their firmware there.

The userspace stack is an issue. For upstream Linux, there’s a fairly hard rule that graphics driver interfaces must be usable with open source userspace. But I don’t think the nvidia graphics user parts are particularly secret, and someone could write such a thing.

Re: Nvidia releases open-source GPU kernel modules

#254

Post by MuffinFlavored »

djbusby wrote: post #247
rsaxvc wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can run these sorts of tests in a VM with PCIe passthrough.

And hardware companies usually have large test-beds of hardware. So, Nvidia should be able to build a comprehensive test-suite.

the same way they should have been able to build an upstreamable opensource driver all this time, right? lol

Re: Nvidia releases open-source GPU kernel modules

#255

Post by kaladin-jasnah »

lawl wrote: post #233
brezelgoring wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Amd changed their windows drivers to not output video if it detects its running in a VM. What? Why?

Presumably market segmentation. You're only allowed VMs that dont feel like shit (i.e. have gpu accel) if you pay for enterprise vGPU shit. Can't have someone buy two of your GPUs to give one to a VM, obviously.

> pay for enterprise vGPU

For AMD the driver is difficult to find and poorly documented (and only available on ESXi unlike NVIDIA vGPU support for Xen, Hyper-V, KVM, Nutanix, and ESXi, etc.). At least the guest drivers don't have licensing issues unlike with NVIDIA IIUC.

Re: Nvidia releases open-source GPU kernel modules

#256

Post by Kaze404 »

dralley wrote: post #142
messe wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I'm aware, since AMD took over, they've been fairly stable (although occasionally omitting support for the latest features until the next kernel release)

IIRC were some problems with the Linux drivers for Navi 1.0 that continued for about a year after launch. Supposedly those have been fixed. My Vega 56 has been perfectly stable and trouble-free for years.

As a Navi 10 (5700 XT) owner, those problems still exist. It used to be that at least once a week while gaming the driver would crash with some undecipherable error message in dmesg, and because the card had the reset bug the only recourse was to reboot the machine entirely. 4 years later the only thing that's changed is that the crash shows up less frequently (I'd say once every 3 months).

Re: Nvidia releases open-source GPU kernel modules

#258

Post by viraptor »

blondie9x wrote: post #194

Is this connected to the hack/leak where the hackers requested this very move? WE REQUEST THAT NVIDIA COMMITS TO COMPLETELY OPEN-SOURCE (AND DISTRIBUTE UNDER A FOSS LICENSE) THEIR GPU DRIVERS” https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/1/22957212/nvidia-confirms-h...

No, there's no reason for NVIDIA to react to that. Anyone working in the industry even glancing at a leak from the competitor would become a toxic legal liability. It's been a problem for reactos with windows leaks, and it would be orders of magnitude worse for NVIDIA/AMD.

Re: Nvidia releases open-source GPU kernel modules

#259

Post by washadjeffmad »

jjoonathan wrote: post #55
messe wrote: post #8

Had to do a few doubletakes on this, but even with the recent hacks and progress on NVIDIA releasing Tegra source code, I didn't expect this for another few years. Holy shit. It's even licensed as MIT. Even OpenBSD could conceivably port this with enough manpower. Adding enough just emulation for the userspace driver would be a lot easier than maintaining a complete linux emulator. This is one of the biggest things t…

That might not even be overstatement. The last few big desktop linux crash-and-burns I've run into all had display drivers as a common component. I like back-foot, underdog NVIDIA. Ascendent AMD hasn't drawn my ire yet, let's hope power corrupts slowly.

Just had my first graphics stack issue since 2013 upgrading to Fedora 36 and was caught flat-footed. I've got multiple GPUs, so now I've got to figure out if it's Wayland, amdgpu, nouveau (since unblacklisting), or dkms. "Just working" has made me lazy.

Re: Nvidia releases open-source GPU kernel modules

#260

Post by hedora »

chlorion wrote: post #119
marcodiego wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the open source ATI drivers were always a bit buggy and it wasn't that easy getting them installed either. No. Once mainlined, you had to do absolutely nothing to get the hardware working.

The part about them being buggy is definitely true. Up until somewhere around 2016-2017 the ATI/AMD drivers were really bad. I had an "HD 7850" GPU on Linux around that time and it was barely usable. The performance was less than half of what you got on Windows, and the drivers would crash very often, sometimes several times a day if I was trying to play games like Team Fortress 2. It was so bad that I decided to rep…

I agree; 2016-17 was about the turning point. I bought a Fury X around then, and it was flawless back then. In contrast, my old nvidia cards had become unusable.

On the AMD, FreeSync and HDMI audio didn't work at first. (For any card; the driver documentation said those features were a work in progress.)

Anyway, I unplugged it for a year or so, and recently plugged it back in. One apt get upgrade later FreeSync and HDMI audio just work.

It's gotten to the point where I'd opt for an ARM laptop over one without AMD or intel graphics. From what I can tell suspend resume doesn't work on intel CPUs (on windows or linux), so it's basically AMD GPU or no x86 at from a compatibility perspective. (Did AMD also eliminate S3 suspend, and not replace it with a working alternative?)

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