NVIDIA Releases Open-Source GPU Kernel Modules

[firewalker]

NVIDIA Releases Open-Source GPU Kernel Modules

https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/nvidia-releases-open-source-gpu-kernel-modules/

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nvidia-open-kernel&num=1

Alexander.

[madires]

Hell freezes over! Let's see what they deliver before removing them from the do-not-buy list.

[themadhippy]

That explains why the price of bacon has shot up

[magic]

Ahem...

In this open-source release, support for GeForce and Workstation GPUs is alpha quality.

So there is that.

Furthermore, I hope they have sorted out security issues and the kernel driver will be able to isolate GPU-using applications from each other and from system RAM. A way too common pattern in "open source kernel drivers" is that they do nothing besides allowing a proprietary userspace library which contains all the actual driver logic to program the hardware to do whatever it wants with no kernel oversight. It used to be the case that some of those proprietary GPU drivers worked like that too.

[SiliconWizard]

Since it's open-source, everybody is free to have a look instead of just guessing.

https://github.com/NVIDIA/open-gpu-kernel-modules

[eugene]

In this open-source release, support for GeForce and Workstation GPUs is alpha quality.

So there is that.

I see that as an admission by NVIDIA that these drivers have always been no more than alpha quality. Perhaps by making them open source they're saying that they have no plans to spend any significant resources improving them, ever. It's sad, but it shows a tiny level of support for linux that they didn't seem to show before; they're not going to maintain the drivers themselves, but they'll provide a bare minimum of assistance helping others do the work. Better than pretending linux doesn't exist.

[magic]

Since it's open-source, everybody is free to have a look instead of just guessing.

Since it's open sores, there is no design documentation and no hardware spec and all you have is thousands lines of code that you are welcome to try to decipher if somebody (NSA/FSB/...) is paying you for doing so

[free_electron]

you just can't please the whole open sauce community.
Here is the source. read it and compile it if you want to.

but but but ...

[nctnico]

In this open-source release, support for GeForce and Workstation GPUs is alpha quality.

So there is that.

Better than pretending linux doesn't exist.

That is nonsense. NVidia has had Linux drivers for many of the video card for years. And these work just fine and are updated regulary. Some people obsess that the drivers aren't open source but the majority doesn't care.

[Marco]

This is mostly just a fix for GPL problems. If you care deeply for GPL compliance (with a very narrow definition of linking) this matters for you, if you care about open source drivers nothing has changed.

[PKTKS]

As post by some early testers...

it is a total shit show...

They just can not figure out a proper position outside the wintel and all closed shit...

I just dont buy their crap .. for years now..

While AMD (my former top list options was already ATI)  can keep a (much) better value for the money...

NV makes no sense.. 
Paul

[JohanH]

That is nonsense. NVidia has had Linux drivers for many of the video card for years. And these work just fine and are updated regulary. Some people obsess that the drivers aren't open source but the majority doesn't care.

It actually makes a big difference. When open source user space is updated to working with this new kernel module (Nouveau, Mesa), we will have user space with more and better features and we can actually have a kernel module that doesn't have to be compiled manually for every kernel release and driver release (DKMS sucks). It will also mean day 1 support for new graphics hardware and kernel module can be signed for secure boot. Finally Nvidia will have similar out of the box experience on the Linux desktop as Intel and AMD.

That said, all of this will take a couple of years in worst case and it only works with Turing chipset and newer (GTX 16xx, RTX 20xx and newer). But it's definitely a good start.

[PKTKS]

That is nonsense. NVidia has had Linux drivers for many of the video card for years. And these work just fine and are updated regulary. Some people obsess that the drivers aren't open source but the majority doesn't care.

It actually makes a big difference. When open source user space is updated to working with this new kernel module (Nouveau, Mesa), we will have user space with more and better features and we can actually have a kernel module that doesn't have to be compiled manually for every kernel release and driver release (DKMS sucks). It will also mean day 1 support for new graphics hardware and kernel module can be signed for secure boot. Finally Nvidia will have similar out of the box experience on the Linux desktop as Intel and AMD.

That said, all of this will take a couple of years in worst case and it only works with Turing chipset and newer (GTX 16xx, RTX 20xx and newer). But it's definitely a good start.

OK we hope for the better...   

But hardly anyone would invest some hundred buks on a promise up to some years...

NV is a multigazillion  dollars company. That said there is no excuse to promote that kind of shitty show.

They not only CAN but should (as if they care about consumers using their hw)  do better.

Otherwise.. ... well otherwise we will just accept that as a skinny dry bone to the wild..
like we love *nix we respect our consumers.. we look green good...

to say something positive..  a dry skinny bone is better than no bone at all

Paul

[bitwelder]

I was reading that what actually Nvidia seems to be doing, the scumbags they are, is pushing all the proprietary blobs to firmware, and 'open-sourcing' the kernel drivers that essentially become just call to f/w.

[DiTBho]

Will I be ale in the future to use an Nvidia GPU through a PCIe-to-PCI bridge?
Crazy, I know, we will see, sweet dreams are made of this 

[DiTBho]

Nvidia Hackers leak employee credentials, threaten to release nvidia's most closely trade secrets Nvidia reacts with Alpha in Open Source

easy 

[DiTBho]

(... and those hackers were punished by the FBI
who are the good guys? the bad guys? mumble)

[SiliconWizard]

Since it's open-source, everybody is free to have a look instead of just guessing.

Since it's open sores, there is no design documentation and no hardware spec and all you have is thousands lines of code that you are welcome to try to decipher if somebody (NSA/FSB/...) is paying you for doing so

If one's knowledgeable enough about Linux drivers as some people here seem to be implying, then one shouldn't have any issue figuring out at least what kind of driver it is by reading the source code.

Oh and one can whine to no end about NVidia, but the market for desktop Linux is unfortunately so tiny that you can't blame a company for not dedicating significant resources to address it *to the full extent that you would like*. As others have said, proprietary drivers have been around for a couple decades on Linux and mostly work fine. The fact that they would "taint" a Linux system is sure a concern, but that never prevented people from using NVidia cards on Linux for real work. Now they released source code, but people are still going to whine. Fortunately, there are decent alternatives to NVidia, so one can stick to those if one has a problem with NVidia. Not much of an issue. It's not a monopoly.

[DiTBho]

Not everything's open yet:

• NVIDIA's userspace libraries
• NVIDIA's OpenGL
• NVIDIA's Vulkan
• NVIDIA's OpenCL
• NVIDIA's CUDA

things in this list remain closed 

[DiTBho]

According to this twit, Turing and younger GPUs come with a RISC-V core 

[DiTBho]

Oh, actually Nvidia didn't released anything 

They just moved their precious industrial secret into a firmware embedded into a binary blob (of 34 Mbyte of size) and created a dummy wrapper around. It's what you get as "kernel driver", actually nothing more than a wrapper, an it's only the same trick used by MadWifi years ago to solve a practical problem: how to keep things embedded into a binary-blob but allowing users to recompile the kernel.

sneaky move, but useful 

[madires]

So I can safely let NV stay on my do-not-buy list.

[magic]

Not sure what you are talking about.

Firmware is stuff that runs on the GPU itself. It may or may not be open source, more often the latter.
Madwifi (and NVIDIA too) used binary blobs with "open source" wrappers as OS drivers running on the CPU.

[Marco]

That is technically true, but classically there wasn't a lot of programmable hardware on GPUs not externally programmed. Maybe some bios stuff and power/fan profiles and that's it. The more programming disappears into it, the less open source drivers mean. Drivers can be open source in an entirely meaningless sense.

Open source in name only.

[jeremy]

For what it’s worth, the raspberry pi open source graphics driver uses the exact same model, ie the open source part is just a very thin wrapper around a proprietary blob.