NVIDIA PR Responds To Torvalds' Harsh Words

[scjet]

Shame on you Nvidia

I think you can buy laptop with Nvidia graphic card (without Optimus):

http://zareason.com/shop/Laptops/

http://linuxpreloaded.com/

You "think" ??? -go think with your own $1799.00 bub. Seriously, unless its a couple years old, OR, it's the newer i think? -lol Nvidia GPU/AMD CPU Laptops?, then nope.
So, sadly enough, we're all stuck with an utterly USELESS "new" Optimus Laptop,..., for Linux.
Even "Clevo",... and/or any of the very few remaining others are building them all "with" Optimus now. - NO choice, 'cause it's hardwired, no thanks to Intel/Nvidia/Microsoft.

So ya, I aggree with Linus: "Nvidia, fuck-you !"

[johnc]

Look, games are not important anymore. It's starting to become a niche market.

...

Aren't IGP's pwning because of that now?

...

Rethink the market. IT companies are reinventing themselves constantly and those who don't addapt; DIE. AMD is addapting and will be succesfull. Intel is already adapting where needed, but on the PC they are fit enough for survival already. nVidia is being left to die if they don't reinvent quickly. If they realise what they have to do and put much more effort into documentation, DRM escaping and open development than AMD then you can bet your ass I will go nVidia.

I think NVIDIA has picked up on these market trends and is trying to diversify its way out of the gaming niche. They wanted to go the x86 IGP route but Intel said no... so they're looking at using the ARM architecture instead (Project Denver). If they can pull that off they'll be in a good position. They've focused heavily on the mobile space (and have established themselves as a big player in that market). GPGPU computing appears to be an important part of their strategy and it looks like they're going to dabble in cloud gaming as well (a bit risky).

The interesting thing is that Linux will probably be the cornerstone of all of those avenues.

[hal2k1]

You are not seriously suggesting that if NVIDIA offered specs and documentation that the open source community could provide a better-performing driver than the one released by NVIDIA?

If NVIDIA offered specs and documentation then the open source community could indeed provide a better-working-with Linux driver than the one released by NVIDIA.

Far better working.

[hal2k1]

Open source community is not fast enough to keep up with the changes that need to be done. For gamers sake like you, NOW. For example the open source drivers for AMD Radeon are still incomplete after the celebration of the documentation. The features of Radeon cards from open source drivers should already be implemented, but they are not.

Au contraire, here is the feature matrix for the open source radeon driver:

http://www.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature/

Green means "done".

Yellow "WIP" means work-in-progress. Most of the time this means new work is required as such a feature does not exist anywhere (e.g. Video Decode {XvMC/VDPAU/VA-API} on the 3D engine, this doesn't exist anywhere, not even on Windows).

Red "TODO" means no documentation has been provided for that feature (e.g. Video Decode {XvMC/VDPAU/VA-API} on UVD hardware).

There is very little missing from this feature matrix because of the reason you imagined, to whit: "open source community is not fast enough to keep up with the changes that need to be done". This is for the most part simply untrue, that is NOT the reason why missing features are missing.

[V!NCENT]

Look, games are not important anymore. It's starting to become a niche market. You're probably thinking that I'm pulling that out of my ass, which is a logical assumption, but just look at the facts:
-Current gen console sales are nowhere near what they used to be with the previous generation consoles (like the Playstation 2), and;
-PC game sales are nowhere near consoles, according to the enterprise.
Conclusion: game sales are declining at an extreme speed. The prices go up, which is how the industry grows in worth in terms of money, which is the reason prices are still climbing, resulting in even more piracy. It's a downwards spiral.

Many people are converting to the Mac, which isn't realy the ultimate gaming platform, showing not a lot of people care for games. The biggest sales are in the cheap ass PC sector, which are not suitable for gaming. The PC graphics industry focusses on gimmick stuff like 3D, because that's the only way for PC gaming to have an advantage above console port games (make them somehow nicer), and 3D panels and glasses almost do not sell. Look at the figures for that.

So are superb graphics capabilities the key for market succes? Not realy and only slightly and vastly declining. Therefore drivers that are stable, energy efficient and somewhat capable of 3D desktop acceleration (which are the open source ones allmost, in terms of energy), are more important. Now look at the China example and conclude what is more profitable. Aren't IGP's pwning because of that now?

Rethink the market. IT companies are reinventing themselves constantly and those who don't addapt; DIE. AMD is addapting and will be succesfull. Intel is already adapting where needed, but on the PC they are fit enough for survival already. nVidia is being left to die if they don't reinvent quickly. If they realise what they have to do and put much more effort into documentation, DRM escaping and open development than AMD then you can bet your ass I will go nVidia.

You see; I'm NOT a fanboy. I'm only a giant fanboy of AMD _right now_ because they're better. If nVidia beats AMD at open source and free software I will instantly become a nVidia fanboy and vice-versa.

[vertexSymphony]

well, it's gets better or worse: http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news...-and-nres.aspx

A rumor appeared [...] Thus, if the Beijing rumor turns out to be true

Well, for some reason I'm not buying this ... only time will confirm or not this "rumor"

[tecknurd]

Try how easy it is rotating one of the screens.

Do not need that feature. Do not care for it. I do believe in the early years of Windows, graphics had an issue with this. Really you are blaming nVidia just for this feature when other features works fine. ATI and now AMD has multiple issues with their closed source driver.

Even with open source radeon's nearly opengl3.0 you can play skyrim or crysis2. Lack of support for OpenGL extensions is bad but not as bad as you think.

Who cares about Skyrim and Crysis --- whaterever Skyrim is. From what I see at the following page, mostly means not finished for OpenGL 3. They are most likely done with implementing OpenGL 2. nVidia already finished OpenGL 3 in I think 2007. That means nVidia had OpenGL 3 in Linux for 5 years. Sure nVidia implements OpenGL through their own libraries. The installation and management of these libraries depends on distribution. Not all distributions can switch from X11 OpenGL libraries and then to OpenGL libraries that nVidia provides. I use Calculate Linux which is based on Gentoo. Gentoo implements an easy way to switch these libraries while still having them be installed.

http://www.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature

You could use AMD graphics closed source driver fglrx, but then you also run into drivers that are short on features compared to Windows drivers.

If the nvidia driver was open source your vdpau problem would most probably already be fixed and you wouldn't have had to wait for years even for xrandr support. If the flash plugin was open source the color palette switching problem with vdpau would be fixed already. Closed Source software is good for a company to protect whatever "secret" knowledge they need to protect but it is bad for everybody else.

Open source community is not fast enough to keep up with the changes that need to be done. For gamers sake like you, NOW. For example the open source drivers for AMD Radeon are still incomplete after the celebration of the documentation. The features of Radeon cards from open source drivers should already be implemented, but they are not. The reason for this is why outsourcing for development projects affects finishing a product. nVidia has a lot of resources to test VDPAU and several other features in house that they can keep an eye on. nVidia has expertise to report what each of the testing machine has a problem with. The open source community gets variations of expertise, so reports of problems varies. The time differences for the open source community to deliver bug reports is 24 hours to as much as weeks. This is not a project that needs a fix NOW or should of been fixed yesterday.

No it is bad for a company to keep the product protected like graphic cards. If nVidia does open up their products, there will be no competition. AMD opens up their graphic products, but only a small amount. AMD does not tell the developers how anti-aliasing works for their graphic cards and many other features. Open source developers for Radeon can only see just the hardware. There are a lot things happening in software that AMD also likes to keep secret. Graphic cards are VLIW processor type, so both AMD and nVidia keeps a lot of compiler magic to make their video cards perform fast. What I mean "compiler magic" is not at the time compiling the driver, but compiling the data (OpenGL, DirectX, OpenCL, CUDA) in code that VLIW understands. I think eventually, the open source developers for Radeon graphics may have to create a project that deals with VLIW compiler separately to get the performance of the open source driver up to the performance that the close source drivers or fglrx.

nVidia is not a non-profitable company. nVidia is a business that is doing it for a profit, but they are doing it ethically. nVidia is still in business, so this means there is competition and then competition lowers prices and finally further improvement for graphic cards. AMD is not different. You just have to understand about businesses then you get why they do what they do.

I have not upgraded my nVidia drivers, so VDPAU might be fixed in 295.49 or the next stable release stated by the Gentoo community.

FYI, nVidia does add features to their video cards like 30-bit color to my aging GeForce8 8400M GS even though open source programs does not support these amount of colors.

[figuerom]

well, it's gets better or worse: http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news...-and-nres.aspx

I have a feeling a few Nvidia executives were fired that day.

[V!NCENT]

And don't tell me that lousily combined with ARM, this uber nVidia CPU can't be done. In fact: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...tem&px=MTA3OTI

Yes, you blob fans can start begging nVidia for that documentation, starting from now on ;-)

[V!NCENT]

The chart you posted... the GPU market distribution has nothing to do with open vs closed drivers, as 99% of that market doesn't even have access to open drivers.

True, but developpers do. Developpers create the games and the Android updates. That's hurting customers indirectly. In the end that was the lethal blow to 3dfx as well as developpers opted for the open solution.

He is referring to the advantages of IGPs.

Exactly. IGP's together with CPU's powerfull enough to run console ports (which renders nVidia cards useless for the majority of the market.

What advice would you give to NVIDIA, who have no chance of creating an IGP in the x86 space?

Make a x86 killer: turn the GPU into a fully parallel CPU powerhouse, put the patented 3rd party magic in the silicon and go full blow open documentation mode, before it's too late.

And no, I don't expect people to write better drivers. Just kidding; heared of the company that makes faster than CUDA, CUDA-only drivers?