NVIDIA Starts Publishing GPU Hardware Documentation To Help Open-Source Drivers

[DanL]

I get the feeling that this is - "Nvidia formally documents what counterfeiters and reverse engineering has already figured out."

[dragon321]

Isn't AMD's DAL/DC shared between platforms too? If so what would be the blocking difference?

AMD Supports only Linux, so there isn't very much to share. Nvidia with similar model would have to port and maintain Nouveau on FreeBSD and Solaris. Question is why they would do it, when they already have driver with support for these platforms?

I don't see what the problem would be there.
The whole KMS/DRM stack is explicitly licenced such that it could be integrated into *BSD.

And who gonna port and maintain Nouveau for these platforms? Nvidia already have unified driver working on these platforms so why they would drop it, port and maintain Nouveau on FreeBSD and Solaris? Since Nouveau is Linux driver, porting it to nonLinux platform is more difficult.

To be honest, I prefer AMD but I understand why AMD driver model wouldn't work well for Nvidia.

[geearf]

AMD Supports only Linux, so there isn't very much to share. Nvidia with similar model would have to port and maintain Nouveau on FreeBSD and Solaris. Question is why they would do it, when they already have driver with support for these platforms?



And who gonna port and maintain Nouveau for these platforms? Nvidia already have unified driver working on these platforms so why they would drop it, port and maintain Nouveau on FreeBSD and Solaris? Since Nouveau is Linux driver, porting it to nonLinux platform is more difficult.

To be honest, I prefer AMD but I understand why AMD driver model wouldn't work well for Nvidia.

I believe DAL is used in Windows too, so is a lot of their Vulkan code.

[aht0]

AMD Supports only Linux, so there isn't very much to share. Nvidia with similar model would have to port and maintain Nouveau on FreeBSD and Solaris. Question is why they would do it, when they already have driver with support for these platforms?

And who gonna port and maintain Nouveau for these platforms? Nvidia already have unified driver working on these platforms so why they would drop it, port and maintain Nouveau on FreeBSD and Solaris? Since Nouveau is Linux driver, porting it to nonLinux platform is more difficult.

To be honest, I prefer AMD but I understand why AMD driver model wouldn't work well for Nvidia.

Nvidia has universal driver, which at it's very core is identical for all platforms. What Nvidia itself terms "our common code". Just "glue" connecting to kernels of different platforms differs. It's way better model than porting to 2 non-POSIX-compliant platforms and then leaving the "figuring-out how the hell you port few millions LoC" to the POSIX-compliant OS's devs themselves.

OpenBSD has trouble with Radeon driver updates because they threw out Linux ABI support for security reasons and devs just dread having to work through millions of LoC trying to port it over to BSD kernel. Do it often and your whole time is spent on nothing but that. Fine, when you are paid for it, not so fine, when it's your free time you could use for developing something else - instead of rooting out linuxisms and trying to find alternative ways evening after evening..

So, quit crying about it. Linux has Nvidia driver afterall. While it's not just ideologically "acceptable" for bunch of fanatics, it's still better than not having driver at all.

[onicsis]

Back in the days, took AMD few weeks to publish hardware documentations GPUs, after obtaining approvals from their legal department. Not F seven years, an eternity in computer industry. To late for them, many users switched to something else already. AMD it's much more feasible in this days even in terms of general purpose GPU computing.

But as long frequency can't be scaled well and dynamically also, open source drivers are far from optimum performance compared with AMD or even Intel OSS drivers, which are better than Nouveau even for high end video cards. And this is not Nouveau fault, but it's 100% exclusive Nvidia fault. So "Fuck you Nvidia" mean buying AMD next time.

[aht0]

And this is not Nouveau fault, but it's 100% exclusive Nvidia fault. So "Fuck you Nvidia" mean buying AMD next time.

Nouveau has it's definite niche. It works with Optimus while Nvidia's does not, except on Windows.

Buying AMD GPU as a matter of principle? Might do that, just to get working graphics on some particular platform ignored by Nvidia (with most Ryzen processors you won't be having iGPU option either). It's sadly no-go when you need powerful card for gaming. Too many driver issues.

[brad0]

meanwhile people are still waiting for their AMD powered gaming laptops.

I'm still waiting for an NVIDIA based computer I can actually use. Maybe it will happen before I die but I'm not betting on it.

[brad0]

Maybe, but until they actually prove it that is just a claim without any foundation whatsoever.

There are mainly two reasons why it took AMD so long:
1. IP idiocy (they had to go through all of the tech docs and all of the code to ensure they didn't violate any IP when releasing that)
2. Untangling the whole thing so it can be integrated into the Linux kernel, which in completeness only started to happen last year

Actually 3..

3. A lot of work on Mesa code and infrastructure which is not specific to any particular driver

Drivers are not completely isolated re-implementing all the same bits over and over again with overlapping code.

[brad0]

OpenBSD has trouble with Radeon driver updates because they threw out Linux ABI support for security reasons and devs just dread having to work through millions of LoC trying to port it over to BSD kernel. Do it often and your whole time is spent on nothing but that. Fine, when you are paid for it, not so fine, when it's your free time you could use for developing something else - instead of rooting out linuxisms and trying to find alternative ways evening after evening..

So, quit crying about it. Linux has Nvidia driver afterall. While it's not just ideologically "acceptable" for bunch of fanatics, it's still better than not having driver at all.

Porting issues are not specific to OpenBSD and the other part you just pulled out of your ass.

Worthless drivers a lot of users won't touch. I'm not putting a binary blob in the middle of my 100% open source OS. Only dipshit morons do that. I'll take other vendors with HW that works unlike NVidia garbage.

[brad0]

Buying AMD GPU as a matter of principle? Might do that, just to get working graphics on some particular platform ignored by Nvidia (with most Ryzen processors you won't be having iGPU option either). It's sadly no-go when you need powerful card for gaming. Too many driver issues.

I need stuff that actually works without maintenance issues so that rules out NVidia. Only AMD and Intel care to sell me a working product. NVidia likes to sell doorstop products.