NVIDIA Publishes Signed Ampere Firmware To Finally Allow Accelerated Open-Source Support

[Developer12]

There's a thing called premise. We're talking about an out of tree driver, so I don't need to cover the case for in-tree drivers.

Point being, nobody is going to step in to support anything out of tree. It will be broken frequently and without remorse.

[writequit]

Well I've been an NVIDIA customer for about 20 years bu now have an AMD and it's been a good change from my perspective. Note I'm not making any claims that this will send their shareholders into a panic but carry on trolling...

[drakonas777]

birdie is bringing Trump into the discussion. I guess this time he is offended really bad by attacks on his religiously beloved NVIDIA (required to be defended) LOL

[CochainComplex]

This phrase is so wrong SO MUCH.
Disclaimer, using Radeon 5700 XT currently.
But previous to that ALL my GPU were nvidia. Starting first generation Nvidia cards. For over a decade of all together use of Nvidia cards, they had drivers that just worked.
I switched from Nvidia to AMD, and some games in Steam stopped working all together. And still don't work.
So NO. Nvidia's closed sourced driver is GOOD.

With that said, i can live without couple of games and prefer to have freedom over functionality.

Having a 5700XT my steam lib has 500 games+ ...havent had any proton game not working. Having 200h+.on AC Oddyssey and Origins. I'm using PopOS 21.10 + mesa git freshly compiled with AOCC. Xanmod 5.17 Kernel. Wayland btw

Please tell me which game does not work? How can you be sure thats the hardware?

[yoshi314]

makes me wonder whether this firmware is fully functional. because - you know, nvidia.

[Developer12]

This is the gr context switching firmware, which allows accelerated switching of graphics contexts (without which accel is effectively impossible), as well as the firmware required to load that firmware (the secure firmware loading requires jumping through some hoops, and those hoops require firmware themselves).

This does not include PMU firmware, which would allow interacting with power management functions. Such functions would be required to change core/memory clock frequencies from the lowest levels.

I really have to wonder: why? Why would nvidia go to the trouble of making this firmware and posting it, when modesetting worked well enough to install their driver?

Why should any mesa/kernel devs bother even looking at this firmware, when even if they bother to implement acceleration for these cards they'll be locked at unusably low speeds? (Unless the plan is to use brand-new expensive underclocked hardware to only slightly outperform 10+ year old hardware with open drivers? I don't care how slow CUDA emulation might be on AMD, there's no way it's slower than this.)

I just can't figure why this firmware exists at all.

[Developer12]

makes me wonder whether this firmware is fully functional. because - you know, nvidia.

It isn't. several pages ago a nouveau dev said as much. This will allow the GPU to function, but at unbearably slow speeds.

[ATFx]

THIS IS FAKE NEWS

(Linux lovers are a lot like Trump supporters: they hate facts and live in alternative Trumpesque/Linux reality where if you don't support Linux you're losing).

No offense its kind of unbelievable such an offensive comparison, is said by said supporter of said platform,
that more inlines to what a windows user would make. To bash a much more Intelligent Community
comparing to the Dumbest people on the Planet.

[Slartifartblast]

If you are bothered about open source drivers then don't buy Nvidia and look to AMD or Intel, if you are not then you can include it on your shopping list. Freedom of choice, great isn't it ?

[dimko]

Being a 5700XT user myself, can you list a few games in steam which worked under Nvidia, but not with the 5700 XT? I currently have quite a good user experience at this point.

I don't remember exactly.
It was 2-3 games.
One of them is Dirt Showdown.

I got it to work by using proton.