NVIDIA Developer Opens Feature Pull Request For Open-Source NVK Driver

[oiaohm]

There are two free kernel-space components for Nvidia cards: nouveau in mainline and Nvidia out-of-tree. nouveau won't work with CUDA and Nvidia kernel drivers won't work with Mesa and NVK.^{[citation needed]}

Its not just Mesa and NVK not working with Nvidia open source drivers. Its the Nvidia version locking between firmware, kernel driver and userspace. Any version miss match and things are not going to work with the Nvidia driver stack.

Mesa and NVK from userspace can work with multi versions linux main kernel with the number of different versions of drivers that means not 1 to 1 version locked..

CUDA is not as 1 to 1 locked as the opengl and vulkan the following is a good read..

https://docs.nvidia.com/deploy/cuda-compatibility/index.html

Particular the next section

https://docs.nvidia.com/deploy/cuda-compatibility/index.html#use-the-right-compat-package

Then notice particular Nvidia kernel modules only support 1 version of CUDA. Also you update your kernel module you cannot use CUDA older than it.

So you upgrade your nvidia kernel module those old CUDA programs that depend on some old CUDA quirk that no longer there no longer work.

People like avis are not very truthful about this. Yes CUDA is just a userspace library that happens to be fairly picky what kernel module it works with.

[johanb]

Since when is Nintendo basing their OS on Linux?

According to Wikipedia, it's not too far off:

Proprietary OS, derivative of Nintendo 3DS system software (partially Unix-like via certain components which are based on FreeBSD and Android)

[TemplarGR]

Yet more proof Nvidia doesn't hate OSS. They just have a business to run and they embrace it when it makes sense for them to do so.

LOL, just LOL.

Ngreedia is the most anticonsumer, anti-opensource and anti-openstandard company in the tech world, dude....

Their whole history is full of closed APIs and closed libraries/frameworks, and attempts to wall-garden both gaming and gpgpu. What are you talking about?

The only reason Nvidia are doing this, is because they have no other choice since all others are doing it succesfully.

[oiaohm]

Ngreedia is the most anticonsumer, anti-opensource and anti-openstandard company in the tech world, dude....

That not quite true. Nvidia has had times when they have worked on open source. Nvidia sticking with working on open source that been a problem.

Its like nouveau when it started there was limited help to it given directly by Nvidia. Or the open source 2d nv driver that Nvidia gave. There are many examples where gives some open source then does not stick at it. There are other companies that are closed source that have never given anything open source. Nvidia gives scraps to open source and has for a very long time.

There are some worse than Nvidia on the .anti-consumer, anti-opensource and anti-openstandard but you are well and truly in the bottom of the barrel with Nvidia. Nvidia quote at the bottom but the sludge under Nvidia contains like tobacco companies as in companies that are so far anti-consumer they are in fact in the process of killing their consumers so need new customers before they kill of their customers so they don't go out of business.

Question with the work Nvidia doing with AI is will they sink into the sludge because of this and in fact come direct consumer killing.

Basically if you think Nvidia is bad you don't want to see the ones that are worse. The most anticonsumer, anti-opensource and anti-openstandard companies have worked out how to legally get away with killing humans so call civilized countries on mass. Comparing Nvidia to this Nvidia starts not looking quite so bad. That why I say Nvidia is just above the sludge of the worst. Yes the sludge made up of millions and millions of dead. One or two wrong steps Nvidia could sink into that sludge..

[Inopia]

I think it's just that gaming isn't where Nvidia makes their money from any more and that Mesa is mature enough so there's no competetive advantage from not supporting the open source graphics stack. It's actually a disadvantage when trying to sell custom chips as anybody buying Nvidia's custom chips is on the mercy of Nvidia for any driver updates.

[cl333r]

The plot twist from the article was so thick that I thought for a minute the 2 contributors could be bfs.

[Sevard]

For me the reason is quite simple – they cannot upstream their "open source" kernel driver if none of user space drivers uses it. So they need to have at least minimal user space driver in place to upstream kernel one.

[avis]

For me the reason is quite simple – they cannot upstream their "open source" kernel driver if none of user space drivers uses it. So they need to have at least minimal user space driver in place to upstream kernel one.

Their open driver was never intended to be upstreamed. It exists as a reference implementation for NVIDIA user space components.

LOL, just LOL.

Ngreedia is the most anticonsumer, anti-opensource and anti-openstandard company in the tech world, dude....

Their whole history is full of closed APIs and closed libraries/frameworks, and attempts to wall-garden both gaming and gpgpu. What are you talking about?

The only reason Nvidia are doing this, is because they have no other choice since all others are doing it succesfully.

The word "anticonsumer" is quite peculiar. If it were the case, people would not buy the company's products, would they?

[d3coder]

Nvidia's firmware is working in GSP co-processor. We don't know why they introduced it, but if it was for the open source driver, it means they started to work on it when they were designing RTX Turing cards (20xx series). Turing was released in 2018. I heard that it takes at least 3 years to bring an idea from paper to silicon. It means they started working on it somewhere in 2015. They probably were working on their software stack and when it became ready, they released the OSS kernel driver and GSP firmware.

I guess they are doing this because their big customers asked for this and industry was pressuring them into doing this.

[oiaohm]

The word "anticonsumer" is quite peculiar. If it were the case, people would not buy the company's products, would they?

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anti-consumer

Its a term from 1936. Does not mean consumer will not buy even in 1936. Not all cases do consumers have other products to use. You would call the inkjet problem where you keep on putting in cartridges and end up with a huge mess over you desk because the waste ink tank that you cannot replace/clean has overflowed as anti-consumer design. Planned obsolescence does come under anti-consumer along with many many other things.