NVIDIA's Open GPU Linux Kernel Driver Will Soon Be The Default For Turing & Newer GPUs

[dragon321]

because you still need the proprietary driver for cuda, and NVK is still behind in a lot of ways. if you had them share the kernel driver, you can seemlessly swap between vulkan drivers. allowing you to use which vk driver you want.

As far I know CUDA is using separate kernel module (nvidia_uvm) so I guess there is no technical reason why you couldn't use proprietary CUDA module from NVIDIA with Nouveau/Nova handling display. NVK is still early in development, it's not yet ready to replace NVIDIA drivers, if you care about performance and features you shouldn't use it for now. On top of that is seems that NVIDIA open kernel module doesn't provide stable interface and kernel module version must match user land module version so Mesa would need to be updated every single time NVIDIA updates their kernel module.

So improving Nouveau or Nova is much better idea than hacking Mesa to work on NVIDIA module.

[sophisticles]

From what I have read, all the things that make NVIDIA a must have, namely CUDA and the hardware accelerated decode, encode and video filtering functions, are part of the closed source user space driver.

If you will recall some "hacktivist" group managed to steal a bunch of NVIDIA's code a couple of years ago and threatened to release it all publicly if NVIDIA didn't open source their drivers.

In response NVIDIA released the kernel mode driver as open source and now during install they will be defaulting to that one.

Big deal.

If it makes some open source zealot feel all warm and fuzzy to have part of the driver open source, then more power to them.

I do wonder if all these people that swear open source would suddenly become Windows evangelists if MS were to release Windows, DX, everything as GPL?

It would be an interesting day, month, year, in the forums, that's for sure.

[bug77]

Nvidia drivers are so annoying to set up on Linux with recent kernels, that all Linux users will certainly end up, one day or another, switching to Intel or AMD GPUs...

What's annoying about them? I have recently reinstalled my Arch and all it took was check the right box in arch-install.

And while the new driver is a huge step forward, what will bite Nvidia now is that Turing is when they started pricing their GPUs through the roof. So they'll have to account for pre-Turing cards for quite a while longer.

[kpedersen]

I do wonder if all these people that swear open source would suddenly become Windows evangelists if MS were to release Windows, DX, everything as GPL?

I could see people doing that and don't see a problem with it. NT itself is a reasonable kernel. It is all the criminal spyware, advertising shite that lets the whole platform down. Any open-source license would allow people to rip all that out and clean it up again as an "Open" distribution.

As a *BSD user, I honestly would rather use (open-source) Microsoft Windows compared to Linux for a client use-case. If your OS is going to be a big grim mess, it might as well be mainstream and compatible

[Weasel]

As long as it remains installable with .run file simple clicks (as it does), it's all good, doesn't matter. Pure convenience rather than having to fuck around with Mesa PPAs and kernel updates when I just want the fucking GPU driver updated.

[Quackdoc]

As far I know CUDA is using separate kernel module (nvidia_uvm) so I guess there is no technical reason why you couldn't use proprietary CUDA module from NVIDIA with Nouveau/Nova handling display. NVK is still early in development, it's not yet ready to replace NVIDIA drivers, if you care about performance and features you shouldn't use it for now. On top of that is seems that NVIDIA open kernel module doesn't provide stable interface and kernel module version must match user land module version so Mesa would need to be updated every single time NVIDIA updates their kernel module.

So improving Nouveau or Nova is much better idea than hacking Mesa to work on NVIDIA module.

afaik uvm is but one part of it. but regardless, many people want the capability to swap between vulkan drivers at run time too.

[scottishduck]

If you will recall some "hacktivist" group managed to steal a bunch of NVIDIA's code a couple of years ago and threatened to release it all publicly if NVIDIA didn't open source their drivers.

In response NVIDIA released the kernel mode driver as open source and now duding install they will be defaulting to that one.

The release of the open kernel module and the hack are not related events.

[sophisticles]

The release of the open kernel module and the hack are not related events.

Of course they are, look at the time table, the group steals the code and demands that NVIDIA open source their driver and a short time later NVIDIA releases the source to their kernel code.

What do you need, a neon sign from NVIDIA admitting as much?

NVIDIA has never released anything open source, why do you think they had the change of heart?

[scottishduck]

Of course they are, look at the time table, the group steals the code and demands that NVIDIA open source their driver and a short time later NVIDIA releases the source to their kernel code.

What do you need, a neon sign from NVIDIA admitting as much?

NVIDIA has never released anything open source, why do you think they had the change of heart?

You don’t understand the amount of legal work required for that code to be released and that’s fine. If you are a company of that size you cannot simply take proprietary code and release it. It doesn’t work like that. The open source kernel module was in the works for a long time and was primarily a legal endeavour.

[Quackdoc]

Of course they are, look at the time table, the group steals the code and demands that NVIDIA open source their driver and a short time later NVIDIA releases the source to their kernel code.

What do you need, a neon sign from NVIDIA admitting as much?

NVIDIA has never released anything open source, why do you think they had the change of heart?

we did look at the time table, thats how we know it was completely irrelevant lmao. also RHEL devs had stated that they were working with nvidia to release them long prior