"NOVA-Core" Patches Propose Building New NVIDIA Driver Piece-By-Piece In The Linux Kernel

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  • phoronix
    Administrator
    • Jan 2007
    • 67370

    "NOVA-Core" Patches Propose Building New NVIDIA Driver Piece-By-Piece In The Linux Kernel

    Phoronix: "NOVA-Core" Patches Propose Building New NVIDIA Driver Piece-By-Piece In The Linux Kernel

    Red Hat engineers have been working on Nova as an open-source driver successor to the Nouveau driver for upstream NVIDIA GPU support within the Linux kernel that can be used with the Mesa OpenGL/Vulkan drivers. Unlike the prior larger RFC patch series, sent out to the Linux kernel mailing list today were some small patches for introducing "NOVA-Core" that would serve as the initial base for this modern NVIDIA Linux kernel DRM driver. Over time and succeeding kernel releases, the NOVA code would be built up until ultimately becoming a usable state for end-users...

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  • zaps166
    Junior Member
    • Apr 2020
    • 28

    #2
    Isn't a better idea to use the new open source nvidia driver to run NVK? AMD runs proprietary and opensource userspace driver on top of the same kernel driver.

    Comment

    • Gobrosse
      Junior Member
      • Oct 2023
      • 3

      #3
      A very welcome development!

      Comment

      • intelfx
        Senior Member
        • Jun 2018
        • 1146

        #4
        Originally posted by zaps166 View Post
        Isn't a better idea to use the new open source nvidia driver to run NVK? AMD runs proprietary and opensource userspace driver on top of the same kernel driver.
        This is the new open-source nvidia driver.

        Comment

        • CommunityMember
          Senior Member
          • Oct 2019
          • 1378

          #5
          Originally posted by zaps166 View Post
          Isn't a better idea to use the new open source nvidia driver to run NVK? AMD runs proprietary and opensource userspace driver on top of the same kernel driver.
          If you are talking about nvidia's current out of tree open-gpu-kernel-module sources, while that is open source, it does not conform to the linux kernels coding standards, and nvidia has stated they do not intend to perform the work that would be needed to make it compliant and to be able to merge it to the mainline kernel. Instead, this effort, led by Red Hat (although clearly with contributions of others), will be the eventual in-kernel DRM driver for nvidia GPUs with a GSP (so Turing or later). Those with older nvidia GPUs will still use nouveau as their kernel driver as part of the current plan. I expect that the current out of tree Asahi M series GPU driver team will also contribute to and benefit from some/many of the kernel DRM driver work being seen here for Nova (a rising tide lifts all boats).

          Comment

          • dragon321
            Senior Member
            • May 2016
            • 874

            #6
            Originally posted by zaps166 View Post
            Isn't a better idea to use the new open source nvidia driver to run NVK? AMD runs proprietary and opensource userspace driver on top of the same kernel driver.
            No. Not only NVIDIA open source kernel module is not in the state it can be upstream (and it seems that NVIDIA is not interested in upstream at all) but also their module is compatible only with their proprietary userland so it wouldn't work with Mesa without changes. Aside from that GSP firmware ABI is not stable so that would likely require Mesa developers to keep up with NVIDIA updates and, despite the fact that this module is open source, all development is not open and internal to NVIDIA that just publish the code on every release.

            It's doesn't really matter, Nouveau and Nova should be able to run the GPU in the exactly same way as this driver does since they are using exactly the same firmware. The only missing things are NVIDIA proprietary technologies like CUDA or DLSS but using NVIDIA kernel module wouldn't change anything about it as they are implemented in their proprietary userland anyway. Since CUDA can't work headless I guess it will be possible to use official NVIDIA drivers only for CUDA with Nouveau/Nova handling rendering.

            Comment

            • avis
              Senior Member
              • Dec 2022
              • 2260

              #7
              Originally posted by dragon321 View Post

              No. Not only NVIDIA open source kernel module is not in the state it can be upstream (and it seems that NVIDIA is not interested in upstream at all) but also their module is compatible only with their proprietary userland so it wouldn't work with Mesa without changes. Aside from that GSP firmware ABI is not stable so that would likely require Mesa developers to keep up with NVIDIA updates and, despite the fact that this module is open source, all development is not open and internal to NVIDIA that just publish the code on every release.

              It's doesn't really matter, Nouveau and Nova should be able to run the GPU in the exactly same way as this driver does since they are using exactly the same firmware. The only missing things are NVIDIA proprietary technologies like CUDA or DLSS but using NVIDIA kernel module wouldn't change anything about it as they are implemented in their proprietary userland anyway. Since CUDA can't work headless I guess it will be possible to use official NVIDIA drivers only for CUDA with Nouveau/Nova handling rendering.
              • CUDA may work headless. It's actually how it's primarily used.
              • There's no reason for CUDA and DLSS not to work with Nova.

              Comment

              • Pheoxy
                Junior Member
                • Dec 2018
                • 18

                #8
                I'm hoping one of the first working Nova essentials is Monitor detection as many motherboards during initial boot error and won't boot without a monitor connected although that may just be UEFI.

                I'm looking forward to Nova though as I'm hoping it shows us what everyone's been talking about and brings NVIDIA into a better relationship with Linux maintainers, users and with the rust drivers it properly succeeding the old faithful nouveau that did its best.

                Comment

                • Guest

                  #9
                  Originally posted by avis View Post
                  • CUDA may work headless. It's actually how it's primarily used.
                  • There's no reason for CUDA and DLSS not to work with Nova.
                  RUST.

                  Comment

                  • CommunityMember
                    Senior Member
                    • Oct 2019
                    • 1378

                    #10
                    Originally posted by avis View Post
                    • CUDA may work headless. It's actually how it's primarily used.
                    • There's no reason for CUDA and DLSS not to work with Nova.

                    And I (strongly) suspect that Red Hat's interest in this new driver is about their enterprise customers who primarily care about using their GPUs for computation, and not so much as to how fast they might run Grand Theft Auto. If the new driver could not support computational workloads, it would likely never have been resourced (by Red Hat).

                    Comment

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