Free NVIDIA Fermi Cards To Open-Source Developers

[codestr0m]

Lets be honest about the size of the linux desktop market share

Agree...and perhaps this is a signal to nvidia to be a little more open if they want to keep their market share

The linux marketshare for gaming if I'm not mistaken is pretty small. I believe this is where most of the money in graphics was made. (I could be wrong as I'm not familiar with that market) I do know Nvidia has invested a huge amount into R&D and everything else to bring Fermi and previous cards to light. I don't blame them for being a bit paranoid about releasing the details. I think instead of getting caught up or pushing open source on them we're just trying to kick their ass on performance and gain the support of larger customers. Then and only then will we have a voice. To do this we need more help from open source developers..

[Daniel Fraga]

Given the power consumption of those horrid monsters, you can NOT call this "free". Those beasts will run you broke just in electricity costs!

Absolutely true

[blackiwid]

What I don?t get is why people are working so hard to make a opensource driver against Nvidias will. Let?s unite and lets buy all AMD cards instead and consentrate development of that driver with no support from Nvidia. If there is a very good free driver for amd hardware, Nvidia gets more under pressure with the last few flopping series of there cards they are under heavy presure at the moment, somedays they can not ignore 1-5% of the market like they did till now.

[codestr0m]

Lets unit on a making spell checkers better

What I don?t get is why people are working so hard to make a opensource driver against Nvidias will. Let?s unite and lets buy all AMD cards instead and consentrate development of that driver with no support from Nvidia. If there is a very good free driver for amd hardware, Nvidia gets more under pressure with the last few flopping series of there cards they are under heavy presure at the moment, somedays they can not ignore 1-5% of the market like they did till now.

While I appreciate your enthusiasm for team red I prefer to support and buy good hardware. I encourage you to look at the lowest level details of the engineering between the two camps and once you're really informed come back and tell others what to do. Nvidia is pushing innovation, but what has team red done in the past couple years?

Did you even write that post with an open source browser? Firefox has a built-in spell checker on most platforms.. Hmm.. makes me wonder if you really care about open source or just lazy. The point is that sometimes you have to go the extra mile to make something of high quality..

[MartjeB]

While I appreciate your enthusiasm for team red I prefer to support and buy good hardware. I encourage you to look at the lowest level details of the engineering between the two camps and once you're really informed come back and tell others what to do. Nvidia is pushing innovation, but what has team red done in the past couple years?

My god, the ignorance. ATi/AMD try to push open standard as much as they can. NVidia solely develops closed-source and closed standard products.

Futhermore; Good hardware? AMD's 5xxx series are excellent. Way better than the NVidia hardware when you compare both.

1. Cheaper
2. Less energy consumption
3. Better scaling (CF / SLI)
4. Better ? / performance ratio

Has Nvidia done *anything* apart from rebranding, the pas two years?

[blackiwid]

It?s, ok to tell me that you are a Nvidia fanboy, I did read again my post and did not find any mistakes except maybe some misusage of Big or Small first-letters, that?s maybe because I am not a native, I think it?s a bit cheap to asult somebody because it?s english thats maybe not perfekt. I do use opensource browser but not firefox, I use epiphany, and if It had a spell-checker it would be set to german.

If you are happy with a closed source drivers be my guest and use Nvidia hardware. But to write a hole opensource driver against a company for free, when all the competitors support the free software developers mit specs and manpower to make free drivers I think is stupid. In the past, there was no choice, you had mainly the same closed philosophy on both sides, so boykott or not writing opensource drivers against all vendors only would have weakend linux. But to only support a compony which goes open half-way and support a vendor which does not the same with nealy analog opensource support is not the right signal in my opinion.

The only "inovation" Nvidia did in the last years was software-innovation, software and standards should be fully open (not only to use them, also to define them and where they goes). When you argue that technologies like cuda (I think you mean that) are good stuff, I could argue that MS ooxml have "features" that the competitor format maybe does not have, and so microsoft is a innovativ.

[blackiwid]

ok this time I mad some mistakes, which are not that small, I am cooking besides writing so sorry about that, the edit button is gone so I cannot correct this.
But I think you all understand me, and thats the main purpuse of communication

[Daniel Fraga]

What I don?t get is why people are working so hard to make a opensource driver against Nvidias will. Let?s unite and lets buy all AMD cards instead and consentrate development of that driver with no support from Nvidia. If there is a very good free driver for amd hardware, Nvidia gets more under pressure with the last few flopping series of there cards they are under heavy presure at the moment, somedays they can not ignore 1-5% of the market like they did till now.

Maybe those who bought a nvidia card, including me, just wanted it to work regardless if it requires a closed source drive or not.

Besides that, nvidia offers VDPAU and very good interaction with Composite extension (it's been a long time I don't use any ATI driver, so I can't tell today how it is in this aspect). AMD/ATI drivers were historically know to be buggy, so maybe this makes people decides not to buy AMD/ATI cards...

Anyway, you're right, since AMD is more friendly to open source than nvidia. But in practice, I think the situation will not change soon.

[Ex-Cyber]

Has Nvidia done *anything* apart from rebranding, the pas two years?

Well, they did Fermi, which seems to genuinely be a novel and worthwhile architecture. On the other hand, its power/yield failings are for reasons relating precisely to "the lowest level details of the engineering" that codestr0m urges us to look at. ATI did low-level workarounds for TSMC process problems, while it looks like Nvidia was mostly leaning on TSMC to just fix the process.

[crazycheese]

I tell you my opinion, but I may need these questions answered by yourself!

1) How much Watt does Fermi consume on Idle and on Perfomance?
2) Does Fermi work in Perfomance mode if not switched my blob driver?
3) Does Nvidia close source and even lastest opensource thing?

How much time would it take to create barebone opensource driver that can handle power well? Let it be A
How much time would it take to create moderately featured 3D driver? Let it be B

This "offer" is merely a "welcome" to pay HUUUUUGE electricity bill by whatever freelancer takes on!

Bill size= (HrzA*300 + HrsB*100)*price_per_KWh

This is sick!