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Interesting. Since Mellanox is a big player in the HPC world, this means Nvidia wants to get more serious there. Due to Nvidia's bad Linux support and pricing (

by ktpsns 8y ago

Interesting. Since Mellanox is a big player in the HPC world, this means Nvidia wants to get more serious there. Due to Nvidia's bad Linux support and pricing (compared to AMD), I know quite a number of academic computing centers which like Mellanox hardware but avoid Nvidia hardware like the plague.

dronedronedrone 8y ago
maybe they will finally opensource their gpu and cuda drivers and remove all the headaches from my life
- rhn_mk1 8y ago
  I too wish dreams came true...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
orbifold 8y ago
My GTX 1080 works flawlessly with Linux, as has any other NVIDIA graphics card I've ever owned (GTX 680, 480). The only time I tried an AMD card it was a complete dumpster fire, nothing worked (the open source driver at the time sucked and the proprietary driver wouldn't install properly). I bought the AMD card based on the myth that AMD has better linux support...
- abaga129 8y ago
  I think most user's complaint is that their drivers aren't open source and until recently were a pain to install. My 1050ti has also worked pretty much flawlessly, but I wish they would open source their drivers and make it easier on the linux developers.
  - Topgamer7 8y ago
    Trying to get a 1070 set up w/ 2 monitors on a laptop with hybrid graphics is a nightmare. 1 display driven by intel, 1 by nvidia. Cannot get both screens working without 2 Xscreens. Xinerama wouldn't work w. proprietary drivers. Nouveau has like no support for like 1050 up. Wanted to try out SwayWM, but they don't work around how nvidia handles things in comparison to what everyone else does. Works in Ubuntu, but could not for the life of me get 2 monitors working in Arch.
    - orbifold 8y ago
      Maybe just maybe this is not the fault of Nvidia but due to the fact that large parts of the Linux ecosystem are fragile, time consuming to configure and break if you look at them in the wrong way. Professional linux distributions like Ubuntu paper over a lot of that fragility, whereas in Arch Linux you can easily burn days getting basic functionality to work (multiple sound cards come to mind) only for it to break with the next update. And yes I speak from experience, I used Arch Linux ~5 years basically for the fun of doing everything by yourself, because Ubuntu felt too restrictive and opaque.
      - sangnoir 8y ago
        > Maybe just maybe this is not the fault of Nvidia but due to the fact that large parts of the Linux ecosystem are fragile, time consuming to configure and break if you look at them in the wrong way. How it works with open source drivers is that you main-line your drivers so that the kernel maintainer maintain the drivers for you, for free. Choosing to keep your drivers closed source means committing to keeping your drivers up-to-date with changes in the kernel, or writing an open-source shim that does that. Which approach is more "fragile?"
        llukas 8y ago
        > How it works with open source drivers is that you main-line your drivers so that the kernel maintainer maintain the drivers for you, for free. Not sure what do you mean by "maintain for free". Full coverage testing is not free.
        8y ago
- dnautics 8y ago
  Try doing a PCI passthrough to virtualizes that 1080 onto a VM. Then try the same thing with AMD. Sure, the AMD drivers are relatively terrible, but at least they are open source and don't kick you in the knees when you are doing something you ought to be able to do.
  - orbifold 8y ago
    Well this is not a supported feature even on Windows (AFAIK), so I'm not sure why this is an issue for you? See here for a list of supported graphics cards https://docs.nvidia.com/grid/latest/grid-vgpu-user-guide/index.html https://docs.nvidia.com/grid/latest/grid-vgpu-user-guide/ind.... Notice how there is no distinction between Windows and Linux. The 1080 is supported perfectly by nvidia-docker though.
    - dnautics 8y ago
      There's no reason the hardware can't do it, the driver actively attempts to see if you're on a VM and refuses to talk to the hardware if so. Google "Nvidia error code 43" if you're curious, and some people like to virtualize a video game on their Linux dev PC.
- mackal 8y ago
  Ahh what are you talking about? That "myth" didn't exist until the open source drivers really started working. Biggest issue with AMD on Linux right now is that they sometimes seem to forget to fully enable support in patches before release. Like the RX 590 had to have firmware updates post release because they forgot to do everything I guess. nVidia GPUs were always recommended over AMD because their support was significantly better before the mainoine Radeon/Radeon si/amdgpu drivers really started being great. nVidia will still run better now, but the benefit of the open source driver ecosystem out weighs that for me.
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    I am still waiting that benefit to provide the missing OpenGL and hardware video acceleration features that were never ported from fxglr.
bayindirh 8y ago
nVidia's Tesla cards work relatively painless in HPC environments. When you install a supporting driver and set the cards' persistence mode to your needs, the rest is generally automagic. However, they're hot and need serious juice to run, so you cannot just shove 36 of them to a rack and just power them on.
shaklee3 8y ago
This is not a purchase for gaming -- this is for the HPC market. Nvidia drivers on Linux for HPC work really well. Academia is a tiny, tiny fraction of the market.
geezer 8y ago
I had the opposite experience.
aetimmes 8y ago
Modern HPC is being done with the Nvidia toolkits. Sure, the Nvidia driver is closed-source and a pain to work with for OS developers, but for the use-cases it's designed for (CUDA etc), it's far and away the best-in-class on Linux. To my knowledge, there are no systems in the TOP500 running AMD chips or GPUs. Intel has some competition in the CPU space (POWER series, some ARM, etc) but if GPUs are in those systems, they're Nvidia.
- adev_ 8y ago
  > Sure, the Nvidia driver is closed-source and a pain to work with for OS developers, but for the use-cases it's designed for (CUDA etc), it's far and away the best-in-class on Linux. It's unfortunately a sad truth. CUDA won, And is now the de-factor standard for almost every application that run over GPU. Nvidia succeeded to jailed the entire HPC community to their bloated, badly maintained crappy software stack and this is very regrettable. Any admin / integrator that had to deal with NVidia bloatwares under Linux hate it, and for very good reasons.

by ktpsns 8y ago

dronedronedrone 8y ago

maybe they will finally opensource their gpu and cuda drivers and remove all the headaches from my life

rhn_mk1 8y ago
I too wish dreams came true...
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

orbifold 8y ago

My GTX 1080 works flawlessly with Linux, as has any other NVIDIA graphics card I've ever owned (GTX 680, 480). The only time I tried an AMD card it was a complete dumpster fire, nothing worked (the open source driver at the time sucked and the proprietary driver wouldn't install properly). I bought the AMD card based on the myth that AMD has better linux support...

abaga129 8y ago
I think most user's complaint is that their drivers aren't open source and until recently were a pain to install. My 1050ti has also worked pretty much flawlessly, but I wish they would open source their drivers and make it easier on the linux developers.
- Topgamer7 8y ago
  Trying to get a 1070 set up w/ 2 monitors on a laptop with hybrid graphics is a nightmare. 1 display driven by intel, 1 by nvidia. Cannot get both screens working without 2 Xscreens. Xinerama wouldn't work w. proprietary drivers. Nouveau has like no support for like 1050 up. Wanted to try out SwayWM, but they don't work around how nvidia handles things in comparison to what everyone else does. Works in Ubuntu, but could not for the life of me get 2 monitors working in Arch.
  - orbifold 8y ago
    Maybe just maybe this is not the fault of Nvidia but due to the fact that large parts of the Linux ecosystem are fragile, time consuming to configure and break if you look at them in the wrong way. Professional linux distributions like Ubuntu paper over a lot of that fragility, whereas in Arch Linux you can easily burn days getting basic functionality to work (multiple sound cards come to mind) only for it to break with the next update. And yes I speak from experience, I used Arch Linux ~5 years basically for the fun of doing everything by yourself, because Ubuntu felt too restrictive and opaque.
    - sangnoir 8y ago
      > Maybe just maybe this is not the fault of Nvidia but due to the fact that large parts of the Linux ecosystem are fragile, time consuming to configure and break if you look at them in the wrong way. How it works with open source drivers is that you main-line your drivers so that the kernel maintainer maintain the drivers for you, for free. Choosing to keep your drivers closed source means committing to keeping your drivers up-to-date with changes in the kernel, or writing an open-source shim that does that. Which approach is more "fragile?"
      - llukas 8y ago
        > How it works with open source drivers is that you main-line your drivers so that the kernel maintainer maintain the drivers for you, for free. Not sure what do you mean by "maintain for free". Full coverage testing is not free.
      - 8y ago
dnautics 8y ago
Try doing a PCI passthrough to virtualizes that 1080 onto a VM. Then try the same thing with AMD. Sure, the AMD drivers are relatively terrible, but at least they are open source and don't kick you in the knees when you are doing something you ought to be able to do.
- orbifold 8y ago
  Well this is not a supported feature even on Windows (AFAIK), so I'm not sure why this is an issue for you? See here for a list of supported graphics cards https://docs.nvidia.com/grid/latest/grid-vgpu-user-guide/index.html https://docs.nvidia.com/grid/latest/grid-vgpu-user-guide/ind.... Notice how there is no distinction between Windows and Linux. The 1080 is supported perfectly by nvidia-docker though.
  - dnautics 8y ago
    There's no reason the hardware can't do it, the driver actively attempts to see if you're on a VM and refuses to talk to the hardware if so. Google "Nvidia error code 43" if you're curious, and some people like to virtualize a video game on their Linux dev PC.
mackal 8y ago
Ahh what are you talking about? That "myth" didn't exist until the open source drivers really started working. Biggest issue with AMD on Linux right now is that they sometimes seem to forget to fully enable support in patches before release. Like the RX 590 had to have firmware updates post release because they forgot to do everything I guess. nVidia GPUs were always recommended over AMD because their support was significantly better before the mainoine Radeon/Radeon si/amdgpu drivers really started being great. nVidia will still run better now, but the benefit of the open source driver ecosystem out weighs that for me.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  I am still waiting that benefit to provide the missing OpenGL and hardware video acceleration features that were never ported from fxglr.

bayindirh 8y ago

nVidia's Tesla cards work relatively painless in HPC environments. When you install a supporting driver and set the cards' persistence mode to your needs, the rest is generally automagic. However, they're hot and need serious juice to run, so you cannot just shove 36 of them to a rack and just power them on.

shaklee3 8y ago

This is not a purchase for gaming -- this is for the HPC market. Nvidia drivers on Linux for HPC work really well. Academia is a tiny, tiny fraction of the market.

geezer 8y ago

I had the opposite experience.

aetimmes 8y ago

Modern HPC is being done with the Nvidia toolkits. Sure, the Nvidia driver is closed-source and a pain to work with for OS developers, but for the use-cases it's designed for (CUDA etc), it's far and away the best-in-class on Linux. To my knowledge, there are no systems in the TOP500 running AMD chips or GPUs. Intel has some competition in the CPU space (POWER series, some ARM, etc) but if GPUs are in those systems, they're Nvidia.

adev_ 8y ago
> Sure, the Nvidia driver is closed-source and a pain to work with for OS developers, but for the use-cases it's designed for (CUDA etc), it's far and away the best-in-class on Linux. It's unfortunately a sad truth. CUDA won, And is now the de-factor standard for almost every application that run over GPU. Nvidia succeeded to jailed the entire HPC community to their bloated, badly maintained crappy software stack and this is very regrettable. Any admin / integrator that had to deal with NVidia bloatwares under Linux hate it, and for very good reasons.