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For Nvidia, the most likely reason they've strongly avoided Open Sourcing their drivers isn't anything like that. It's simply a function of their history. The

For Nvidia, the most likely reason they've strongly avoided Open Sourcing their drivers isn't anything like that. It's simply a function of their history. They used to have professional level graphics cards ("Nvidia Quadro") using exactly the same chips as their consumer graphics cards. The BIOS of the cards was different, enabling different features. So people wanting those features cheaply would buy the consumer graphics cards and flash the matching Quadro BIOS to them. Worked perfectly fine. Nvidia naturally wasn't happy about those "lost sales", so began a game of whack-a-mole to stop BIOS flashing from working. They did stuff like adding resistors to the boards to tell the card whether it was a Geforce or Quadro card, and when that was promptly reverse engineered they started getting creative in other ways. Meanwhile, they couldn't really Open Source their drivers because then people could see what the "Geforce vs Quadro" software checks were. That would open up software countermeasures being developed. --- In the most recent few years the professional cards and gaming cards now use different chips. So the BIOS tricks are no longer relevant. Which means Nvidia can "safely" Open Source their drivers now, and they've begun doing so.

chii 3y ago
Customers really, really hate segmentation of product [1], esp. if the product end up being exactly the same! I think companies should stop trying to segment customers. It's a long term loss, despite a short term gain. [1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/12/15/camels-and-rubber-duckies/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/12/15/camels-and-rubber-...
- jjeaff 3y ago
  I don't think customers mind segmentation at all. Just, as you said, when it's a purposely crippled, identical product, they hate it.
- justinclift 3y ago
  > It's a long term loss, despite a short term gain. While I dislike market segmentation as much as anyone, it seems like it worked out ok for Nvidia. It let them keep a (very) profitable segment of the business, which in turn financed other developments and let them become the GPU leader for a very long time. No idea how it'll play out in the end of course, but we're definite past the whole "short term" time frame.
- user_7832 3y ago
  Thanks, that was an excellent read. If that article hasn't been posted to HN recently, I think it deserves to be posted.
blagie 3y ago
I suspect there are a few issues: 1) NVidia drivers had a lot of secret sauce to give high performance. 2) NVidia for machine learning still has a lot of platform lock-in (although fading gradually), and cross-compatibility doesn't help them 3) Quite often, if you've licensed something from a third-party, you can't legally open-source. Proprietary codebases sometimes get... messy. I'm jumping ship as soon as Intel drivers are good enough. I don't trust AMD to have anything working -- too many bad experiences -- but Intel has a good track record. Arc A770 gives 16gb for <$300. That's as much as I have on my >$1000 NVidia card. I don't need maximum FLOPS. So long as deep learning models run, and 3d apps are accelerated, I'm happy.
Already__Taken 3y ago
it's possibly even less evil, may be to remove flashing the bios at all for support simplicity. I flashed a 7800gt to a gtx for use in sli with a gtx I bought much later. weirdly I expected to flash the gtx down to the older GT but that wouldn't boot.
KeplerBoy 3y ago
Nvidia still sells Quadro cards with the same chips as their gaming counterparts but much more VRAM. They are mainly used for workstations (CAD stuff, VFX, some CFD, maybe also some AI for small scale testing).
- justinclift 3y ago
  Didn't they rename things a while ago? I'm remembering this, though it's possible some things might have escaped the rename: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/design-visualization/quadro/ https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/design-visualization/quadro/
  - KeplerBoy 3y ago
    Ah yes, seems they did. I'm still on a Quadro RTX 4000 (Turing) so I thought they just slapped RTX on there after Quadro.

chii 3y ago

Customers really, really hate segmentation of product [1], esp. if the product end up being exactly the same! I think companies should stop trying to segment customers. It's a long term loss, despite a short term gain. [1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/12/15/camels-and-rubber-duckies/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/12/15/camels-and-rubber-...

jjeaff 3y ago
I don't think customers mind segmentation at all. Just, as you said, when it's a purposely crippled, identical product, they hate it.
justinclift 3y ago
> It's a long term loss, despite a short term gain. While I dislike market segmentation as much as anyone, it seems like it worked out ok for Nvidia. It let them keep a (very) profitable segment of the business, which in turn financed other developments and let them become the GPU leader for a very long time. No idea how it'll play out in the end of course, but we're definite past the whole "short term" time frame.
user_7832 3y ago
Thanks, that was an excellent read. If that article hasn't been posted to HN recently, I think it deserves to be posted.

blagie 3y ago

I suspect there are a few issues: 1) NVidia drivers had a lot of secret sauce to give high performance. 2) NVidia for machine learning still has a lot of platform lock-in (although fading gradually), and cross-compatibility doesn't help them 3) Quite often, if you've licensed something from a third-party, you can't legally open-source. Proprietary codebases sometimes get... messy. I'm jumping ship as soon as Intel drivers are good enough. I don't trust AMD to have anything working -- too many bad experiences -- but Intel has a good track record. Arc A770 gives 16gb for <$300. That's as much as I have on my >$1000 NVidia card. I don't need maximum FLOPS. So long as deep learning models run, and 3d apps are accelerated, I'm happy.

Already__Taken 3y ago

it's possibly even less evil, may be to remove flashing the bios at all for support simplicity. I flashed a 7800gt to a gtx for use in sli with a gtx I bought much later. weirdly I expected to flash the gtx down to the older GT but that wouldn't boot.

KeplerBoy 3y ago

Nvidia still sells Quadro cards with the same chips as their gaming counterparts but much more VRAM. They are mainly used for workstations (CAD stuff, VFX, some CFD, maybe also some AI for small scale testing).

justinclift 3y ago
Didn't they rename things a while ago? I'm remembering this, though it's possible some things might have escaped the rename: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/design-visualization/quadro/ https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/design-visualization/quadro/
- KeplerBoy 3y ago
  Ah yes, seems they did. I'm still on a Quadro RTX 4000 (Turing) so I thought they just slapped RTX on there after Quadro.