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Nvidia open source driver to use NVK and Zink for OpenGL on newer GPUs

• shmerl 3y ago
  Nice, hopefully Linux gamers with Nvidia GPUs will be able to replace Nvidia's blob soon enough with nouveau + nvk + zink.
  • rnd0 3y ago
    It's unlikely this will be useable for AI, however
    • shmerl 3y ago
      Why not? AI can rely on Vulkan for GPU compute and nvk plans to be fully Vulkan compliant. There was some separate OpenCL effort I think? I haven't kept track.
• 0xcde4c3db 3y ago
  Last time I looked into using nouveau (ca. 2018-2019), there was an issue with the Nvidia firmware (some kind of DRM?) that prevented implementation of proper power management support on recent generations, which made it nearly useless for GPU-heavy applications. Has that changed?
  • fngjdflmdflg 3y ago
    I believe that is the point on NVK.
  • PlutoIsAPlanet 3y ago
    Yes, on newer Nvidia GPUs, power management etc is delegated to an on die RISC-V that runs its own firmware blob. Effectively they’ve moved the kernel driver to the GPU. Nvidia when open sourcing their kernel driver, showed how to communicate with this blob, so Nouveau have done the same.
    • 0xcde4c3db 3y ago
      I don't see a definitive list anywhere, but it looks like "newer" roughly means RTX 20 series and later? I'm a little disappointed that I can't migrate the older card in my HTPC (ironically, it has a power management issue with the latest Nvidia driver), but I'm glad there's a path forward for nouveau.
      • ewzimm 3y ago
        It's actually much older, the 700 series from 2013 were the last to ship without signed firmware. 2013 also happened to be the year of the last AMD CPUs without the PSP, so my all-free software computer is still stuck in that year until RISC-V improves.