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Is there any reason why NVIDIA/AMD wouldn't want to go the open source route with their drivers? Is there some kind of a special sauce in there that they need t

Is there any reason why NVIDIA/AMD wouldn't want to go the open source route with their drivers? Is there some kind of a special sauce in there that they need to treasure? Aren't they in the business of selling hardware, or is there something really special about those drivers?

ekianjo 11y ago
Yes, there is. Like nVidia making sure that you don't know that the chip they use is actually the same as in a more expensive card, but controlled to act as a lower performance chip through the drivers.
- BadassFractal 11y ago
  Well, that's sad. So they basically have every incentive for there not to exist decent Linux drivers until the demand is large enough that they have to do a great job at supporting the platform?
  - ekianjo 11y ago
    I mean, as long as they make decent proprietary Linux drivers (which is what they are doing right now), I would not complain too much. They have been catching up in terms of features as well (compared to Windows drivers), so they are very active compared to the sleeping engineers from AMD (who like making announcements but do very little visible work, which renders their credibility close to zero).
    - tadfisher 11y ago
      > sleeping engineers from AMD http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2015-June/084083.html http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2015-June/08...
- rangibaby 11y ago
  Isn't that because of binning?
pandaman 11y ago
For once, OpenGL/DirectX drivers contain a shader compiler since the compiled form of shader in these APIs is in IL bytecode and it has to be compiled into the actual ISA code to be able to run on the processors inside the GPU. Such a compiler is pretty complex piece of software and even if it did not have licensed code opening it would expose you to all kinds of patent trolls. Also, the DirectX drivers (and likely OpenGl as well) contain special code paths for many games/apps to improve performance. When they are telling you to download the latest drivers for your new PC game it's not because the new drivers fixed bugs and the game won't run (though it's also the case sometimes), it's because the new drivers have an optimized code path for that game. Developing these code paths costs money and giving them away for free may save money for the competition since the hardware is pretty similar and most of these optimizations are selecting the best hardware representation for an API entity.

ekianjo 11y ago

Yes, there is. Like nVidia making sure that you don't know that the chip they use is actually the same as in a more expensive card, but controlled to act as a lower performance chip through the drivers.

BadassFractal 11y ago
Well, that's sad. So they basically have every incentive for there not to exist decent Linux drivers until the demand is large enough that they have to do a great job at supporting the platform?
- ekianjo 11y ago
  I mean, as long as they make decent proprietary Linux drivers (which is what they are doing right now), I would not complain too much. They have been catching up in terms of features as well (compared to Windows drivers), so they are very active compared to the sleeping engineers from AMD (who like making announcements but do very little visible work, which renders their credibility close to zero).
  - tadfisher 11y ago
    > sleeping engineers from AMD http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2015-June/084083.html http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2015-June/08...
rangibaby 11y ago
Isn't that because of binning?

pandaman 11y ago

For once, OpenGL/DirectX drivers contain a shader compiler since the compiled form of shader in these APIs is in IL bytecode and it has to be compiled into the actual ISA code to be able to run on the processors inside the GPU. Such a compiler is pretty complex piece of software and even if it did not have licensed code opening it would expose you to all kinds of patent trolls. Also, the DirectX drivers (and likely OpenGl as well) contain special code paths for many games/apps to improve performance. When they are telling you to download the latest drivers for your new PC game it's not because the new drivers fixed bugs and the game won't run (though it's also the case sometimes), it's because the new drivers have an optimized code path for that game. Developing these code paths costs money and giving them away for free may save money for the competition since the hardware is pretty similar and most of these optimizations are selecting the best hardware representation for an API entity.