2y ago

Nouveau NVIDIA GSP Firmware Support Merged For Linux 6.7

www.phoronix.com

Just a moment...

Nouveau GPU System Processor (GSP) firmware integration that allows making use of NVIDIA's binary GSP firmware on RTX 20 "Turing" and newer GPUs for having improved support. In turn this GSP route also provides initial support for GeForce RTX 40 series support.

tl;dr some preparation for hopefully better Nvidia open source driver support in the future

13 comments

Great to see, sadly I wouldn't be able to use it. I have GTX 10 series and the next one I will be buying is AMD or maybe Intel, if their drivers get a lot better by the time I am in a market for a new GPU.
- Yep, I have a RTX 2080 and am picking up a 6700 XT once my pay check lands later today (put in a bit of extra time to justify the cost) - I've given Nvidia more than enough time to get their act together.
  I have heard that Intel had just recently released a pretty decent update to their driver, I haven't been following it too closely but there's certainly hope.
  
  Can I ask why 6700? In raster performance it's only about 10 faster than 2080 and in ray tracing it is worse. It might be a bit different on linux, but either way, when I will be upgrading I want better improvement than that.
  I don't really need to play the latest games, so I can easily wait. My next gpu will probably be 8800xt or even 9800xt
I'm wondering whether the open source nvk driver will work with exclusive nvidia features like DLSS.
CUDA probably won't work either, just like AMD's RADV doesn't do the common compute APIs. Maybe they'll support Vulkan compute, but that's not as useful.
- AMD’s RADV doesn’t do the common compute APIs
  RADV is just the Vulkan driver to be clear, so the other APIs are implemented separately. ROCm is supported by some cards, and Rusticl is the currently most advanced OpenCL implementation in Mesa (with Clover on the way out). Vulkan compute is implemented in RADV, although I found it to be slightly slower than the AMDVLK implementation (AMD's official Linux Vulkan driver, developed out of tree).
  As for Nvidia, it's likely to be a worse situation since Nvidia don't have a bunch of open APIs, just closed ones. Vulkan compute I would expect at least, if not immediately.
  As for CUDA, it might work if you're willing to have a hybrid open/closed system. On AMD this is possible, where you can generally install and enable/disable the AMDGPU-PRO compute and Vulkan drivers on demand.
I won't be buying an NVIDIA GPU any time soon for my desktop, but hopefully this move will make gaming on my laptop better. Unfortunately NVIDIA seems to have an almost monopoly on good gaming laptops especially if you don't want giant bulky or cheaply built ones. My 2021 Razer Blade 14 has a 3070 and while the proprietary drivers work, NVIDIA's own implementation of render offloading/PRIME leaves much to be desired, with random screen tearing even when vsync is forced on as soon as the GPU load starts getting high.
- I think you have to be okay with APUs to be satisfied with AMD on laptops. Which at least are decently powerful these days, as long as high res triple AAA gaming isn't a requirement (the Steam Deck is just an APU after all).
strong
- mmm cum
I hope they will also upstream blob-lock(firmware needs to be signed by nvidia) bypass.

13 comments