Ben Skeggs, former Nouveau lead developer and former Red Hat employee has joined NVIDIA. He resigned from Nouveau development as a personal decision removing himself from the MAINTAINERS file September of last year.
After months of being radio silent in Nouveau driver development, Skeggs sent a massive 156-part patch set as a follow-up on the Noveau GSP firmware enablement work, code cleanup, ioctl-like interfaces between NVKM and the Nouveau DMS driver which will reduce driver overhead and call chain complexity.
The important part for this news is that this patch series was submitted using his new NVIDIA work email address.
Strange times indeed since, no one was expecting that Skeggs would be at NVIDIA, and due to the history involved with that company that he would also continue to contribute directly with Nouveau.
Looks like history may be repeating itself with AMD and Radeon…could this be another sign of NVIDIA opening up more?
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Quoting: ShabbyXAre we no longer too few to ignore? :)I blame AI.
All those AI training servers run Linux and NIVIDIA is raking in big bucks, because of them.
A better driver might just what keeps in front of the competition.
11 Likes, Who?
OK, he sent the patches, but are the Nouveau people allowed to use them? I'd want to secure some assurances from NVIDIA that using these patches from a guy that's got access to NVIDIA's internal stuff isn't going to open me to a copyright lawsuit. It's not exactly "clean room".
3 Likes, Who?
Quoting: Purple Library GuyOK, he sent the patches, but are the Nouveau people allowed to use them?
Let's not forget that Nvidia has contributed to Nouveau before:
https://www.phoronix.com/news/NVIDIA-Nouveau-GV11B-Volta-Xav
4 Likes, Who?
Seems like Ben is not the only Nouveau dev to join Nvidia.
Arthur Huillet is also amongst the ranks, and he is contributing directly to NVK.
https://nouveau.freedesktop.org/ArthurHuillet.html
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/merge_requests/28714
That makes two instances of hell freezing over for me :V
Arthur Huillet is also amongst the ranks, and he is contributing directly to NVK.
https://nouveau.freedesktop.org/ArthurHuillet.html
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/merge_requests/28714
That makes two instances of hell freezing over for me :V
9 Likes, Who?
Quoting: GuestThis is bad news. Can likely lead to the Noveau Driver not being developed properly anymore. Perhaps its Nvidia's way of "shutting down" development on the open source driver with seeming like it is.
Why would they send lots of patches then?
I also lean to them enabling the free driver at least for good AI performance. Don't know if they care for graphics performance here in the same way though.
1 Likes, Who?
Quoting: EikeYeah, these weird conspiracy theories need to stop.Quoting: GuestThis is bad news. Can likely lead to the Noveau Driver not being developed properly anymore. Perhaps its Nvidia's way of "shutting down" development on the open source driver with seeming like it is.
Why would they send lots of patches then?
I also lean to them enabling the free driver at least for good AI performance. Don't know if they care for graphics performance here in the same way though.
4 Likes, Who?
TheRiddick Apr 19
This MEME comes to mind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBAdbxjbTM0
Also its my understanding the open-source driver can't do CUDA, DLSS, HDR or HDMI2.1 etc... like its pretty vanilla and may NEVER see those features become a thing?
Last edited by TheRiddick on 19 April 2024 at 12:11 am UTC
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBAdbxjbTM0
Also its my understanding the open-source driver can't do CUDA, DLSS, HDR or HDMI2.1 etc... like its pretty vanilla and may NEVER see those features become a thing?
Last edited by TheRiddick on 19 April 2024 at 12:11 am UTC
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Quoting: GuestQuoting: EikeQuoting: GuestThis is bad news. Can likely lead to the Noveau Driver not being developed properly anymore. Perhaps its Nvidia's way of "shutting down" development on the open source driver with seeming like it is.
Why would they send lots of patches then?
I also lean to them enabling the free driver at least for good AI performance. Don't know if they care for graphics performance here in the same way though.
To be fair this is something that companies like Microsoft are famous for. It's even got a name, "Embrace, Extend, Extinghuish"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
Come on, this patch is coming from a previous maintainer of this very code. So what, he was an open source hero, then went to nvidia and continues working on the same project but now suddenly it's all a conspiracy to thwart open source? That's nonsense.
1 Likes, Who?
Really hope it is a sign of NVIDIA opening up more.
As much as I've expressed that the card I have in my system at the moment is very likely the last time I ever put an NVIDIA card in my system, it would be really nice to see NVIDIA pivot and embrace open-source drivers, as they're unfortunately still where most people look for GPUs. Even with the 40 series, somehow.
Last edited by pilk on 19 April 2024 at 3:25 am UTC
As much as I've expressed that the card I have in my system at the moment is very likely the last time I ever put an NVIDIA card in my system, it would be really nice to see NVIDIA pivot and embrace open-source drivers, as they're unfortunately still where most people look for GPUs. Even with the 40 series, somehow.
Last edited by pilk on 19 April 2024 at 3:25 am UTC
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