nVidia Posts First Linux Graphics Drivers for Opteron

Brian Stretch writes "nVidia posted the first publically available Linux graphics drivers for the Athlon 64 (aka Hammer series) on their website today. There are updates for the lesser x86 and IA64 architectures as well. Now, if only the Athlon 64 and Opteron boards and CPUs themselves were publically available, or is AMD's developer program sending out more of these things than I know? (If so, gimme!) I guess I'll have to tough it out with my mere dual Athlon 2400+ workstation for now (heh heh heh)." In related news, an anonymous reader writes "The new AMD Opteron servers designed by Newisys are using embedded Linux for system management. This allows remote management via web browser or ssh to examine processor state, switch power on/off, regulate processor power states and fan speeds, update BIOS firmware, etc. See the docs for more info!"

Comments

The first? Really?

[Ed Avis]

Are these really the first Linux graphics drivers for Hammer? Surely XFree86 and other graphics systems like the kernel framebuffer are already being ported?

It sounds like this is just the first Hammer release of Nvidia's proprietary, binary-only drivers for cards they won't release specs to. Useful, but hardly any more significant than some other random piece of proprietary software being ported.

Re:Yay

[grahamlee]

Yep, me. I get a little barf every time X starts:

Dec 1 08:57:14 heisenberg kernel: Switching off penguin.

However apart from that the drivers are very sweet and stable, as were the (free and not as good) nv drivers that I used for two days. I've had more trouble with the other graphics card in the box, which is the Intel i810. Used to have random lockups when that was my principle GFX card, especially when playing DVDs.

Drivers

[harks]

Not to be a zealot, this is an honest question: Why dont they open-source their linux drivers? They are giving them away for free anyway, and i would think it could only increase the attraction to their products for some ppl. I can't think of any reason why not to.

PowerPC Drivers?

[Vardamir]

There are Linux drivers for 3 different platforms intel based platforms now. There are OS X drivers for PowerPC. Why can't Nvidia merge some of that code to give us Linux/PPC Nvidia drivers. A lack of a good graphics system for Linux/PPC is the major factor holding it back. Hopefully these things will change once IBM's GPuL hits the shelves.

Re:The first? Really?

[Si_Cowboy_03]

Nvidia - Random Video Card Driver?!

That's like saying that Microsoft is porting some random operating system to the Hammer architecture.

Slashdot Socilogy

[BSDevil]

Since almost no comments here are about the actual post, I've got a cultural question...

Where/How did the "In Soviet Russia..." posts come from? I remember where things like 1.2.3.Profit and the now-passe Mastercard and All Your Base jokes started, but what brought on this spur of neo-Marxist-Lenninist thought?

Re:Yay

[fault0]

I've had absolutely no lockups in X over the past six or so months. The drivers have come a looong way in stablity from the past. I remember about a year and a half ago, I used to get random lockups all the time, even after messing with many things like AGP 4x->2x, sidebanding off, fastwrites off, nvagpagpgart, etc.. But recently, it works fine pretty much out of the box.

Because they're probably protecting trade secrets

[GroundBounce]

I don't work for Nvidia, but if they're like most high end competitive products, there are probably trade secrets involved in their designs. Trade secrets are generally things that might not be patentable, but nonetheless are critical to the technical lead your product might have. The fact that they may not be patentable is why companies try to keep them secret for as long as possible.

In the case of NVidia, it's entirely possible that their driver code would necessarily reveal some of their hardware's trade secrets.

The irony here is that most Slashdotters probably don't have anything big against the need for hardware companies to keep trade secrets in general, but when this necessitates closed-sourcing some of their driver code, everybody screams foul.

I'm all in favor of OSS, and I use OSS for everything I do unless there's no option, but put yourself in their shoes for a moment - if you happened to make the world's fastest consumer video card at some point in time, would you be in a hurry to release details that would likely help your competitors to catch up faster?

You might ask "then how come company X can release open source drivers or specs and NVidia can't?", and this would be a valid question. I don't know the answer, but there are several possibilites. One is that the specs they release to the OSS community don't really have *all* of the details (which would mean their proprietary drivers would always be a little bit faster). Another possibility is that their design is such that the driver code or programming specs don't reveal as many trade secrets.

Re:their competitors will gain

[Buck2]

Is a video card manufacturer's hardware driver a trade secret?

How is this possible? The only way that we can consider software to be a trade secret is if we allow ourselves to believe that the closed source model is good for all. Is the layout of what's under the hood of a Toyota a trade secret? No? Oh. I guess software is more special. We should be happy sticking stuff in one side and getting stuff out the other without having a clue as to what's going on in the middle, even though there is absolutely no reason (in an ideal world) not to share that information.

All that open source advocates are asking for is a chance to better use the equipment that they have purchased. It's still possible to charge however much you want for the driver+card or whatever your business model requires, but, in the long run, the open source dogma says that it's better to let people play with the stuff they've bought.

The only reason why I say that you may be missing the point about open source is because I read a thread where you kept saying, "What's the point? I mean, what's the point? Tell me, what's the point?"

I gave you an example of a direct consequence of "the point" and you say you already know this? Why ask, then?

As for your quip about open-sourcing the plans for building jets, I would think that if it were possible for a heretofore unknown group of non-jet-designing-as-a-full-time-job US citizens (say, graduate students in aerospace engineering, for example) to improve on current plans then we would benefit from those people working on it in their free time, don't you? The DOD could then spend their money on actually building the equipment to make these fancy new designs. This would be the new race.

All open source people generally want is to get as many capable people as possible to attack any and all current, and sometimes unforeseen, problems. This is a good thing. There's not really much bad to say about it. If a couple stupid paradigms have to be changed on the way, so be it.