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.

Jesus

[cca93014]

I guess I'll have to tough it out with my mere dual Athlon 2400+ workstation for now

oh do shut up

Why tell us....

[Deltan]

I guess I'll have to tough it out with my mere dual Athlon 2400+ workstation for now (heh heh heh).

I don't think anyone here cares how big your e-penis is, and no... I won't stroke it.

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.

Re:Drivers

[joshki]

This comment is posted every single time anyone mentions anything about Nvidia, and it's starting to get old. Nvidia can't open-source the drivers, due to licensing issues. Also, why do you honestly care? Nvidia is supporting the linux (and now the FreeBSD) crowd just as well as they are the windows crowd -- personally, as long as they keep releasing drivers, I don't care whether they open-source or not.
Insightful, indeed.

Re:Drivers

[(startx)]

this question is asked (and answered) in just about every nvidia related article that comes up on /., so I'll summarize. There are bits and pieces of their drivers which they do not own the rights to (ex. S3TC compression). Also, most of the bang for their video cards comes from the drivers, and they don't want to just give that away. Did you ever notice every time someone shows a benchmark with an ATI card faster than a nvidia card, nvidia releases new drivers with "25%" permformance increases!?!? The whole damn card must be software, since this new driver was larger than the rest of my kernel!

translation of comments.

[LordYUK]

"tough it out with my mere dual AMD 2400 (heh heh heh)"...

I havent gotten laid since October of '67. (sob sob sob)

Obligatory comment

[miltimj]

I guess I'll have to tough it out with my mere dual Athlon 2400+ workstation for now (heh heh heh).

[sigh] You're bragging about a single dual Athlon machine when I've got a beowulf cluster of those??..

Clarifying Opteron vs. Athlon 64

[EchoMirage]

To clarify AMD's processor naming scheme for those who haven't been keeping up with the Joneses, the Athlon 64 is AMD's 64-bit desktop and mobile CPU, while the Opteron is AMD's 64-bit server and workstation CPU. Both utilize the x86-64 architecture, which is essentially an extension of the existing x86 instruction set for 64 bits.

A few key differences between the two are that the Opteron will be multiprocessor-enabled and have three HyperTransport pipes (each providing a theoretical 6.4GB/s of throughput) versus one in the Athlon 64. The Opteron will also have more on-die L2 cache (1MB and 2MB are being talked about right now), and will draw quite a bit more power (90W+ vs. ~65W for the Athlon 64).

Re:well,

[LinuxGeek8]

From the specfile of Mandrake's rpm for XFree86:
http://cvs.mandrakesoft.com/cgi-bin/cvsw eb.cgi/SPE CS/XFree86/XFree86.spec

%ifarch x86_64
#define XF86CardDrivers mga fbdev vga ati savage nv glint vesa \
DevelDrivers XF86OSCardDrivers XF86ExtraCardDrivers
%endif

And part of the changelog:
* Mon Nov 04 2002 Gwenole Beauchesne 4.2.1-6mdk
- Build more drivers for x86-64

So I guess those drivers have been built for at least a month now in Mandrake's XFree86 rpm on x86-64.

Re:The first? Really?

[isaac]

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

They are not the first. I saw at least one Opteron-based 1U system running XFree in the AMD booth at SC2002, just a few weeks ago. No idea what the video/driver subsystems were like (maybe fbdev?).

Wouldn't be surprised if this was the first x86-64 driver to support hardware accelleration though.

-Isaac

Re:The first? Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

binary-only drivers for cards they won't release specs to

Whinge.

They can't. There is IP involved they don't own, both from S3 and SGI.

Not that this hasn't been said everytime some jackass whined about the same thing. And not that it'll help morons like you who don't have a clue how business works understand this little concept.

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:The first? Really?

[bm_luethke]

They said the first public release of thier drivers. Past instances of SC have generally shown future work (as in beta stuff), not current tech. I'm willing to bet that there are other graphics drivers from other vendors that are still internal.

Plus if you don't know what video/driver subsystem how do you know it was not nvidia (and hence, still the first)?