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NVIDIA To Publicly Release Some Tegra GPU Documentation
An anonymous reader writes "It was revealed today during the annual X.Org Developers' Conference in Germany that NVIDIA will be publicly releasing Tegra graphics programming documentation. Initially this will cover their Tegra 2D engine but it's thought they might also be providing 3D engine documentation too. A slide shown at the conference says NVIDIA is committed to open-source. NVIDIA also allegedly has supplied documentation under NDA to one Nouveau developer and taken other covertly supportive steps. These actions come after NVIDIA has been notoriously unfriendly to open-source and months after Linus Torvalds pubilcly slammed the NVIDIA Linux support."
Initially this will cover their Tegra 2D engine but it's wished they might also be providing 3D engine documentation too.
ftfy
"NVIDIA also allegedly has supplied documentation under NDA to one Nouveau developer"
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but isn't this a bad thing? Because he's seen it under an NDA, he now is prevented from using it, which he otherwise could if he had figured it out on his own?
Wasnt the Linus shaming them for not supporting Optimus (which would help a lot of netbooks and laptops) and not about Tegra (which works but is not opensource, and hence makes custom ROMs difficult)
How is NVIDIA unfriendly toward open source. They have the only high-end cards that work consistently on both Linux and FreeBSD. They've been maintaining their drivers for open source operating systems for years.
GPUs can have completely open drivers while remaining quite closed on the hardware side. The one thing they're worried about, their precious shader compilers -- aren't even really needed. Give us an instruction reference to target and we'll make our own damned compiler, and after a while it'll be even better than the proprietary one. It's difficult to believe that it's taking so long to get documentation for something so basic.
My car's subwoofer uses a Tegra and Bunny based motherboard, so it'd be good to be able to program it so my car can go "boom" a little louder.
The operative word being "some"
we will see if they really do release useful documentation or if this is just smoke and mirrors to try to limit the damage from Linus comments.
I suspect its just a marketing stunt to try to damage control their android clients (that is why they will release info only about the tegra chip), if not they would also announce the release of docs for the other cards (even if small parts, 2D only).
Even for damage control, they took away too long, people that didnt knew/cared about nvidia open source position, learn from on of the top leaders that NVIDIA sucks, and if a leader points to a major problem, everyone looks at it.
Even if this is really a new policy, they still have a long way to help the 3D development and catch up the Intel and AMD.
Not until NVIDIA really supports the Linux and other open source OS with open drivers and documentations i will buy another nvidia card, nor recommend it... even in tablets (ARM have many closed parts, but at least MALI 400 have already a open drive in the forge)
Higuita
I love their hardware, but their drivers suck. I just switched back to Nouveau so I could have a decent framebuffer. Gripes about systemd sucking aside, and the fact that Plymouth just doesn't work for my setup, I'd really like it if nVidia would just start supporting Nouveau full on - if they have to make certain precautions, they could treat bits they provide as firmwares or something to prevent whatever they see as intellectual property from getting "stolen."
Furthermore, why VMWare works with the Gallium3D project, yet doesn't support 3D acceleration under the nouveau drivers on a host is beyond me, but really stupid. I'll be buying ATI next time.
N/T (IATOP)
I read articles stating that nvidia open sourced the nv X driver with the installer, config, and settings that works with the proprietary driver so if anything goes wrong that makes a new kernel incompatible with a current nvidia driver the open source community only have to modify the open source that nvidia offers to make the current driver install on the new kernel. But, I never had any issue with nvidia and ati proprietary drivers for the linux compared to the full open source versions which have bugs and glitches. I run some windows games in wine and they run pretty fast with minor graphical glitches.
Microsoft pays for the ati and nvidia source code and yet kde is still on par or faster than windows 7 aero.
Its kinda of telling just how open source hostile and unfriendly Nivida is when they make Microsoft look like an ally.
So in the words of Linus Torvalds "Hey Nvidia, Fuck You!"
---- GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
I wish this article was titled "Nvidia might release some unknown stuff" rather than implying Nvidia are going to release ANYTHING interesting....
Why haven't they released the documentation?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Oh, you want Optimus documentation? Here, have some documentation! ... for Tegra ... 2D.
If you are going to try to troll something like that try to make it a bit more believable.
Such as.
Just announced: to release a notarized statement from PriceWaterhouseCooper saying he payed an average 20% effective tax rate when he was 20.
or
Just announced: to release a notarized statement from PriceWaterhouseCooper saying he payed an average 20% effective tax rate over the last 20 years on 2% of his income. The rest was taxed at a rate of 8%.
or
Just announced: to release a notarized statement from PriceWaterhouseCooper saying he payed an average 20% effective tax rate over the last 20 years on his private yacht.
Yeah, he has more money than you and me. We should so totally hate his guts! I mean, it's what all the cool kids do. That's what the world needs - more hatred and petty bickering, not because the guy did something bad to harm you, but because we always have to be in other peoples' business, approving and disapproving, sitting on our high horse and deciding how everything should be.
Live and let live? No way in hell. That's too simple, peaceful, and doesn't give us nearly enough to get angry about! We need that visceral satisfaction of condemnation, which is the only satisfaction empty people will ever know. Someone else must be blamed for our problems. Someone well-off. That will teach them to have things someone else doesn't have!
Obama is dirt-poor by the way, just like all the other kids who've spent lots of time at Harvard. He made his millions from selling books and not from running a business, so that's okay. His money is less evil than Romney's. And we are totally unbiased in every way, evaluating everyone by the same standard.
The open source drivers are less well developed precisely becuase the developers did not have the hardware specifications and had they had them, you could pretty much guarantee they would work better than the closed source versions.
BSD is not open in the sense that at anytime the code can be made proprietary. There is no license like the GPL forcing a downstream developer to ensure their code remains open. This ability to re-lockin precludes it from having true openness and any other trolling missdirection is only more of the new slashdot.
You need to look up the word "hate" in the dictionary, as it apparently doesn't mean what you think it does.
Clue: hate does not mean "Probably disagrees with on one or two issues, and is possibly critical of some aspects of the other party's behavior."