if it's being loaded at hypervisor layer via vfio-pci, then within the KVM VM it loads the nvidia binary blob, even if at the KVM layer it has kernel space privs, at the hypervisor layer it does not.

ooof. I remember discussing how effective those drivers were compared to the open source AMD ones a few years back. Now the open AMD drivers are good and there is all more more reason to be skeptical of the binary blob.

"stallman was right"