Nvidia open source driver to use NVK and Zink for OpenGL on newer GPUs

gamingonlinux.com

43 points·mfilion··8 comments

Last time I looked into using nouveau (ca. 2018-2019), there was an issue with the Nvidia firmware (some kind of DRM?) that prevented implementation of proper power management support on recent generations, which made it nearly useless for GPU-heavy applications. Has that changed?

Yes, on newer Nvidia GPUs, power management etc is delegated to an on die RISC-V that runs its own firmware blob. Effectively they’ve moved the kernel driver to the GPU.

Nvidia when open sourcing their kernel driver, showed how to communicate with this blob, so Nouveau have done the same.

I don't see a definitive list anywhere, but it looks like "newer" roughly means RTX 20 series and later? I'm a little disappointed that I can't migrate the older card in my HTPC (ironically, it has a power management issue with the latest Nvidia driver), but I'm glad there's a path forward for nouveau.

It's actually much older, the 700 series from 2013 were the last to ship without signed firmware. 2013 also happened to be the year of the last AMD CPUs without the PSP, so my all-free software computer is still stuck in that year until RISC-V improves.

I believe that is the point on NVK.

Nice, hopefully Linux gamers with Nvidia GPUs will be able to replace Nvidia's blob soon enough with nouveau + nvk + zink.

It's unlikely this will be useable for AI, however

Why not? AI can rely on Vulkan for GPU compute and nvk plans to be fully Vulkan compliant.

There was some separate OpenCL effort I think? I haven't kept track.

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