According to TechPowerUp today, Nvidia has released an open source GPU acceleration framework, to be used in big-data crunching and machine learning. That’s right, open source!!!
It seems that if there is a financial motive, Nvidia actually can participate in the open source world. It’s up to us now, to to provide them with that motivation. At the VERY least, Nvidia should not be thwarting the efforts of the Nouveau team.
Not exactly sure how to feel … cautiously optimistic?
Edit: Just dropping these links here, for convenience:
This is VERY interesting… will be keeping tabs on this topic
Nvidia looking for some good PR by open sourcing their GPU framework? I find it funny that this gets released after Torvalds ‘takes a break from Linux’.
This isn’t the first time Nvidia has open sourced software. A handful of their stuff for the Shield was open sourced too.
Put bluntly, Nvidia doesn’t really have a choice but to open source stuff used for machine learning, because super-computer style crunching happens on a wide variety of architectures, and it would be cost prohibitive for them to maintain builds for all of them.
Still, as a Linux user, this doesn’t really matter. Nvidia sells hardware that doesn’t work without proprietary drivers, and until they correct that flaw (like Intel and AMD already have), I still don’t care about them.
Linus’ “Fuck You” still stands. I’ll consider purchasing Nvidia cards again when there’s a GPU-accelerated driver in the mainline Linux kernel, and not until then. It’s literally the least they can do.
RAPIDS is a push to drive more demand for Tesla cards in the datacenter. They’ll need to do more to excite me as a buyer of consumer-grade equipment.
Dang, saw Nvidia and hell freezing over combined and was sure they finally broke on adaptive sync. Oh well.
My stance also. I suppose I am too optimistic in hoping there will be an open source driver.
I don’t think this is anything too big. RAPIDS isn’t completely standalone from a standard desktop GPU driver and while it be helpful with large data centers, the end user won’t benefit at all from it. I’d be surprised if there was anything beneficial to the standard open source drivers in that source code.
Point being, I highly doubt this is of any use to the consumer and I don’t believe this means Nvidia will continue the trend. As for them open sourcing stuff for the shield, they were sort of forced to given licensing constraints.
I’m not optimistic on it.
Nvidia devs are talented engineers, and a bunch of them want to see open source drivers, too. They’d enjoy their jobs more if they got to improve their work as part of a community.
Unfortunately, Nvidia uses software-based limitations to differentiate their product line, and in some cases, prevent cannibalization of certain products. They’re annoying about GPU passthrough because they really don’t want their consumer grade cards in datacenters, for instance. (Error Code 43)
I expect 5 years, minimum, before an open source driver gets executive approval. It’ll take that long before they feel they’ve differentiated their product lines enough to not be afraid of it.
I wonder what impact this will have on nouveau.
Apache is compatable with MIT so I wonder if portions of this could help them.
Though I entirely expect GTX cards to be excluded from this.
Couldn’t this help out though? Maybe they’re seeing if this raises opportunities? And maybe if this goes well, and is well received it may encourage them to do more opensource other things concerning the stuff we actually care about?
I believe it’s Nvidia’s way of dipping their toes in the water, to see if it may be profitable? Maybe if they get good feedback it leads to more?
Well as I’ve said before. They aren’t going to care about desktop stuff. Ever. If they make anything FOSS its for supercomputers and shit.
Atd what’d I tell ya.
Supercomputer stuff.
Woo.
Until recently, I’ve been on Team Green, since before AMD acquired ATI and sadly, I believe that you are right. They simply don’t give a damn. Therefore, I’ve decided not to give a damn right back at 'em. It doesn’t matter to me how fast their latest Titan (or whatever their halo product is currently named), is, because I don’t have the budget for those cards, anyway. Instead, I’ll be supporting those manufactures that best support Linux, with open source drivers and/or support for the teams developing those drivers. I’m also not buying a Quadro card, just to run a single virtualized instance of Windows on my home PC. Nvidia can shove their shenanigans up their jumper. I’m done with them, until they change their attitude.
None. I fully expect nVidia have engineered all of this in their usual practices. Locking it for consumers, make sure the GTX cards don’t work with it, stop VMs using it, AMD above all make sure there is not way for users to make use of this for their games.
Unless you do machine learning, this is a nothing burger.
Tbh it doesn’t matter what they do, people still buy it.
And, imo, an rx580 is goo enough for most games, if not all. At least mine is :3
I also just don’t get the MOAR FRAMS mentality. I get that overclocking for big scores on leader boards is fun, shur, but just having a 1080ti to play quake or something doesn’t make sense to me. IMO 130FPS is the max that I benefit from in FPS games. I don’t need 300. And in othder games, Deus Ex MD for example, the only graphical benefit I can get is if it ray traces the light engine. The game looks amazing on its own, even at medium. And I ran it at high till the FPS bug half way through the game at l/aunch chugged it to 20FPS, and changing to medium changed like… the texture of newspapers in the streets.
Ooohhhh nooo I need dem noosepapers.
Still loving on an R9 290, and nothing is “unplayable” I keep everything so that it does not drop below 40 fps for any period of time. Most of the time 60+ so meh… Not ultra 4k or anything but it pushes pixels just fine still.
I always laugh when I see the frenzy to update from a brand new card that was bought 6 months ago because it is “out of date”…
Whatever. People can waste their money. Unless some amazing deal happens that I can get a 16GB graphics card, I don’t think I’ll be buying a new one soon. 8GB will last for years.
I want GPUs with HBM, GDDR6 and 2 DDR4 slots. Then it can load all textures to GPU and just swap them arround to get the required stuff closer to the core.
Agreed on all points.
I don’t presume to tell others what to do with their cash, but I would hope that they stop and think for two seconds, what they are endorsing/promoting with their purchase. So long as Nvidia are rewarded for their bad behaviour, they have no incentive to change. Please don’t interpret this as suggesting that AMD should be canonized. AMD aren’t perfect, merely less imperfect. Meanwhile, there are eminently viable alternatives to Team Green hardware, which are frequently cheaper.
I used to get between 250 and 300FPS on Deux Ex HR, with my antique GTX780. I really don’t think that 400FPS will in any way improve my enjoyment of that game. Newer Windows games obviously require more powerful hardware, but since I stopped buying Windows games years ago, this is no longer an issue for me.