1.0-9XXX Driver Speculations

[Michael]

As Phoronix has been stating for some time, the next NVIDIA Linux driver release will likely not publicly surface until August or September of this year.

This will be their initial 1.0-9XXX release.

One of the notable highlights in the next driver is X.Org v7.1 support including GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap.

Among the other likely possibilities include a revamped installer and control panel interface.

For those pondering over when the next NVIDIA Linux display driver will be released, it looks like it may POSSIBLY occur during QuakeCon 2006. QuakeCon 2006 (http://www.quakecon.org/) runs from August 3rd to the 6th. This information hasn't yet been confirmed by any sources, and the information is based on a bit more than a hunch.

We have also been staying tuned to Hewlett Packard's FTP servers, among other locations, to see if NVIDIA squeezes out any extra drivers -- such as what they had done with the 1.0-8183 Linux display drivers (http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=6140).

We are working source for more information, and once we have some more details that we are allowed to share, they will be passed on here.

Feel free to speculate at what NVIDIA's upcoming 1.0-9XXX Linux drivers may hold in store, in this thread.

[Shadewalker]

As far as I remember, one of the guys at the nvnews forum mentioned that the next 9XXX driver including the new GL extensions was a possibility without any guarantees. Do you know if the possible release during QuakeCon will be available internally to participants only or public?

[Michael]

As far as I remember, one of the guys at the nvnews forum mentioned that the next 9XXX driver including the new GL extensions was a possibility without any guarantees. Do you know if the possible release during QuakeCon will be available internally to participants only or public?

X 7.1 support and the new GL extension should both be guaranteed for the next release.

It would be a complete public release.

[Shadewalker]

X 7.1 support and the new GL extension should both be guaranteed for the next release.

It would be a complete public release.

How do you know that?

[Michael]

How do you know that?

X.Org 7.1 support? It's been publicly confirmed by NVIDIA.


GL extension? I believe that was also confirmed officially by NVIDIA, but I have also received other information on that from sources.

[Shadewalker]

X.Org 7.1 support? It's been publicly confirmed by NVIDIA.


GL extension? I believe that was also confirmed officially by NVIDIA, but I have also received other information on that from sources.

And what about the release type?

[Michael]

The August/September release time-frame is pretty much a given if you follow their usual release schedule. I believe they *might* have mentioned something like that as well on nvnews.

There will certainly be a new release prior to Fedora Core 6, which will ship with X 7.1, and the OpenSuSE 10.2 release with 7.1 is also scheduled in that late September/early October area (if I recall correctly).

The possible QuakeCon release is based upon other information, which hasn't been officially confirmed. I'm still working on acquiring some additional information on these matters.

[Shadewalker]

The August/September release time-frame is pretty much a given if you follow their usual release schedule. I believe they *might* have mentioned something like that as well on nvnews.

There will certainly be a new release prior to Fedora Core 6, which will ship with X 7.1, and the OpenSuSE 10.2 release with 7.1 is also scheduled in that late September/early October area (if I recall correctly).
That's interesting. From nvnews:

The next driver release will support Xorg-7.1. And before someone asks, I'm afraid that I cannot provide a timeframe for that release right now.

Thanks,
Lonni

So in short, I doubt we should count on any specific date. I also doubt that nVidia takes popular distro release dates into account as far as their display drivers are concerned.

[1c3d0g]

About time nVidia started to support v.7.1. :)

[niniendowarrior]

I agree with Shadewalker, I think it will be difficult to gauge nVidia's release on any time frame.

Maybe it'll get delayed, and delayed... like the last one.

[Michael]

Maybe it'll get delayed, and delayed... like the last one.

Which NVIDIA driver release are you referring to exactly?

[Ryu_Tenchi]

hey, maybe by then they'll have quad SLI working and will have that in there too... anything, else people want to speculate about besides GL_ext for XGL,etc and 7.1 compatablity?

on the not of the previous messages, I'm very hopeful for the release to be when expect(if not earlier) but alas if it's not, such is life

-Ryu

[Michael]

hey, maybe by then they'll have quad SLI working and will have that in there too... anything, else people want to speculate about besides GL_ext for XGL,etc and 7.1 compatablity?

on the not of the previous messages, I'm very hopeful for the release to be when expect(if not earlier) but alas if it's not, such is life

-Ryu

Oops, yes, the next driver release will also support Quad SLI. I failed to mention that earlier.

Public statement: http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=909687&postcount=8

[R3MF]

Given that X.org 7.2 is due out in Oct with improved GLX support it would be nice if nVidia gave this consideration before releasing the 90 drivers.

Seeing as SUSE 10.2 doesn't enter Beta until November I would be amazed if they did not intend to add X.org 7.2 during the Aplha > Beta changeover phase. If like the X.org 7.1/nVidia 87 series debacle the 90 series drivers don't support X.org 7.2 then it will be a real pain for distros with 7.2 between Q4 2006 and Q2 2007.

I have no idea if this suggestion is reasonable or feasible, but:
nVidia tend to do two quick releases followed by a 5 month gap till the next two, so perhaps a Sept release for the initial 90 series, and a late Oct release for the bug-fix 90 series including support for X.org 7.2.............?

[James]

7.2 will break compatibility then?

What are the advantages of 7.2 and 7.1 over <=7.0?

[niniendowarrior]

Which NVIDIA driver release are you referring to exactly?

If I remember correctly, the last driver nVidia released (pre-1.0-9X) was quite delayed and I remember reading on nvnews before about angry users wanting a new driver release. But I may have been assuming things.

[R3MF]

7.2 will break compatibility then?

What are the advantages of 7.2 and 7.1 over <=7.0?

i don't know that it will, but the last update to X.org was incompatible with the latest nVidia drivers, so maybe this will happen again.

[mpcd]

Any chance they might support hardware accelerated font antialiasing? They claim support for this feature in some of their marketing materials, it would be nice to see it come to Linux where it would make a big difference. There are some pretty angry threads out there about this too.

[Shadewalker]

Any chance they might support hardware accelerated font antialiasing? They claim support for this feature in some of their marketing materials, it would be nice to see it come to Linux where it would make a big difference. There are some pretty angry threads out there about this too.
Accelerated font-antialising has nothing to do with them. Really. I don't understand why people would even bring such a subject up. Perhaps their understanding of how the drivers are implemented is lacking.

The nVidia drivers for linux provide mainly two things: a hardware-accelerated implementation of OpenGL using their hardware, GLX implementation and GL headers. As a bonus, they also provide an accelerated version of the XRender X extension, which (as far as I'm aware of) is significantly slower than its software-implemented counterpart.

In a regular GUI application, all drawing is usually performed by a specific toolkit as the backend (Gtk, Qt), and hence, the acceleration part should be implemented in one of these. I'm aware that the X server probably has some standard font routines that could be accelerated, but I think keeping it in the toolkit would be a much better solution.

In conclusion: blame your toolkit, not nVidia. Cairo (http://www.cairographics.org/OpenGL), a GUI backend, accelerates fonts and such, and I believe Qt (version 4, at least) does too.

[mpcd]

Accelerated font-antialising has nothing to do with them. Really. I don't understand why people would even bring such a subject up. Perhaps their understanding of how the drivers are implemented is lacking.



My apologies for misunderstanding. I was reading a thread, (http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=72858) (http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=72858) to be exact, where this is discussion about a lack of 2d acceleration for certain features. AA was also mentioned. Many people seem to think that cards from two generations prior are faster than even the latest nvidia cards in 2d.

What you said about how it is toolkit specific makes perfect sense to me, but I guess at the lowest level I thought it all boiled down to driver implementation - as in the way that the toolkit ends up sending information to the driver. It would seem that acceleration of additional features would improve performance in various areas of 2d including fonts.

Sorry if I derailed the thread.

[Shadewalker]

My apologies for misunderstanding. I was reading a thread, (http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=72858) (http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=72858) to be exact, where this is discussion about a lack of 2d acceleration for certain features. AA was also mentioned. Many people seem to think that cards from two generations prior are faster than even the latest nvidia cards in 2d.

What you said about how it is toolkit specific makes perfect sense to me, but I guess at the lowest level I thought it all boiled down to driver implementation - as in the way that the toolkit ends up sending information to the driver. It would seem that acceleration of additional features would improve performance in various areas of 2d including fonts.

Sorry if I derailed the thread.

I was referring to the thread you mentioned, not to you specifically. The driver implementation if a linux kernel object, which does nothing else than operate on the hardware level. I'm sure nVidia could somehow come up with a hack for X to accelerate certain parts, and that would possibly satisfy the starter of that thread, but it is far from an ideal solution - in my opinion, and I hope it'll never come to that. Perhaps, in the future, if the entire X server depends on the GPU, it will be an attractive solution.

[Michael]

Okay, a bit more information to throw out there today... Most of the information in this article is based solely on NVIDIA's past history, so accept these thoughts as you wish.

If you measure the time from NVIDIA's first public Linux display driver release (May 17, 2001; 1.0-1251) to their most recent non-legacy driver (May 22, 2006; 1.0-8762), and graph it, you will get something like:

http://www.phoronix.com/misc/nv_linux_cycle.jpg

Pardon the version numbers on the bottom getting cut off. This visual pretty much reiterates the long/short release cycle of a few months and then a matter of weeks for a follow-up release. If you base their release cycle on all of the drivers in the past, the average number of days between releases is 70. Coincidently, today is 70 days since the 1.0-8762 driver release. However, if you simply count the time between the major driver releases in the 1.0-7XXX and 1.0-8XXX, there is on average 92 days for the major/longer driver release. With that said, the resulting date based upon NVIDIA's past would push this next driver release to August 22, 2006.

Based upon this NVIDIA release history, as well as a few other tid-bits of information learned from various people in the industry, NVIDIA's inaugural 1.0-9XXX driver release will likely occur within a week of August 23, 2006. This estimated date hasn't been officially confirmed by NVIDIA, so accept this information at your discretion.

[Michael]

Some news today is of NVIDIA's Quado Plex VCS. Two links:

http://www.nvidia.com/page/quadroplex_comparison_chart.html
http://www.nvidia.com/page/quadroplex.html

The Visual Computing System is compatible with Linux (32-bit and 64-bit), and with that it would be logical to bring the new display drivers. NVIDIA is stating this VCS will begin shipping in September, while The Inquirer (http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=33404)is reporting 3 weeks from now.

With this Quadro Plex now, hopefully they will improve the quality of Linux SLI...

I'm still trying to get the August 23rd (+/- a week) Linux driver date confirmed with sources close to NVIDIA. Hopefully some more information will come out during Siggraph.

[Thunderbird]

The new 9xxx drivers will add OpenGL 2.1 and GLSL 1.2 support :)

[Michael]

It also looks like there will be some nvidia-settings improvements -- http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=74657

[1c3d0g]

The new 9xxx drivers will add OpenGL 2.1 and GLSL 1.2 support :)
Yay! :D I LOVE nVidia! :cool:

[Thunderbird]

A big part of the changes in NV-CONTROL already exist in the current drivers but nvidia-settings doesn't use those yet. Neither do I in nvclock..

Further 1.0-9xxx won't be out soon, there will be a new 1.0-8xxx release first containing 7.1 support.

[Michael]

...release will likely occur within a week of August 23, 2006.

This looks like it will indeed be the case.

[rinthos]

Michael,

Will this be the 9xxx release, or another 8xxx release?

Thanks,
---

[Michael]

It looks like a final 1.0-8XXX release may be squeezed in, I am still trying to confirm that.

[darktama]

It looks like a final 1.0-8XXX release may be squeezed in, I am still trying to confirm that.
Is this confirmation enough, from #nvidia on Sun 12 Aug (Australia time):

11:54 AaronP: +stillunknown_: Sorry, I was on the phone.
11:54 AaronP: +The driver is actually ready, we're just waiting for the web guys to post it to the website.
11:54 AaronP: +I would guess that it should happen sometime next week, but I can't make any guarantees.
11:55 strawman: +any idea what the version is, AaronP ?
11:57 AaronP: +8774
11:57 strawman: +thanks

[Patrick]

Thanks darktama- Has AaronP said anything about the changes?

[darktama]

Thanks darktama- Has AaronP said anything about the changes?
Not to my knowledge, but my guess is that it's the same as 1.0-8762 with the Xorg 7.1 ABI changes and possibly a couple of bugfixes.

[Michael]

...release will likely occur within a week of August 23, 2006

This still looks like it will hold true ;)

[Michael]

Only one day off the prediction :)

[R3MF]

is there likely to be another ABI/API break between X.org 7.1 and 7.2 as happened between 7.0 and 7.1?

i ask because a major feature of the 9 series drivers is the GLX_rtp support, and a major feature of X.org 7.2 is improved XGL/AIGLX support.
therfore it would make sense to ensure that they will work together......

regards

[Michael]

is there likely to be another ABI/API break between X.org 7.1 and 7.2 as happened between 7.0 and 7.1?

i ask because a major feature of the 9 series drivers is the GLX_rtp support, and a major feature of X.org 7.2 is improved XGL/AIGLX support.
therfore it would make sense to ensure that they will work together......

regards

A driver update will likely be needed for X.Org v7.2.

The next NVIDIA Linux driver release should also support the MCP61 -- http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=975941&postcount=4

[R3MF]

given that RC versions of X.org 7.2 will be out in Oct, and the final release due in early November, would it therefore make sense for nVidia to leave the 9 series driver till the same period so that it is API comliant with the latest release of X.org?

[Michael]

given that RC versions of X.org 7.2 will be out in Oct, and the final release due in early November, would it therefore make sense for nVidia to leave the 9 series driver till the same period so that it is API comliant with the latest release of X.org?

Not necessarily, but NVIDIA has been so unpredictable with their release schedule, you never know what will end up happening. :confused:

[R3MF]

there is some hope that SUSE 10.2 due in early December will include X.org 7.2 so there is a good reason for nVidia to ensure a compliant 9 series driver.

if 7.2 will break the API again, they could either:
1) make the 9 series drivers 7.2 compliant only, (after all, they have now released a 7.1 compliant driver already).
2) do an initial 9 series release for 7.1 and then rapidly do a recompile for 7.2 in order to quickly support post November distro releases.

whatever they do, i hope they don't do what they did for 7.1, i.e. ignore it for as long as they could.

[1c3d0g]

Or, what X.org could do is try to maintain compatibility this time. How about that? :-/

[R3MF]

X has a long and clunky history, and is being asked to accomodate lots of new inovations.

keeping the API static would probably greatly inhibit the adoption of new rendering/compositing technologies.

[Michael]

Onto the 1.0-9XXX drivers... I have heard no official word on anything recently.

They should be here soon as they need to support the Quadro Plex, which should be shipping anytime. (The Quadro Plex officially supports Linux, and any user that just lays down ~$18k on a graphics solution should have drivers) In addition, the GeForce 7950GT and 7900GS will be shipping today. Perhaps the inaugural Rel90 driver will be out mid-September?

[R3MF]

cheers

any idea on X.org 7.2 support?

[Michael]

No clue yet on the X.Org 7.2 support...

This is a clear guess, but I would imagine no immediate support for X.Org 7.2 with the initial Rel90 drivers. The next versions of Ubuntu and Fedora are coming out in October, and they will ship with X.Org 7.1. SuSE 10.2 seems to be the only MAJOR distribution in the immediate future that will likely adapt X 7.2. So it's just a guess that the support won't come too soon, unless the ABI changes are minimal.

[Michael]

MCP61 support in the 1.0-9XXX drivers is confirmed.

[1c3d0g]

I can't wait for the new 1.0.9xxx series, hopefully it'll give us all a nice performance boost. :)

[Michael]

Some more thoughts and information (and compacting most of the information in this thread) is @ http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=7380

[R3MF]

i like nvidia hardware, and i am willing to go with nvidia with their stated preference for AIGLX over XGL.

this leaves me in a quandry as my preferred linux vendor is SUSE who heavily support XGL...........

what chance that when nvidia and ati have both released drivers supporting GLX_rtp and SUSE have released a X.org 7.1/2 compliant distro that they will support both AIGLX and XGL?

[Michael]

what chance that when nvidia and ati have both released drivers supporting GLX_rtp and SUSE have released a X.org 7.1/2 compliant distro that they will support both AIGLX and XGL?

XGL shouldn't have any problems running with either ATI or NVIDIA's current closed-source drivers. As soon as the new GLX extension is supported with the respective drivers, AIGLX should have no problems running. Was that your question?

[R3MF]

more whether SUSE would support AIGLX, or just stick with XGL?

tho i did hear that GLX_rtp extension would allow XGL desktops to play games without slowdown just like AIGLX is supposed to achieve, in which case the objective is achieved..........