Nouveau Makes Its Own NV40 Firmware Replacement

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Nouveau Makes Its Own NV40 Firmware Replacement

Since last week the DRM code for the Nouveau driver has been in the mainline kernel code-base for its official debut with the Linux 2.6.33 kernel. However, by default this DRM will not work with hardware newer than the GeForce 5 series as there is some firmware that must be loaded...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=NzgxMQ

[d4ddi0]

This is what should happen to binary blobs in open source drivers.

Kudos.

[Melcar]

Incredibly sexy news.

[Louise]

What does the ctx_voodoo actually do? Is it like a BIOS that initializes the GPU and such?

[DeepDayze]

What does the ctx_voodoo actually do? Is it like a BIOS that initializes the GPU and such?

That's what I believe it is...something like what the ATOMbios is to ATI cards

I think this stripped down version of the ctx_voodoo blob should at least provide basic 3d stuff. If you wanted the better stuff you'd then have to load the native nvidia firmware blob

[hax0r]

What does the ctx_voodoo actually do? Is it like a BIOS that initializes the GPU and such?

"The point of context switching is to allow several clients to access the card at the same time, without bad hardware level interference. Those clients will typically be the X server and OpenGL applications. Indeed, the 2D driver owns one hardware context, while every OpenGL client takes one more." - http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/ContextSwitching

AFAIK, proper name would be ctxprogs/ctxvals.

[bulletxt]

At this point my question is: what is so secret about it? Why can't nvidia release the source code of things like this? I mean, I'm starting to believe NVIDIA will have an hard time with linux at the end of next year and starting from 2011.

If AMD and Intel continue like they are doing, I see no real future for NVIDIA in the Linux market. Maybe in some professional areas, but are we sure on the long term a binary blob will win over open source drivers? I bet 10$ and a cup of coffee that NVIDIA is the one that will loose. And I'm actually not happy because NVIDIA knows how to write software, they could contribute to the open drivers in such an incredible way that I'm sure that if all GPU vendors have open drivers NVIDIA will continue to lead the GPU market EVEN with open source drivers. They just have to get the courage to get this decision...

[FireBurn]

At this point my question is: what is so secret about it? Why can't nvidia release the source code of things like this? I mean, I'm starting to believe NVIDIA will have an hard time with linux at the end of next year and starting from 2011.

If AMD and Intel continue like they are doing, I see no real future for NVIDIA in the Linux market. Maybe in some professional areas, but are we sure on the long term a binary blob will win over open source drivers? I bet 10$ and a cup of coffee that NVIDIA is the one that will loose. And I'm actually not happy because NVIDIA knows how to write software, they could contribute to the open drivers in such an incredible way that I'm sure that if all GPU vendors have open drivers NVIDIA will continue to lead the GPU market EVEN with open source drivers. They just have to get the courage to get this decision...

If you look at who Nvidia is targeting - businesses and OEMs the folks that don't care about OSS and just wan't something that works and they can sell

Ion is a prime example

[Louise]

At this point my question is: what is so secret about it? Why can't nvidia release the source code of things like this? I mean, I'm starting to believe NVIDIA will have an hard time with linux at the end of next year and starting from 2011.

If AMD and Intel continue like they are doing, I see no real future for NVIDIA in the Linux market. Maybe in some professional areas, but are we sure on the long term a binary blob will win over open source drivers? I bet 10$ and a cup of coffee that NVIDIA is the one that will loose. And I'm actually not happy because NVIDIA knows how to write software, they could contribute to the open drivers in such an incredible way that I'm sure that if all GPU vendors have open drivers NVIDIA will continue to lead the GPU market EVEN with open source drivers. They just have to get the courage to get this decision...

nVidia will win big! They haven't spend a cent developing the open source drivers.

And I am pretty sure that is their secret plan. If the Nouveau developers stopped what they do, nVidia might start releasing specs.

No doubt AMD got the mind share right now, and once it have come to a point where it "just works", that will spread like heat on a Pentium 4, and it will hurt nVidia sells.

Because no one wants to spend time on getting their hardware to work, if AMD's work out of the box.

nVidia have scored pretty big on that on Linux.

But nothing beats a full featured distribution with Compiz enabled at first boot.

[Louise]

If you look at who Nvidia is targeting - businesses and OEMs the folks that don't care about OSS and just wan't something that works and they can sell

But those that use Linux are aware of the driver situation, and if one vendor "just works out of the box"... That will effect OEM's and workstation sells.

It is like XP. People use at work what they use home and visa versa.

If the guy that orders the hardware and software, are used to AMD on Linux, that just works, with no work done on his side, he is going to order AMD machines at work.