The Back Story On The Open NVIDIA Tegra Driver

[phoronix]

Phoronix: The Back Story On The Open NVIDIA Tegra Driver

New details have been shared with Phoronix about the back-story that led to the work on the open-source NVIDIA Tegra DRM graphics driver that will be introduced in the Linux 3.8 kernel...

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

[Tundra]

Ok, NVIDIA doing open source drivers is a good thing, but not good enough. When can we expect a desktop driver for GeForce/Quadro cards?

Why did it take some other company developing their own driver to make NVIDIA understand they CAN and SHOULD do it?

Will it take another one doing a GeForce driver?

[blackiwid]

Ok, NVIDIA doing open source drivers is a good thing, but not good enough. When can we expect a desktop driver for GeForce/Quadro cards?

Why did it take some other company developing their own driver to make NVIDIA understand they CAN and SHOULD do it?

Will it take another one doing a GeForce driver?

so 3d is not that importent, but does mean 2d-driver that you can decode hd-videos or will that stay close, if so... nice for your medical usecases or whatever... but will than have no use for consumers...

[przemoli]

so 3d is not that importent, but does mean 2d-driver that you can decode hd-videos or will that stay close, if so... nice for your medical usecases or whatever... but will than have no use for consumers...

If Nvidia end up (or whoever) improving kernel drivers that are generic. Then everybody who will use new hw will benefit.

[Tundra]

so 3d is not that importent, but does mean 2d-driver that you can decode hd-videos or will that stay close, if so... nice for your medical usecases or whatever... but will than have no use for consumers...

A 2D driver starts with basic hardware initialization, and if they keep it up to date, that would enable a "functional" desktop from where you can choose to install the privative driver (or not). That's always better than a black screen.

They used to do that with NV, and that basic initialization gave nouveau developers a firs step to use new cards (not much, but now it's even harder), but they caned it.

[Veerappan]

so 3d is not that importent, but does mean 2d-driver that you can decode hd-videos or will that stay close, if so... nice for your medical usecases or whatever... but will than have no use for consumers...

If we have a DRM driver with 2D and video acceleration, that's less stuff that the OSS developers would need to develop (or reverse engineer) themselves. Note, this doesn't mean that Nvidia are never doing a 3D driver for Tegra, just that they haven't done it yet. Maybe they won't do a 3D Open-Source Tegra driver, but maybe they will.

[uid313]

I hope open source will be a tradition to be continued for upcoming Nvidia socs in the future such as Tegra 4 and later.

Thanks Avionic Design!