"On the Phoronix Forums we have been running a Q&A with the developers of the Nouveau project. For those out of the loop or new to Linux, the Nouveau project aims to provide an open-source 2D/3D graphics driver for NVIDIA hardware. After collecting a number of questions from our readers, KoalaBR and Marcheu have answered these questions. The questions range from whether there will be open-source SLI support to asking if NVIDIA has ever contacted the Nouveau developers."
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Member since:2005-10-13
It seems like the most progress has been made on 6xxx and 7xxx series cards, which aren't exactly the latest and greatest - I think they are probably the most popular linux graphics cards right now. I do think you could make an argument that supporting the older cards first would be simpler and allow extensions to then work on newer cards, but I'm not sure if that is really true or not. Maybe the architecture just changes too much between releases.
Edited 2007-09-04 05:29
RE[4]: Good luck for this project
Member since:2005-07-06
Have you read the NVIDIA driver license lately?
http://www.nvidia.com/content/license/location_0605.asp?url=-1
6.1 No Warranties. TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND NVIDIA AND ITS SUPPLIERS DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
6.2 No Liability for Consequential Damages. TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, IN NO EVENT SHALL NVIDIA OR ITS SUPPLIERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES WHATSOEVER (INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, DAMAGES FOR LOSS OF BUSINESS PROFITS, BUSINESS INTERRUPTION, LOSS OF BUSINESS INFORMATION, OR ANY OTHER PECUNIARY LOSS) ARISING OUT OF THE USE OF OR INABILITY TO USE THE SOFTWARE, EVEN IF NVIDIA HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
Member since:2005-08-18
"That's what customers want--a product that's guarenteed by somebody."
Because that was all the commercial companies are doing. Have you actually ever read an EULA? Its' pretty much just a way for the company to not take any responsability whatsoever for their product. MS, Sun, Apple, IBM etc, all the same. If something goes wrong, it's not their fault and not their responsability.
Member since:2005-10-02
Member since:2006-04-20
Well, yes you are right in the sense that the nVidia drivers work reasonably well, and are easily installed on most distros.
The thing is, the Nouveau team will always be several steps behind nVidia, simply because they are trying to reverse engineer something. This takes considerable time, and if the Nouveau team focus on cards that are old (eg, 2 years or more), by the time they have developed a fully functional driver for it, it will be well and truly ancient, and even people clinging to old hardware may have moved on.
If you are going to reverse engineer something, start with the 8800/8600 series, because by the time you have a fully functional driver for these cards, they will be starting to look a bit old.
So yes, it is worthwhile for users of older hardware to have these drivers, but the definition of older hardware will shift, and what is bleeding edge today will be older hardware by the time you get a decent driver written for it.
Unless of course nVidia or ATI/AMD open up their drivers, or Intel actually make graphics hardware worth using...
Member since:2005-07-08
The parent comment shows a lack of understanding of how graphics cards and most other kinds of technologies evolve through product generations. It assumes that reverse-engineering the 8 series is distinct effort compared to reverse-engineering older NVIDIA cards. This is simply not the case.
For one thing, as you can see from the article, the "reverse-engineering" is not the most resource-intensive part of the process of producing an alternative graphics driver. The Nouveau team already knows most of what they need to know about the cards. The implementation is significantly more work than the discovery of the functionality.
But more importantly, the various generations of NVIDIA cards are related to one another much like the layers of a Russian matryoshka doll. It doesn't make sense to create a driver for the 8 series without implementing the previous generations as functional subsets.
Similarly, it doesn't make sense to work from the outside in. Basic 2D comes before textures, T&L, and the various iterations of programmable shader models. Besides the engineering sensibility, very few applications use the most recent shader models. The leading-edge applications often trail the hardware by 6-12 months, and most applications are multiple generations behind.
The same marketing ploys that inform the parent have consumers buying cards with features they might not use until after they jump on the upgrade treadmill yet again. By the time applications start using the features, the graphics cabal will have long since started beating the drums that tell consumers that these cards are "starting to look a bit old".
Case in point: the latest midrange performance box recommended by Ars is under $1500 US including monitor, speakers, and input devices. This includes a $379 graphics card, equal to the CPU, motherboard, and half of the memory combined (or more than four times the cost of all of the memory).
If I didn't know better, I'd say it seemed like there might be something fishy about this conspicuous splurge on one item within a system that is otherwise quite modest.
It simply doesn't make sense to spend so much money on a graphics card for a Linux box. I can't imagine what I'd do with anything beyond a 7600GT, just about the cheapest card with dual-DVI. A hardware MPEG decoder would be nice, but as the article explains, there's currently no way to expose it to applications through X11 or OpenGL.
Plus, with quad-core CPUs reaching down into the sweetspot and many more cores on the horizon, the case for discrete accelerators in general is gradually eroding. Between Fusion, Larrabee, and SSE5, it's becoming more and more likely that the CPU will win the stream processing tug of war in the mainstream space.
I for one welcome the impending niche-ification of specialized graphics processors (discrete and integrated alike). I was never a fan of the clunky, proprietary programming models anyway, and common form factors were never designed to properly address the thermal dilemma of 130W expansion cards.
But in the meantime, the free software graphics community should ignore the hype and focus on implementing the subset of functionality (on as many cards as possible) that is likely to be the most useful for our application developers. Even Carmack is fed up with the marketing machine.
Enough is enough. The parent comment is an example of the strained logic that has been widely indoctrinated in the enthusiast community. It doesn't take a thermonuclear jet engine to enjoy a rich multimedia experience. Just some honesty and some efficient free software.
Member since:
2007-07-10
I don't understand what you're trying to do with this argument - it is worthwhile for users of older or non-mainstream hardware to have these capabilities, it is for these users that an open-source solution (which can service the long tail of the market) is necessary. Why have nouveau focus on only the latest and greatest, when some just want their cards to 'work'? Your argument would make more sense if you were advocating nvidia to open source their own drivers - and I don't think that ethical quandaries over 'binary blobiness' is what's stopping linux from making inroads on the desktop OS scene.