Aiming to completely replace closed-source drivers, NVIDIA announced a full shift to open-source GPU kernel modules

According to news from this site on July 18, NVIDIA issued a press release yesterday (July 17), announcing a comprehensive shift to open source GPU kernel modules. Subsequent versions will provide more powerful and comprehensive support for GeForce and Workstation Linux. And plans to eventually completely replace closed source drivers.

NVIDIA announced in May 2022 that it will release open source GPU kernel modules under the GPL/MIT dual license model starting with the R515 driver.

Developers can trace code paths and understand how kernel event dispatch interacts with their workloads for faster root cause debugging.

Additionally, enterprise software developers can now seamlessly integrate drivers into custom Linux kernels configured for their projects.

NVIDIA stated that after more than 2 years of development, the open source GPU kernel module has achieved equal or better performance and added a large number of new features:

Support for heterogeneous memory management (HMM)

Confidential computing

and Grace platform Consistent memory architecture

Supported GPUs

Note from this site: Not all GPUs are compatible with open source GPU kernel modules.

Nvidia says that on cutting-edge platforms such as Grace Hopper or Blackwell, users must use open source GPU kernel modules, which do not support proprietary drivers.

For newer GPUs with Turing, Ampere, Ada Lovelace or Hopper architecture, NVIDIA recommends using the open source GPU kernel module instead.

For older GPUs based on Maxwell, Pascal or Volta architecture, they are not compatible with the open source GPU kernel module platform. It is recommended that users continue to use NVIDIA proprietary drivers.

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