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> NVIDIA doesn't help at all, not providing any docs and not interacting with the rest of the community.

That is simply not true.

Various docs, provided based on requests by Nouveau developers: https://download.nvidia.com/open-gpu-doc/

Documentation released in the last year include e.g. https://download.nvidia.com/open-gpu-doc/MemoryTweakTable/1/... https://download.nvidia.com/open-gpu-doc/MemoryClockTable/1/... https://download.nvidia.com/open-gpu-doc/BIOS-Information-Ta...

The announcement of the first piece of documentation in 2013: https://www.mail-archive.com/nouveau@lists.freedesktop.org/m...

Commits with @nvidia.com addresses (including Reviewed-By tags etc.) to nouveau driver: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin...

You can also regularly see posts by NVIDIA employees on the nouveau mailing list.

Sure, they are contributing nowhere near as much as AMD or Intel, but to say they are not interacting at all or not providing any docs or not helping at all is clearly false.




It's true they don't literally do nothing, but are Noveau developers getting the information they need about newer hardware? I think these benchmarks are illuminating: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nouveau-...

You get 3x better performance with a GTX 780 Ti than a GTX 980 Ti. From reading the explanation from a Nouveau developer in the comments, I get the impression that NVIDIA just wants the open source drivers to work well enough that you can boot your computer and download the proprietary drivers.


I think the biggest missing piece currently is signed PMU firmware for GM20x to allow reclocking, which NVIDIA has not released and does not seem to currently be planning to (even though they have released some other GM20x firmware).

This post from a Nouveau developer a year ago provides a summary, which I think is probably still accurate: https://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/linux-graphics-x-org-d...


Isn't the reclocking support for GM20x and newer the biggest pain point for last several years?


AFAIK yes, and I'm not aware of any positive developments on that front lately, though I haven't been following that closely.




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