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http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/t253027.html[QUOTE]Interview with NVIDIA Engineers ( post #1)
LQ) Can you tell me a little bit about what went into the original decision to release an NVIDIA driver for Linux?
NV) NVIDIA received several requests from our end users for giving the same quality Linux drivers that we provide on other platforms. In addition, our workstation customers were moving more and more of their development to Linux. NVIDIA recognized early on the demand for Linux drivers from the community as well as from significant commercial customers such as the film studios, national labs, geosciences, life sciences, etc and knew that this was to become a trend in professional graphics as customers started migrating from proprietary UNIX workstations to open platforms.
LQ) Does NVIDIA use Linux for anything internally?
NV) Yes, we use it for many things internally from developing drivers to designing and verifying our chip design. We use Linux substantially for software development, testing, as well as having the largest Linux data center for chip simulation in the industry!
LQ) Can you tell us a little bit about the current demand you are seeing for Linux drivers? What has the recent trend been?
NV) Demand has continues to grow for high quality Linux drivers with each new generation of GPUs. Around 15-20% of our workstation users ship with Linux. Some industries in the workstation business are 100% Linux. We have users using our Linux OpenGL drivers for things like designing automobiles, operating medical equipment, broadcasting television, and creating the latest special effects in movies.
LQ) From a technical perspective, which drivers do your engineers like working on? Why?
NV) I think its fair to say that our engineers like working on great GPUs. We have some folks on our team that like working on Linux, others on Windows, and others on Apple. Driver developers can be bigots too. We have too many developers to make such a generalization. Due to the unified driver infrastructure, we share a common driver base between multiple operating systems (like Linux, Windows, Linux64, Win64, MacOS, Solaris).
LQ) At times, NVIDIA has taken a bit of flak for the Linux drivers not being Open Source. Can you tell us a little bit about why they aren't? Do you have any plans for a full open source driver, or is the long term plan to stick with one Open Source driver (nv) and one closed source driver (nvidia).
NV) We have lots of IP in our supported closed source Linux driver some of which is licensed and cannot be open sourced. While we did our best to ensure that there was open source driver (nv) for our chips available, we got lots of feedback from our professional partners as well as end users that wanted a driver that had the same quality and performance characteristics of our supported drivers for platforms such as Windows and Apple. By taking on the commitment to providing great Linux drivers for our GPUs, networking adapters/storage/audio devices we have given our end users the same Compatibility, Reliability & Stability that NVIDIA Software has become known for. We will maintain the strategy of providing both. Due to the UDA architecture, there is too much IP in the driver source to make open sourcing the driver a practicality.
LQ) Is there anything the Linux community could do to help enable the release of an Open Source driver?
NV) Not at this time.
LQ) Has NVIDIA considered putting a "Compatible with Linux" type logo (similar to the Windows logo) on any of its products?
NV) We do use the Linux (Penguin) logo when appropriate on our software etc, but this is more of a question for our OEM's and channel partners who place these types of stickers on their boxes.
LQ) What do you see as the biggest obstacle for Linux becoming a mainstream gaming platform?
NV) Having better game developer tools for Linux, more installed base of consumer users for Linux and the general availability of Linux gaming titles.
LQ) Any comment on the recent X.org fork? Do you anticipate it impacting NVIDIA in any way?
NV) No comment at this time.
LQ) Can you give us a glimpse or tip on anything that may be upcoming from NVIDIA?
NV) The Linux team leaves product announcements to our marketing team but in software we are always focused on faster and more features.
UPDATE - 11/12/04
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LQ) Has NVIDIA considered releasing the hardware specs for any of their cards (video or otherwise) so that the Linux community could write a fully functional Open Source driver? If not, why?
NV) In answer to your follow-up question, the answer is really the IP involved. In talking with the developers, there is no effective way we could both do this in a manner that is effective while protecting our IP as it relates to the hardware. Similar response to the "why aren't our Linux drivers open source" question.
I also have a couple updates to the previous questions you asked - I inadvertently left out the comments from one of our Linux developers. Please update if you can - see below:
LQ) What do you see as the biggest obstacle for Linux becoming a mainstream gaming platform?
Update) Having better game developer tools for Linux, more installed base of consumer users for Linux and the general availability of Linux gaming titles. The extremely dynamic nature of Linux is a double-edged sword: on the one hand, the components of Linux can change quick (from version to version) to provide new functionality or better ways of doing things, but that dynamic nature causes interfaces to change frequently, making it hard for anyone to release software that will run on a wide spectrum of Linux distributions/versions.
LQ) Any comment on the recent X.org fork? Do you anticipate it impacting NVIDIA in any way?
Update) As long as both X servers continue to maintain their binary compatible driver interface, our graphics driver will work with both X servers. We have open communication with both X.org and XFree86 developers, so we do not anticipate that compatibility will break. The politics involved are unfortunate, but some of the new features under development in the X.org server are exciting (Damage/Composite for translucent windows, etc), though we are unsure what impact Composite will have on some of our workstation customers: the interaction between Composite and things like workstation overlays is ill-defined, at best.[/QUOTE]
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