NVIDIA Open-Sources Tegra K1 Graphics Support

An anonymous reader writes "NVIDIA's next-generation Tegra K1 ARM processor now has open-source support for its Kepler-based graphics. NVIDIA decided to submit a large queue of patches to the open-source, reverse-engineered Nouveau project for supporting their ARM Kepler graphics with the open-source driver. The patches are still experimental but this is the first time NVIDIA has contributed open-source code to Nouveau."

For all the naysayers out there.

[deviated_prevert]

That jump all over how terrible Tegra SOCs are, the chips still power a crapload of cheap devices all over the planet. What opening up the source on these chips will do is make it easier for smaller companies to create Android and other OS based devices for the expanding cheap device market. What some here refuse to realize is that China is a have and have not market. Those who cannot afford iPads and iPhones will go for the best cheap alternatives and Samsung's products are not significantly cheaper than Apple products. The stuff that they make that is low end could easily be blown out of the water by other companies that clone both the iPad the iPhone and high end Samsung products like the top end Note series and Galaxy 4 phones. You can bet within a very short period of time there will be a flood of cheap knock offs that do everything that these devices do and with just as much grunt but much cheaper.

The high end portable device market that is run by SOCs is undergoing the same thing the pc market went through, aggressive competition and a patent portfolio will not adequately stop the production of knock offs. This is most likely what NVidia is counting on happening, all they care about is selling a gazillion SOCs as fast as they can, just like everybody else that relies on sales of hardware for revenue. NVidia realizes that their SOCs are not going to make it into iPads and Win8 RT is a complete bust so they are instead taking a run at Samsung by opening up their software specs and making cheap but much more powerful versions of Android and even things like Firefox OS and Ubuntu on arm a real possibility. No doubt this will make many more powerful cheap devices possible than what we currently see coming out of the east. This sort of game change is only to be expected, even if many would like to see NVIDIA FOD they are in a position to change the game simply by not playing by the old closed source software design rules that killed many manufactures in the PC market place. My prediction is the next company to bite the dust will be Creative unless someone like NVidia buys them out and teams up with someone like Lenovo to produce killer pro devices and the like as well as consumer do dads. There will be a huge consolidation in the industry and this time Microsoft and their so called "hardware partners" could be left in the dust, perhaps NVidia sees the writing on the wall this time and is breaking free from Redmond's apron strings for a change.

Re:Nvidia has NOTHING to lose at this stage

[Khyber]

" but you must admit they have good quality."

When a driver update kills the fan and thus kills the GPU by failing to cool it (320.18) you call that good quality?

Really?

Microsoft's loss

[EmperorOfCanada]

One of the greatest strengths Microsoft has had was its library of drivers. Quite simply most manufacturers would be foolish to make their drivers for anything but Windows first and foremost. Thus when a company would deploy their resources they could ask the question is it better to spend some resources for porting the drivers to things like Linux or just put more effort into the Windows version. Thus at best the Linux version (if any) played second fiddle to Windows (or third after Mac).

This resulted in Microsoft effectively having billions of dollars worth of drivers that they didn't even have to pay for; a serious competitive advantage. But as many power users have moved over to Linux for various needs such as servers, rendering, and large scale computing; certain classes of drivers have become valuable for hardware manufacturers to port properly (or assist in the porting).

This won't kill Windows but it is a nice step toward leveling the playing field somewhat.

deceptive title

[Gravis Zero]

The title should be "NVIDIA publishes Nouveau patches to support Tegra K1"

Nothing has been "open sourced" as it was never closed sourced to start with. It's all original code written specifically for Nouveau.

Re:Nvidia has NOTHING to lose at this stage

[tick-tock-atona]

Don't get too excited. It's not like nvidia are actually opening up here:

The scope of this work is strictly limited to Tegra (although given the similarities desktop GPU support will certainly benefit from it indirectly), and we do not have any plan to work on user-space support. So do not uninstall that proprietary driver just yet. ;)

This is only about leveraging the hard work already done by nouveau hackers, in order to bring their embedded SOC product to market more quickly. There was no documentation dropped, and they're specifically refuting the idea desktop linux support.