News Overview
- The Nouveau driver, the open-source graphics driver for NVIDIA GPUs, faces significant challenges in supporting NVIDIA’s newer architectures, Hopper (H100) and Blackwell (B100).
- Reverse-engineering efforts are hampered by the lack of documentation and the increasing complexity of NVIDIA’s hardware.
- Initial bring-up of basic functionality might be possible, but fully functional and performant drivers are far from guaranteed.
🔗 Original article link: NVIDIA Nouveau Lands First Hopper/Blackwell GPU IDs But Challenges Remain
In-Depth Analysis
The article highlights the ongoing struggle for the Nouveau developers to support the latest NVIDIA GPUs. Specifically, the Hopper (H100) and Blackwell (B100) architectures present significant hurdles.
- Hopper and Blackwell IDs: The Nouveau driver has now incorporated device IDs for Hopper and Blackwell GPUs, representing an initial, crucial step toward compatibility. This signifies recognition of the hardware within the driver’s codebase.
- Reverse-Engineering Difficulties: NVIDIA’s continued obfuscation and lack of open documentation make reverse engineering increasingly difficult. The security features in newer architectures such as firmware signing require more advanced reverse-engineering techniques.
- Performance and Feature Limitations: Even with basic driver functionality, achieving performance levels close to NVIDIA’s proprietary driver remains a substantial challenge. Features like power management, proper clock control, and acceleration of modern features such as ray tracing will require significant effort. Without proper documentation from NVIDIA, advanced functionality becomes extremely difficult to implement.
- Volta Success as a Comparison: While Nouveau managed to achieve relatively good support for the older Volta architecture, the increased complexity of Hopper and Blackwell architectures make a similar outcome less likely without cooperation from NVIDIA. The article suggests that what was achievable with Volta may not be replicable with the current and future generations of NVIDIA GPUs.
Commentary
The continued difficulties faced by the Nouveau developers underscore the limitations of relying solely on reverse engineering for graphics driver development. NVIDIA’s lack of collaboration with the open-source community is a significant obstacle. While initial device ID support is a necessary first step, it represents only a tiny fraction of the work required to build a fully functional and performant driver. Without more open documentation or collaboration from NVIDIA, Nouveau’s ability to provide adequate support for Hopper and Blackwell GPUs, particularly for demanding applications like gaming and professional workloads, is highly questionable. This has implications for Linux users who prefer or require open-source drivers. The situation highlights the dependence on proprietary drivers for optimal performance on NVIDIA’s latest hardware.