News Overview
- Nouveau developers are working on implementing NAK (Nouveau Atomic Kernel) support for NVIDIA Kepler GPUs.
- NAK support is expected to improve performance for Kepler GPUs by leveraging hardware atomic operations.
- This effort is primarily driven by a developer who still actively uses Kepler hardware.
🔗 Original article link: NAK Support For Kepler 2.0
In-Depth Analysis
The article discusses the ongoing development of NAK support for NVIDIA’s Kepler architecture GPUs within the Nouveau open-source driver. NAK, short for Nouveau Atomic Kernel, aims to enhance the performance of these older GPUs by enabling the utilization of hardware-level atomic operations. Atomic operations are crucial for parallel processing as they ensure data integrity when multiple threads or processes access and modify shared memory concurrently.
Previously, Nouveau relied on software workarounds for atomic operations on Kepler GPUs, which were less efficient. By implementing NAK, the driver can directly leverage the GPU’s hardware capabilities for atomic operations, resulting in reduced overhead and improved performance, particularly in compute workloads. The work is being spearheaded by a developer with a personal interest in Kepler hardware.
It’s important to note that this is a continuing effort on a dated GPU architecture. While performance gains are expected, they may not be revolutionary, but could make a noticeable difference in some use cases.
Commentary
The development of NAK support for Kepler GPUs highlights the dedication of the Nouveau developers to supporting even older hardware. While NVIDIA has long ceased official support for Kepler, this effort provides users of these GPUs with potential performance improvements through the open-source driver. The performance gains achieved by using NAK might not drastically impact modern gaming, it could have an impact for users of older GPUs that use compute workloads, giving a new lease on life to these older GPUs.
Strategically, the effort demonstrates the long-term value proposition of open-source drivers. Even after official vendor support ends, community-driven development can continue to improve the usability and performance of older hardware.