In May 2022, NVIDIA released open-source GPU kernel drivers for Linux under the GPL/MIT dual license in line with their new policy to use open-source drivers to replace older commercial drivers.
Over two years ago, NVIDIA announced that the new open-source drivers are more efficient and superior to the old commercial drivers.
However, as the new drivers were developed for the latest GPUs with the GPU System Processor (GSP) chip, they are not compatible with all NVIDIA GPUs. The company recommends the following:
– Older GPUs like Maxwell, Pascal, Volta are not compatible with the new open-source drivers and should stick to the old drivers.
– Middle-generation GPUs like Turing, Ampere, Ada Lovelace, Hopper are advised to switch to the new drivers.
– The latest generation GPUs like Grace Hopper, Blackwell only support the new drivers.
Currently, NVIDIA driver installations default to open-source drivers. Users who wish to use old drivers must specify, and updating from the old package requires installing the new package named nvidia-open, for example, sudo apt-get install nvidia-open on Debian/Ubuntu.
These changes will impact the upcoming R560 driver version release.
Source – NVIDIA Technical Blog via Phoronix
TLDR: NVIDIA introduces open-source GPU kernel drivers for Linux, advising users to switch to new drivers based on their GPU generation while offering open-source drivers as the default choice.
Leave a Comment