NVIDIA 開源 Linux GPU Kernel Driver

NVIDIA 宣佈開源 Linux 下的 GPU Kernel Driver:「NVIDIA Releases Open-Source GPU Kernel Modules」。

從一些描述上可以看出來,應該是因為 Datacenter 端的動力推動的,所以這次 open source 的版本中,對 Datacenter GPU 的支援是 production level,但對 GeForce GPU 與 Workstation GPU 的支援直接掛 alpha level:

Which GPUs are supported by Open GPU Kernel Modules?

Open kernel modules support all Ampere and Turing GPUs. Datacenter GPUs are supported for production, and support for GeForce and Workstation GPUs is alpha quality. Please refer to the Datacenter, NVIDIA RTX, and GeForce product tables for more details (Turing and above have compute capability of 7.5 or greater).

然後 user-mode driver 還是 closed source:

Will the source for user-mode drivers such as CUDA be published?

These changes are for the kernel modules; while the user-mode components are untouched. So the user-mode will remain closed source and published with pre-built binaries in the driver and the CUDA toolkit.

nouveau 來說,是可以從 open source driver 裡面挖一些東西出來用,不過能挖到跟 proprietary 同樣效能水準嗎?

用 SSD 的 I/O 暴力解

這篇「Achieving 11M IOPS & 66 GB/s IO on a Single ThreadRipper Workstation」用了 AMD 平台上的 PCI-e 4.0 硬幹出 4K 隨機讀取 11M IOPS 的速度,另外在大區塊讀取可以到 66GB/sec,後面這個速度應該是可以把 DDR4 記憶體頻寬吃滿...

硬體的部份,作者用了 8*1TB + 2*500GB 的 M.2 SSD 來建這組系統,然後接到卡上:

不過他好像沒提到這組機器的價錢 (雖然每個單品都查的到),大概算了一下 storage 的部份其實不怎麼貴,Samsung 980 Pro PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSD 的部份,1TB 每一條要 USD$160,500GB 要 USD$120,旁邊那些 CPU 與記憶體反而貴不少... 不過整台機器應該有機會在 USD$10000 搞定?

感覺拿來給剪片的人用很爽?至少在處理讀寫的時候應該是很順...

Love your country, but never trust its government

Hacker News Daily 上看到的,在 Sun-2 的 bootloader 裡可以看到「Love your country, but never trust its government」這樣的字串:「Why the Sun 2 has the message "Love your country, but never trust its government"」。

這段字串是由 John Gilmore 當時在 Sun 開發時所放入的,John Gilmore 同時也是後來 EFF 創辦人之一,不過當初放入這段字串的目的是為了抓到盜版:

Yes. Vinod Khosla, first President of Sun, came to me at one point and said to put something hidden, triggered in an unexpected way, into the ROM Monitor, so that if somebody cloned the Sun Workstation (violating our software’s copyright), we could do that unexpected thing to the competitor’s demo workstation at a trade show and thereby prove that they had cloned it.

過了三十年後 John Gilmore 被挖出來問的回應也是蠻有趣的... (可以參考原文附上的信件)

而這句話現在回頭看也很經典,尤其是最近各國政府想要在 crypto system 裡面放後門的各種反應。