From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: "Thompson, David" Subject: Re: Have GPGPU support in guix? Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2018 14:00:33 -0400 Message-ID: References: <87sh7jtdc0.fsf@elephly.net> <2e8cf2af-7a98-b099-d714-dbeb701c11eb@platen-software.de> <87a7tqejtv.fsf@gmail.com> <168a0afc-e446-3f76-705d-7df1537dd9c1@web.de> <87k1su5r7d.fsf@netris.org> <3cf92a23-f4ef-af5d-18d1-f456767dfec4@web.de> <87muxp2ulw.fsf@gmail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:44186) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fDD6L-0003xK-BG for guix-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 30 Apr 2018 14:00:38 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fDD6K-0006n0-7r for guix-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 30 Apr 2018 14:00:37 -0400 Received: from mail-ot0-x22c.google.com ([2607:f8b0:4003:c0f::22c]:43390) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.0:RSA_AES_128_CBC_SHA1:16) (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fDD6K-0006mq-0p for guix-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 30 Apr 2018 14:00:36 -0400 Received: by mail-ot0-x22c.google.com with SMTP id y10-v6so10424865otg.10 for ; Mon, 30 Apr 2018 11:00:35 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <87muxp2ulw.fsf@gmail.com> List-Id: "Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: "Guix-devel" To: Chris Marusich Cc: guix-devel On Thu, Apr 26, 2018 at 11:31 PM, Chris Marusich wrote: > Jonathan Brielmaier writes: > >> On 26/04/2018 10:04, Mark H Weaver wrote: >>> What about firmware? Do we know which AMD Radeon cards, if any, can be >>> used without including nonfree software in the OS? >> >> I'm not aware of an AMD/ATI Radeon card which doesn't need nonfree >> firmware. The in-tree firmware in kernel goes back until ATI Radeon >> R100[0], out-tree (linux-firmware.git) are all cards who run the amdgpu, >> radeon or r600 kernel driver. So no card without nonfree firmware in the >> last ~20 years... >> >> There could be some Nvidia cards who doesn't need nonfree firmware >> according to [1]. It have to be before Geforce 8000[2]. >> >> AFAIK Intel integrated GPUs didn't need nonfree firmware. >> >> [0] >> https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git/tree/firmware/radeon?h=v4.4.129 >> [1] >> https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/393504/which-amd-ati-cards-dont-require-non-free-firmware-when-using-radeon >> [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_8_series > > Are there any new graphics cards being made today by anybody, which do > not require non-free firmware? I don't know much about the state of > graphics cards in the GNU/Linux world, but I'm very curious about it. I'm not aware of a single new GPU that fits the bill. Last year I bought the most recent NVIDIA GPU I could find that works blob-free with nouveau drivers, the GTX 770. That will last me awhile but I don't know what I will do when it becomes too weak to handle modern software. Furthermore, I don't know what to do when my Thinkpad X220 and it's aging Intel GPU are no longer good enough, since all new Intel GPUs also require firmware blobs. The future looks bleak. - Dave