On Tue, Sep 24, 2013 at 12:12:02AM -0700, Maarten Lankhorst wrote:> Hey, > > Op 24-09-13 06:44, Andy Ritger schreef: > > Hi Nouveau developers, > > > > NVIDIA is releasing public documentation on certain aspects of our GPUs, > > with the intent to address areas that impact the out-of-the-box usability > > of NVIDIA GPUs with Nouveau. We intend to provide more documentation > > over time, and guidance in additional areas as we are able. > > > > As a first step towards that, we've posted a document here: > > > > ftp://download.nvidia.com/open-gpu-doc/DCB/1/DCB-4.0-Specification.html > > > > that documents the Device Control Block ("DCB") layout in the VBIOS. > > The DCB describes board topology and the board's display connectors. > > > > I suspect much of the information in that document is not news for > > the Nouveau community, but hopefully it will be helpful to confirm your > > understanding or flesh out the implementation of a few unhandled cases. > > > > A few of us who work on NVIDIA's proprietary Linux GPU driver will pay > > attention to nouveau at lists.freedesktop.org and try to chime in when > > we can. > > > > If there are specific areas of documentation that would most help you, that > > feedback would help NVIDIA prioritize our documentation efforts. > > > > If you have specific questions for NVIDIA, you can ask here, or direct > > them to: open-gpu-doc at nvidia.com.Sorry, I got the email address wrong. The right address is: gpu-public-documentation at nvidia.com sorry I didn't double check the address before sending the announcement.> > I can't promise we'll be able to answer > > everything, but we'll provide best-effort in areas where we are able. > You rock! :D:) Thanks, Maarten.> Our biggest struggle at the moment is the video clocking and power management, which is highly device specific > and depends on configuration too.Those will be two of the more difficult areas for us to address, but we'll see what can be done.> A complete video bios documentation would be nice too, I understand that will > take a bit longer than just the dcb. :)BIOS-related information should be a bit easier to get through the pipeline than other things, so we'll focus on that to start. I'm looking forward to collaborating with you guys, - Andy> ~Maarten
>> > >> > NVIDIA is releasing public documentation on certain aspects of our GPUs, >> > with the intent to address areas that impact the out-of-the-box usability >> > of NVIDIA GPUs with Nouveau. We intend to provide more documentation >> > over time, and guidance in additional areas as we are able. >> > >> > As a first step towards that, we've posted a document here: >> > >> > ftp://download.nvidia.com/open-gpu-doc/DCB/1/DCB-4.0-Specification.html >> > >> > that documents the Device Control Block ("DCB") layout in the VBIOS. >> > The DCB describes board topology and the board's display connectors. >> > >> > I suspect much of the information in that document is not news for >> > the Nouveau community, but hopefully it will be helpful to confirm your >> > understanding or flesh out the implementation of a few unhandled cases. >> > >> > A few of us who work on NVIDIA's proprietary Linux GPU driver will pay >> > attention to nouveau at lists.freedesktop.org and try to chime in when >> > we can. >> > >> > If there are specific areas of documentation that would most help you, that >> > feedback would help NVIDIA prioritize our documentation efforts. >> > >> > If you have specific questions for NVIDIA, you can ask here, or direct >> > them to: open-gpu-doc at nvidia.com. > > Sorry, I got the email address wrong. The right address is: > > gpu-public-documentation at nvidia.com > > sorry I didn't double check the address before sending the announcement. > >> > I can't promise we'll be able to answer >> > everything, but we'll provide best-effort in areas where we are able. >> You rock! :D > > :) Thanks, Maarten. > >> Our biggest struggle at the moment is the video clocking and power management, which is highly device specific >> and depends on configuration too. > > Those will be two of the more difficult areas for us to address, but > we'll see what can be done. > >> A complete video bios documentation would be nice too, I understand that will >> take a bit longer than just the dcb. :)Hey Andy, this is great news, I suppose the question I have is there any known upfront limits on what you can release or is it going to be a per-request type thing? My main request if you give Ben whatever he asks for :-P, but I'm interested if you guys would be also able to say review things like the microcode situation and say explaining what might be missing from the nouveau microcode for context switching etc, along with VM things like hw with pagefaults etc. Dave.
On Tue, Sep 24, 2013 at 12:43:46PM -0700, Dave Airlie wrote: ...> > Hey Andy, > > this is great news, > > I suppose the question I have is there any known upfront limits on > what you can release or is it going to be a per-request type thing?Hi Dave. I think we're going to have to deal with things on a case-by-case basis. I wouldn't take anything off the table, yet. You all can probably imagine what areas may have IP/security/whatever entanglements, which will be more painful for NVIDIA to sort through. But, for now, just enumerate what information would be most useful. The more specific and targeted the request, the more focused (and hopefully efficient) the internal vetting process can be.> My main request if you give Ben whatever he asks for :-P, but I'm > interested if you guys would be also able to say review things like > the microcode situation and say explaining what might be missing from > the nouveau microcode for context switching etc,For microcode: from NVIDIA's perspective, I think we'd like to move to a model where NVIDIA releases microcode firmware (as binary-only) with a defined ABI, versioning, and reasonable licensing to allow redistribution. We have some release engineering process improvements to make there, since today the firmware is allowed to evolve along side the NVIDIA proprietary driver code, and the two are released in lock-step. But longer-term, I think we'd like to move things to the firmware that either we're not comfortable documenting, or things that are Real Hard to get right, like P-state switching. Does Nouveau reimplement Falcon microcode due to particular deficiencies in NVIDIA's microcode, or because you couldn't get permission in the past to redistribute the firmware extracted from NVIDIA's proprietary driver? If the latter, I think we can get to the point of solving that with more amenable licensing. If the former, I'd like to report the deficiencies from your point of view back to NVIDIA's firmware team, so that we can improve the firmware for Nouveau use. While I know open firmware would be preferred over binary-only firmware images, hopefully we can find a reasonable compromise there.> along with VM things like hw with pagefaults etc.I don't have a great sense for how much internal concern there will be around pagetable-related documentation. My guess is that it might be a little harder than DCB and other BIOS-related docs, but much easier than clock programming. Thanks, - Andy> Dave.