Today is almost a historic day, as Nvidia has posted a long announcement regarding the fact that they are releasing open-source (GPL/MIT dual license)

Nvidia open sources GPU Kernel modules for Linux: How will that be Beneficial?

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2022-05-12 17:30:06

Today is almost a historic day, as Nvidia has posted a long announcement regarding the fact that they are releasing open-source (GPL/MIT dual license) Kernel modules for their GPUs. There’s already a github repo where you can see and contribute to their code.

Customers with Turing and Ampere GPUs can choose which modules to install. Pre-Turing customers will continue to run the closed source modules.

First, let’s confirm what this is about. This is NOT Nvidia going full open-source with their drivers. The kernel module is just the interface between the Linux kernel and the hardware. Modules extend the functionality of the kernel without the need to reboot the system:

For example, one type of module is the device driver, which allows the kernel to access hardware connected to the system. Without modules, we would have to build monolithic kernels and add new functionality directly into the kernel image

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.

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