Re: Nvidia steps in it again...

On Mon, 07 Apr 2025 12:15:03 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

Well, some good news on this front: Nvidia is open-sourcing the code for
PhysX 32-bit. So even if Nvidia no longer is supporting 32-bit code on
its newest GPUs, it is possible that either an updated 64-bit version
will be created by enterprising hackers, or some sort of shim will be
made that will allow older software to run on the newer hardware. I
suspect, given the raw horsepower on modern GPUs, any slowdown from this
thunking will be minimal.
 
Code available here, if you're the sort who thinks they can do something
with it. (Me, I'm gonna wait on the hacks ;-)
https://github.com/NVIDIA-Omniverse/PhysX/releases/tag/107.0-physx-5.6.0
 
I guess sometimes, despite themselves, Nvidia can do something right.
Now if only they can prevent their GPU power-connectors from melting ;-)

They've also been working on opening up the Linux driver:

   https://github.com/NVIDIA/open-gpu-kernel-modules

Currently, the driver lags behind the newer "bleeding-edge"
Linux releases (release candidates, like the newly-released
Linux 6.15-rc1).  But they do support the actual releases,
such as the (newly-released) 6.14.1 with the current drivers.[*]

That should all change if/when the NVIDIA drivers end up in
the vanilla kernel.  That would be the most desirable outcome.

[*] I've found it tricky to get the latest driver to work with
the 6.14 kernels, but it can be done, and I have a bug report
submitted to their developer forum.  Not many distros use
the latest kernel though, so this is no indictment of using
NVIDIA with Linux.

--
-Scott System76 Thelio Mega v1.1 x86_64 NVIDIA RTX 3090 Ti
   OS: Linux 6.14.1 Release: Mint 22.1 Mem: 258G
   "Want a stupid answer? Ask me anything!"