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points by maxhille 4 days ago | 0 comments

AFAIK the open source kernel driver pushes a signed proprietary 500Mb firmware blob into the GPU.

The total linux-firmware-nvidia package for Archlinux uncompressed (outer, the firmware blobs are also compressed on top of that) is ~160MB (Mb would be Megabit), with the biggest individual compressed blob being ~50MB.

[–] maxhille 4 days ago

You are right the firmware packages are smaller. I mixed it up with the VRAM the GSP uses after being loaded.

Point was about the kernel drivers being open-source enabling hackability - they don't, the card hardware is just as closed as before.

[–] mrheosuper 3 days ago

50MB is a lot of code. Linux kernel in minimal config will use significantly less than that.

[–] NekkoDroid 3 days ago

Never wanted to imply it wasn't. AMDGPUs firmware package is a total of 27MB and the biggest single blob is 1,5MB.