Asking about open-source states.

[unsatisfying]

I don't know what the current open-source status of the NVIDIA open GPU kernel module is. Has all the code been open-sourced, or is part of it hidden? If it's hidden, then what parts are concealed?

[ptr1337]

All the code, which is required for then "open module" is in this repository and licensed under MIT/GPL.

The Firmware and Driver blobs are still closed source and i guess its very unlikely to be open sourced any time.

[unsatisfying]

All the code, which is required for then "open module" is in this repository and licensed under MIT/GPL.

The Firmware and Driver blobs are still closed source and i guess its very unlikely to be open sourced any time.

I know the firmware is the GSP firmware that runs on GPU riscv cores.
May I ask if the 'blob' refer to the binaries that the kernel module (.ko) dynamically loads during its runtime, or does it refer to the parts that are statically linked into the .ko during the compilation process?

[ptr1337]

"Blobs" in terms of what is packaged by the runtime depend. The complete module compiles without these.

Edit:
Some parts of the "blobs" are also open source, like eg-wayland, egl-x11, egl-gbm

[unsatisfying]

I think I roughly understand it now. Let me clarify my understanding, though I'm not sure if there are any errors with this.

+------------------------------+
|        User Space            |
|------------------------------|
| libcuda.so / libnvidia-ml.so|  <-- userspace drivers and libs，some open-source, some close-source
| libnvidia-glcore.so         |
| eg-wayland (open blobs)     |
| ...                         |
+------------------------------+
              ⇅ ioctl / mmap / etc.
+------------------------------+
|        Kernel Space          |
|------------------------------|
| nvidia.ko                    |  <-- kernel space parts are all open-source
| nvidia-modeset.ko            |
| nvidia-drm.ko                |
| ......                       |
+------------------------------+
              ⇅ PCIe / DMA / etc.
+------------------------------+
|            GPU               |
|------------------------------|
|   GSP (GPU System Processor) |
|     ⇨ gsp.bin (firmware)    |  <-- close-source blob，binary firmware, for memory management（pgtables， ASLR....）
|                              |   <--、scheduling (processes)、resource isolations 
+------------------------------+

[arisu3]

Your understanding seems right. All of the open kernel driver is open source. The firmware blob is just loaded onto the GPU where it is run within the GPU on the RISC-V processor. It then handles management and scheduling that was previously handled by code in the proprietary driver. This lets them keep their GPU control functionality secret with greater efficiency than just obfuscating closed driver code. It probably also lets them reduce the latency of certain operations now that they don't have go to go over PCIe anymore.

The gsp.bin blob contains the firmware and code for the GSP and is uploaded (presumably by the open driver) onto the GPU when it initializes. The blob is never a part of the open driver and it's never executed in your kernel.

ASLR is handled by the host OS though. Unless the GSP itself runs an OS with ASLR.