Windows 10 Linux Subsystem: You Get GPU Acceleration -- With Intel, AMD, Nvidia Drivers (zdnet.com) 56
Nvidia, Intel and AMD have announced their support for Microsoft's new effort to bring graphics processor support to the Windows 10 Windows Subsystem for Linux to enhance machine-learning training. From a report: GPU support for WSL arrived on Wednesday in the Dev Channel preview of Windows 10 build 20150 under Microsoft's reorganized testing structure, which lets it test Windows 10 builds that aren't tied to a specific future feature release. Microsoft announced upcoming GPU support for WSL a few weeks ago at Build 2020, along with support for running Linux GUI apps. The move on GPU access for WSL is intended to bring the performance of applications running in WSL2 up to par with those running on Windows. GPU compute support is the feature most requested by WSL users, according to Microsoft. The 20150 update includes support for Nvidia's CUDA parallel computing platform and GPUs, as well as GPUs from AMD and Intel. It also supports DirectML (Direct Machine Learning), Microsoft's Windows 10 API for hardware-accelerated machine learning.
That did not take long (Score:1)
Re:That did not take long (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder what incentive Microsoft gave them.
Users. *ducks*
Different drivers. Will never get mainlined. (Score:5, Informative)
Note that, this is *not* proper GPU driver, and the bare metal graphic card *is not* being forwarded to the Hyper-V VM running the linux kernel.
(i.e.: it is not like making a physical graphic card show up inside a VMware VM, or the USB forwarding used by VirtalBox).
This would have had benefited the whole Linux world, including HPC users.
This is the other way around.
This is a special custom drivers (dxgkrnl) written by Microsoft which is used by the Linux kernel, and which communicates to the Windows kernel which then executes on top of the DirectML windows stack.
(i.e.: the same class of idea as the VirGL driver inside VirtalBox that forward the OpenGL command stream to the host OS).
This will only exclusively benefit Windows users, who run their Linux VMs ontop of a windows host with proper DirectX drivers.
What. A. Suprise.
1. Fuck you Microsoft. Go fuck yourself. The Linus Torvalds comment applies here too.
2. As a single-use specific driver that needs to communicate with closed source blob (the DirectX installation running on the host Windows), it doesn't stand any more chance to get accepted into mainline than any other kernel shim driver used by other closed source stacks (same situation as Nvidia's shim).
Re: Different drivers. Will never get mainlined. (Score:2)
Beat me to it. Mod up. This is NOTHING to do with running Linux GUI with native hw acceleration
Funnily apropos (Score:2)
Go write your own fucking drivers then douchebag...
Turns out your comment is entirely à propos:
Decades ago, I ported the older BT869 I2C driver used for TV-Out on my 3Dfx Voodoo 3 3000 to the newer I2C interface that was introduced back then.
(Saddly my patch didn't get upstreamed).
So, depending on how you look at it: I actually went writing my own fucking driver then, dipshit.
---
I am also maintaining my own local fork of driver for my eMagin Z800 3DVisor HMD. At some point, I should dust it off, clean-up my mods (mostly a few alternate modelines) and
Re:Different drivers. Will never get mainlined. (Score:4, Insightful)
Probably because they can't strong arm big vendors in to releasing the documentation they need, like M$ can, with not only their effective (gaming) desktop monopoly but also their massive gaming (xbox, currently but not always running AMD) platform. I.e. mafia rules, it'd be shame if something happened to your market access.
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Hasn't this topic been beaten to death? Nvidia can't release drivers because of licensing and patent issues. If the market needed a 100% open source GPU solution then don't you think someone would start selling one?
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> If the market needed a 100% open source GPU solution then don't you think someone would start selling one?
You mean like AMD?
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> If the market needed a 100% open source GPU solution then don't you think someone would start selling one?
You mean like AMD?
Who does not have the licensing and patent issues of NVidia?
Start at "go fund me" (Score:2)
Probably because they can't strong arm big vendors in to releasing the documentation they need, like M$ can, ...
If its a matter of money start a gofundme and pay them.
If its a matter of license, well then that was your choice. Every choice has a downside, live with your choices. You wanted your own playground with your rules, don't bitch when not everyone wants to play with you.
They do write FOSS drivers (Score:2)
Linux is FOSS people could just write their own drivers, wonder why they haven't?
They do write FOSS drivers:
- Nouveau is written by FOSS people. But they are a small team, they have little resources, and they work in the dark (Nvidia doesn't provide much information) and need to reverse engineer nearly everything.
- Meanwhile Intel and AMD also have oepnsource drivers. But Intel and AMD do provide extensive documentation about their hardware, and even have some of the developer on their own payroll.
(And recently, you also start seeing such movement in the embed world, with drivers such a
Re: Different drivers. Will never get mainlined. (Score:2, Insightful)
Note that, this...
Your post reminds me of an article I read nearly twenty years ago about how supposedly college-ready freshmen were peppering their essays with random commas because they knew they were supposed to be in there somewhere but hadn't a clue where...
Non native speakers (Score:2)
Your post reminds me of an article I read nearly twenty years ago about how supposedly college-ready freshmen were peppering their essays with random commas because they knew they were supposed to be in there somewhere but hadn't a clue where...
Or, you know, English might not be my first language.
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it doesn't stand any more chance to get accepted into mainline
It doesn't need to. A metric fuckton of stuff isn't accepted into the mainline kernel which is none the less used on a daily basis. In other news the WSL builds of Ubuntu, Suse, Kali, Fedora, Debian, and god knows what else, are not traditional Linux builds for normal hardware either. *SHOCK*.
So no fucks for Microsoft. They don't owe the wider community anything. Their goal was to improve their product, this should come as absolutely no surprise to you.
Long term maintenance (Score:2)
It doesn't need to. A metric fuckton of stuff isn't accepted into the mainline kernel which is none the less used on a daily basis.
The problem is that by Linux kernel version 5.12.0 "The horny octopus edition", Linus might change some sub-system which will completely break this driver (only mainlined drivers are guaranteed to get attention).
And it won't be his fault either: if this driver uses only some obscure proprietary blob developed by Microsoft, the vast open-source community will not be able to test it and make sure it doesn't break: hence the strong requirement of having more than a single proprietary use case for mainlining (b
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How long have we been waiting for proper drivers for linux ? I wonder what incentive Microsoft gave them.
Just this? Probably didn't need that much, CUDA already exists for both Windows and Linux. It's made by Nvidia so they control the spec and don't need to take anyone's opinion on design or integration. All they needed to do is pass the same commands/data through to the Windows driver. Making complete drivers that actually take into account the kernel/windowing system differences between Linux and Windows will be much harder.
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I haven't been waiting-- I've had great video drivers under Linux for years.
Does WSL even have native graphical support? (Score:2)
I've been running WSL for quite some time, but to get GUI stuff to work I've been using VCXSRV. Using something like VCXSRV seems to outside of WSL - I'm not sure if it can use the native Windows acceleration or not. Or did they add X to WSL while I wasn't looking.
Re: Does WSL even have native graphical support? (Score:2)
VCX (Score:2)
From what I understand, acceleration is the job of the server. If the server is a native windows app, wouldn't it take advantage of the native Windows drivers? X is so weird to me, though, I might be wrong. I seem to remember an X server for Macintosh that supported OpenGL acceleration back in the classic OS days. You could hook it up to a Linux box and run (very early) 3d accelerated games. At that time it mostly meant Quake 2.
Embrace extend & extinguish (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Embrace extend & extinguish (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, AMD is going in the opposite direction with fully OSS drivers so there's hope.
Now if only "Big Navi" turns out to be competitive and heralds that "come-back" of AMD in GPUs (like Ryzen did for CPUs) then we'll at least have that...
I'm already buying AMD-only (my last two purchases were an RX-480, RX-570) precisely to use my wallet and support the fully-OSS drivers. Also bought a Ryzen APU laptop for my son and will make buy I Ryzen laptop for myself next (hoping for the Surface Laptop 4).
It'll be the end of windows, at MS's hands! (Score:2)
Yeah, but here Microsoft is actually embracing something which will extinguish windows....haha, they think its the other way around....once people get a taste of linux and used to running it under windows, they'll ask themselves WTF am I doing running a secure system under a insecure one?
And they will just install linux without windows....
familiarity with linux will breed contempt for windows, in mass.
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Same here. I will not touch Nvidia or Intel.
But they won't fix resolv.conf (Score:2)
https://github.com/microsoft/W... [github.com]
4 years in the waiting.
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What, you're not running WINE under qemu?
Wimp.
2020 (Score:5, Funny)
Very fitting addition to the dumpster fire that is 2020: the Year of the Linux Desktop was finally brought about by... Microsoft.
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No, this isn't the year of the Linux Desktop. It's the year of the Linux application on the Windows desktop.
All this crap runs as a user process tied to the user profile, so good luck trying to deploy multi-user apps to Windows desktops via WSL.
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The year when the desktop is slowly becoming irrelevant, and Microsoft desktop division are worried
Death of Linux on the Desktop (Score:1)
Very fitting addition to the dumpster fire that is 2020: the Year of the Linux Desktop was finally brought about by... Microsoft.
More like "2020: the Death of Linux on the Desktop". Now the only way regular Joes and Janes are going to use Linux is through the stained-glass Window. Maybe not classic embrace and extinguish, but conquer and control. If you can't beat 'em, confine 'em.
Don't hold back! Complete the circle! (Score:5, Funny)
One day, we'll be able to run a Windows 10 application under WINE under WSL under Windows 10 and we'll have finally come full-circle...
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This [angband.pl] is from 2017 -- WSL1 could already do that, but only for win64 processes (the vast majority are win32).
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I bet you can do this now, actually.
Just checked, and yep!
https://www.reddit.com/r/basho... [reddit.com]
LOL
Not hopeful... (Score:2)
I'm on Windows 10 Pro, build 2004. It's not dev, it's main update channel. It breaks hardware accelerated video in Edge & Netflix on Intel Atom Cherry Trail. So I'm having a hard time getting excited about my WSL Debian getting reliable GPU acceleration any time soon, or even not soon.
Sweet! (Score:3)
Halloween has come early (Score:2)
Embrace
Extend ---------- We are here
Extinguish
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents
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Sure sure, just like IBM did with the OS/2 for Windows release. A better Windows than Windows. Popped that Microsoft bubble right out of existence, and now they're a tiny company surviving on revenue from a flight simulator and a spreadsheet.
Why efforts putting Linux ML training in Windows (Score:2)
Is Linux THAT much of a market leading platform for ML that Microsoft can not move them directly to Windows API?
Think about this, they put a kernel shim in Windows to let Linux native apps run under a Windows host to increase performance over pure VM solutions.
Now they are creating a GPU shim specifically for ML access from the Linux pseudo VM so Linux based ML training can run on a Windows box.
Are there THAT many ML developers booting Linux
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Doesn't this seem strange and what is the end-game goal with this? Is Linux THAT much of a market leading platform for ML that Microsoft can not move them directly to Windows API?
Yes. ML isn't done on the desktop too much and when it is its done by a dev on a Linux machine to test some cloud based ML framework on minikube. But the applied ML is all done in clusters of Linux machines. Windows is rarely even supported for most frameworks. The idea that Windows could even compete in that market is about as likely as them resuming Windows phone and somehow challenging Android and iPhone with it.
Same Playbook (Score:2)
ask an IT guy what he wants... (Score:1)
Well if you asked... I would say I want windows running as a VM/Container on KVM so that I can run Linuix on the hardware. Then the average user would want the applicaitons to run in WINE so they can switch to a better platform and use WINE for those one or two Win32 apps they still need. WINE on Mac would be OK as well so the Mac Heads get windows apps wihout a windows license or a full VM just to run one APP and still have to patch and av update the windows VM!
The only people who want Linux to run as a
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Datacenters are high-volume, low-margin, and a race to the bottom for everyone.
Microsoft is probably aiming for the lucrative ML market (along with Google). The GPU support isn't primarily for graphics; it's to make deep learning an Azure service they can sell at high margin to suits.
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish (Score:2)
such improvement much excite (Score:2)
It's great to see Microsoft embrace and extend Linux like this! Can't wait to see what comes next!
I already have that without Microshit (Score:2)
Thanks, but I'm fine living without Windows polluting my Linux laptop, my Linux desktop, my Linux phone, my Linux TV...