Nvidia Loses 10 Million GPU Order Over Awful Linux Support
You may recall last week I reported on Linux founder Linus Torvalds and his battle with Nvidia (he called them the worst company to deal with), at the time he said Nvidia does not care about Linux and does a horrible job offering support for the platform. It appears the Chinese government took notice of that statement and it has cancelled an order for 10 million Nvidia based GPUs that would have been installed on Linux based government machines.
While Nvidia fully supports the Linux-based Android operating system its support has been called a “joke” and “pathetic” by many PC users.
The cut order is no small matter, Nvidia is expected to lose $200 million to $500 million because of its own support blunder.
Phoronix says the Chinese government was looking to complement their Longsoon processors and custom Linux OS with 10 million of NVIDIA’s GPU chips. Unfortunately for Nvidia the Longsoon processors are based on MIPS architecture which Nvidia’s Linux GPU drivers do not support.
The Chinese government offered to look at Nvidia’s source code on their own and develop custom drivers but Nvidia was unwilling to give up that intellectual property and the deal was cancelled in full.
Winning the contract was Nvidia competitor AMD, another company that has had Linux support issues but was more willing to work with the Chinese government to fix those issues and offer the 10 million needed GPUs.
Given the bad press surrounding Nvidia’s PC support for Linux drivers there’s a small chance they could soon offer better support for the ever-growing platform with its devoted followers.
Tags : AMD, chinese government, Linus Torvalds, linux, Linux OS, nVidia, Nvidia GPU
Posted: June 29, 2012
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Jun 29, 2012
sure…. I would give up my Intellectual Property to The Chinese! HAHAHA! Give AMD a few more months after they send their source code to the Chinese and you'll see a whole bunch of knock off AMD Video Cards.
Jun 29, 2012
sure…. I would give up my Intellectual Property to The Chinese! HAHAHA! Give AMD a few more months after they send their source code to the Chinese and you'll see a whole bunch of knock off AMD Video Cards.
Jun 30, 2012
Linus Torvald's Torpedo….
Jun 30, 2012
windows user detected.
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Jul 3, 2012
If nVidia did their job they wouldn't propose that.
Jul 6, 2012
I've seen more then one tech company walk away from China because of I.P. issues, including one I was employed by. Anyone who thinks that NVidia would hand over any I.P. to the Chinese is not far enough up the totem pole to know how business and I.P. in China works.
Giving away this supposed help from China, saved them billions in lost sales, which is what would have happened, after the Chinese copied their designs.
Jul 8, 2012
Nvidia has fabulous support for Linux. You are invited to check out ATI's Linux support some time. This whole issue is smoke, although what the fire is, I am not sure. Probably it is just China trying to steal more technology, again.
Oct 29, 2012
you don't actually need to disclose the architecture when you develop their drivers as you only need a map(eg which connects what), without the architecture backbone you can't develop a processor either.
its like building a house without a blueprint but with a map.