【转载】nVIDIA软件工程部副总裁Dwight Diercks 问与答

phk

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/windows_vista_nvidia_forceware_performance/page2.asp

FiringSquad: When do you expect to have WHQL-certified drivers for the GeForce 8800 cards?

Dwight Diercks: We estimate the WHQL driver for GeForce 8800 will be ready to release by the end of February. We are working very closely with Microsoft to finalize the WHQL certified DirectX 10 driver. Both companies are working together to ensure that the driver is certified and delivered to customers as soon as possible. After this driver, we intend to release a GeForce 7 series SLI driver in the March timeframe.


FiringSquad: Will your 32-bit Vista driver be higher priority than your 64-bit Vista driver? Are older, more prevalent, GeForce 6/7 cards given higher priority when it comes to Vista driver development than GeForce 8?

Dwight Diercks: 32-bit and 64-bit drivers are both equally important to NVIDIA since there are so many platforms out there that support the x64 instruction set. From an OEM perspective, we are seeing slightly more interest in 32-bit drivers than 64-bit. GeForce 6 and 7 series card are being given the same priority as GeForce 8 series.

Our reason for doing these first two ForceWare 100 releases for GeForce 8 series was that we have OEMs who require a WHQL driver in order to go into production. We have already obtained WHQL certification for two previous drivers for GeForce 6 and 7 series GPUs, v96.85 and 97.46. Once we have completed the GeForce 8 series WHQL requirement, we are ensuring that we have a top to bottom driver that supports all of the hardware features in all three GPU series. I do want to point out that ForceWare Release 100 is a solid beta driver for GeForce 6 and 7 series GPUs.

FiringSquad: With its radically different stream architecture, you’ve split off your GeForce 8800 driver from the rest of your older GeForce graphics cards. Did this cause added strain on your driver development for Vista, and how is the driver group organized now?

Dwight Diercks: No, this did not cause strain and, in fact we have not split off the GeForce 8800 driver from the rest of our GeForce GPUs. ForceWare Release 100 was originally released as a Beta for GeForce 8800 series GPUs since these customers did not have a driver to use yet, and our focus was on getting the WHQL logo for those products. The fact is Release 100 supports GeForce 6 and 7 series GPUs, and you can download and run v100.54 or v100.59. We updated the v97.46 driver download pages on January 30th to let those customers know we had a Beta driver for them to download.


FiringSquad: Could you go over some of the differences in coding for the GeForce 8800 driver versus previous GeForce cards? In light of its unified shading architecture, this would make life a little more difficult for you driver guys would it not? As you’ve got to keep the stream processors running as efficiently as possible, surely that’s an added challenge correct?

Dwight Diercks: GPU’s are probably the largest programmable device in the world, and the level of programming complexity seems to grow each year. For example, the GeForce 8800 family adds new driver requirements for DirectX 10 in addition to DirectX 9 support, HD DVD/Blu-ray drivers for NVIDIA PureVideo HD, and NVIDIA SLI for both DirectX 9 and DirectX 10. All of this adds to the complexity factor and to the volume of code required to keep a GPU operating at peak efficiency.

We will be the first company to submit hardware for DirectX 10 WHQL certification, and the challenge in getting WHQL certification for a new API is that you’ll find some issues where the tests need to change, and other issues where the drivers need to change. At this point we’re down to a handful of bugs that we still need to fix, and we expect to finish this week.

FiringSquad: How hard is it programming for Vista’s new driver model?

Dwight Diercks: Vista requires an entirely new driver model for graphics. It moves much of the driver from kernel space to user space. It changes how basic display is handled, and it removes older driver portions of the code that have been there since NT4.0 days. In addition, high definition video (Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD) has a completely new architecture for video acceleration. So it is not hard to program for the Vista driver model, its just different than Windows XP. We have tens of millions of users of our XP drivers, so we are maintaining two large simultaneous driver bases, which results in additional software engineering complexity.

FiringSquad: Last year you stated that you planned to add additional overclocking functionality in nTune for GeForce 8800 cards, including the ability to independently overclock the stream processors. How is work progressing on this version of nTune, and when can we expect it to be released?

Dwight Diercks: This is already supported in nTune, but it requires some special code in our GPU drivers to support it. We are working on this now and we expect to support it in the March timeframe.

大家慢慢看，二月底才会发布8800的WHQL驱动，估计明天会有中文翻译版

[ 本帖最后由 phk 于 2007-2-8 02:11 编辑 ]

eye2eye

很简单的对话，应该不用什么翻译吧。:unsure:

rallyho

请教phk，8800gtx的新驱动在vista下用pd7.1播放hddvd可以输出10bit的画质吗？

phk

原帖由 rallyho 于 2007-2-8 08:18 发表
请教phk，8800gtx的新驱动在vista下用pd7.1播放hddvd可以输出10bit的画质吗？

你的HDTV有10bit色彩么？:sweatingbullets:

dyr

原帖由 eye2eye 于 2007-2-8 04:18 发表
很简单的对话，应该不用什么翻译吧。:unsure:

有些人要用的:lol:

大死人花

8800要2月底才能有正常驱动

Alextian

如果是在2月底会有正式版的驱动上来，那也行，就怕到时又没有。。。。。。

rallyho

原帖由 phk 于 2007-2-8 11:00 发表


你的HDTV有10bit色彩么？:sweatingbullets:

hd72投影机支持10bit色彩

phk

原帖由 rallyho 于 2007-2-8 12:00 发表


hd72投影机支持10bit色彩

那就没问题了w00t)

phk

原帖由 Alextian 于 2007-2-8 11:49 发表
如果是在2月底会有正式版的驱动上来，那也行，就怕到时又没有。。。。。。

兄弟也跑到显卡区来玩玩:loveliness: