Nova Roma

Thought, "oh, that looks interesting; I'll put that on my wishlist"... and it was already on my wishlist.

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Quoting: Augustus-OctavianWhat is the broader implication of this, explain this for a noob please :grin:

By itself the implications aren't huge.

Historically all of the Nvidia driver on PCs was closed source. Binary blob user space and binary blob kernel modules. But the kernel is GPL and the kernel devs want things in the kernel (rather than running on the kernel) to be GPL. That conflict between GPL and proprietary on the interface of the kernel has led to a lot of tension and a lot of friction.

Having a clear boundary between open source kernel modules and proprietary user space & firmware removes all of that, without the need for GPL condoms or other shenanigans.

Nvidia having open source kernel modules at all is a big step in the right direction. Nvidia making the open source kernel modules the default going forward is another big step in the right direction.

But in terms of end user impact, there ideally won't be any: things will just continue to work whichever modules you're using. It'll just be less frustrating, and hopefully more efficient, for the people doing the nitty-gritty of making a particular bit of hardware work well.

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Quoting: ToddL"The more things change, the more they stay the same"

This is pretty much how I still picture Nvidia today as I do back in the early 2000's, when they refuse to open source their graphics drivers while ATI Radeon (before AMD acquired them) did. They can contribute to the open kernel module all they want but unless they start providing open source graphic drivers, I'm not interested in what they do.

Your timeline is entirely wrong. Ati didn't open source their drivers; they had the proprietary fglrx (which was terrible) and they provided some information to some open source developers under NDA - the open source drivers were predominantly reverse-engineered (just like nouveau). AMD didn't switch their focus from fglrx to the open source drivers till a year after they'd bought Ati - after pressure and an implementation from Novell.

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Quoting: sprocketFor them that is Turing, which made its debut in 2019.

2018. Not a dig, just an FYI.

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Quoting: pete910Ok, not read the whole thing or posts but how many SD's has Valve sold to date?

Only Valve (and probably their suppliers, and that guy that trudges around delivering them all) know for sure; we can only guess. I guess around five million.

Pictured: Steam Deck delivery.

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Quoting: PenglingI was never fooled by that whole attempt to paint the "AAA" label as representing good quality, when it's self-evidently always represented buggy, unfinished experiences

That's not at all what it means. "AAA" means "likely to make money" by analogy with the bond market. Blockbuster big-budget games with a variety of well-established mechanics, ideally as a tie-in to a popular brand or a sequel to a previously-lucrative game, are the safe bets that the industry has discovered over the years, since they'll draw in the widest audience. And since some people get addicted to gambling (which is very lucrative - ask the mafia) having mechanisms to hook some whales is also a safe bet for making money. And, yes, when you're min-maxing revenue you'll want to maximise non-refunded sales for the minimum of QA outlay. The term has never meant good quality.

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Quoting: PyrateFurthermore, people asking for Deck 2 to run current games

Running current games is not adequate. If the Deck 2 is releasing in 2026/2027 then it needs to be able to run games from 2028 & 2029.

It needs to have sufficient performance to minimise the work of game devs to make that happen, and it needs to sell in sufficient numbers to make that effort worthwhile. Those two factors are inversely related: the Switch could command game developers putting in epic amounts of work for their games to run on its underpowered hardware because it sold >100 million units; the Deck 2 isn't going to sell that many so the work required needs to be less. Lower resolution and a smaller screen than the mainstream will get some of the way there, but not all of it.

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Quoting: WYWIt's a very tricky thing to balance. They don't want to release a SD2 too soon since it will make current buyers feel burned, and they don't want to wait too long since interest will fall as it ages.

Having a stable target platform is important, and Valve have said as much.

A CPU generation is one year. A GPU generation is two years. A typical PC upgrade cycle is 3-4 years. A console generation is 5-7 years. Slotting a Deck generation in at 4-5 years makes sense to me, to balance the fixed target against staying relevant as a part of the wider PC ecosystem, but I don't work for Valve or AMD. For ease of reference, the Deck was announced in mid-2021 and released early-2022, with the OLED released late-2023. I'm expecting 2026 to be the time that the Deck 2 is released (or perhaps only announced) as 5 years from the announcement and 4 years from the release of the Deck 1. (Edit: although 2027 works, too, as 4 years from the release of the OLED and 5 years from the release of the LCD)

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Quoting: pleasereadthemanualIf they could release it in Australia first...

Oops, yes, that's something that I forgot to put on my list: worldwide availability.

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And what do you now want from a Steam Deck 2?

A lot of the failings of the first-gen Deck got fixed with the OLED - the bezels got reduced, the battery life got improved, L1/R1 got less janky, the not-great display got swapped, the too-small 64 GB SKU got dropped, and the power LED has status colours.

There are still remaining improvements that can be made, though, so I'd like

• enough performance to run 2026-current and near-future AAA games at native resolution at 30 fps or higher
  
• OLED for every SKU
  
• stacked cache on the APU for more effective bandwidth
  
• any magical new-fangled battery tech that lets you fit more battery inside.
  
• additional intake vents along the bottom edge so that neither "propped in lap" nor "balanced on a sofa arm" will completely starve the cooling of air
  
• a Kensington slot. If the Deck becomes the de facto machine to leave at trade shows or hand out to focus groups, then "the machine that my in-development game absolutely has to run well on" is the Deck
  
• further improved L1/R1 buttons, and potentially make those analogue
  
• have some means, either tactile or backlight, to find the supplemental buttons.
  
• since both "game developers don't test below 1080p" and "this game is only Playable rather than Verified because the text is too small" are both things, a size bump to 8½-9 inches and a resolution bump to 1920×1200 if they can get that to meet the performance requirements
  
• a kickstand, or a prop solution that comes in the box, since external controller support is already good.
  
• sticky strips instead of glue, and maintaining or improving the deconstruction process
  

Whether it will need a RAM bump and a storage bump is hard to say right now, but it seems like it might. Streaming-to-Deck and shopping-on-Deck need work already, but they'll want to fix up both of those before a Deck 2 is released.

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