To put it in GPU RAM, you need GPU drivers.

For example, NVIDIA GPU drivers are typically around 800M-1.5G.

That math actually goes wildly in the opposite direction for an optimization argument.

Doesn't the UEFI firmware map a GPU framebuffer into the main address space "for free" so you can easily poke raw pixels over the bus? Then again the UEFI FB is only single-buffered, so if you rely on that in lieu of full-fat GPU drivers then you'd probably want to layer some CPU framebuffers on top anyway.

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throwaway173738 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Yes if you have UEFI.

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the8472 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

well, if you poke framebuffer pixels directly you might as well do scanline racing.

	▲	jsheard 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Alas, I don't think UEFI exposes vblank/hblank interrupts so you'd just have to YOLO the timing.

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Rohansi 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> NVIDIA GPU drivers are typically around 800M-1.5G.

They also pack in a lot of game-specific optimizations for whatever reason. Could likely be a lot smaller without those.

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monocasa 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Even the open source drivers without those hacks are massive. Each type of card has its own almost 100MB of firmware that runs on the card on Nvidia.

	▲	jsheard 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That's 100MB of RISC-V code, believe it or not, despite Nvidias ARM fixation.

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hinkley 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Someone last winter was asking for help with large docker images and it came about that it was for AI pipelines. The vast majority of the image was Nvidia binaries. That was wild. Horrifying, really. WTF is going on over there?