Status of Optimus work? Target laptops?

[Matt B]

Hi,

As I understand it, the only thing missing with regard to nvidia dGPUs on
Coreboot are the ACPI calls to turn them on and off at run-time, which is
what Optimus is. Things like DRI_PRIME and similar work just fine as long
as the dGPU is running, even under nouveau.

What is the current status of the work to get nvidia Optimus working? From
what I gather there have been a couple of attempts and a recent restart,
but I don't know what the current status of this work is.

I have heard that some laptops currently have the option to switch the dGPU
on or off at boot-time. For which ones does this work?

If the work on Optimus is completed, what laptops are most likely to
support it? My expectation is that turning the GPU on or off may be
different for different laptops, even though the ACPI calls are the same,
and so may not work everywhere.

Thanks,
    -Matt

[Matt B]

Is [1] the current, most recent work on supporting nvidia Optimus?
It seems to be fairly complete (aside from some stability issues) and
frequently worked on.

-Matt

[1] https://review.coreboot.org/c/coreboot/+/28380

On Thu, Feb 20, 2020 at 2:28 PM Matt B  wrote:
> Hi,
>
> As I understand it, the only thing missing with regard to nvidia dGPUs on
> Coreboot are the ACPI calls to turn them on and off at run-time, which is
> what Optimus is. Things like DRI_PRIME and similar work just fine as long
> as the dGPU is running, even under nouveau.
>
> What is the current status of the work to get nvidia Optimus working? From
> what I gather there have been a couple of attempts and a recent restart,
> but I don't know what the current status of this work is.
>
> I have heard that some laptops currently have the option to switch the
> dGPU on or off at boot-time. For which ones does this work?
>
> If the work on Optimus is completed, what laptops are most likely to
> support it? My expectation is that turning the GPU on or off may be
> different for different laptops, even though the ACPI calls are the same,
> and so may not work everywhere.
>
> Thanks,
>     -Matt

[Evgeny Zinoviev]

> Is [1] the current, most recent work on supporting nvidia Optimus?

Yes! Needs rebasing, though.

[Matt B]

> Further work is required to make it stable and cross-platform.

What is it that triggers the instability (freezing?)? Does it have to do
with the the nvidia drivers?
What do you mean by cross-platform? are there other laptops which might
benefit from it?

Sincerely,
    -Matt

On Fri, Feb 28, 2020 at 3:35 PM Evgeny Zinoviev via coreboot <
[e-mail]> wrote:
> > Is [1] the current, most recent work on supporting nvidia Optimus?
>
> Yes! Needs rebasing, though.
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