Why open source rocks – a new SM750 (Silicon Motion GPU) HDMI Driver

90 points - yesterday at 6:49 PM

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SillyUsername yesterday at 6:49 PM
I wrote* a modern Linux driver that supports ultrawide resolutions, higher refresh, and faster performance than the original driver(s) on this cheap HDMI only variant server GPU.

I created it because I wanted my Nvidia GPUs to be compute only, and needed a cheap and small display GPU to run X11. I bought this GPU on AliExpress, after learning it had Linux support. It does, but kernel 5.x series and the sm750 driver in modern Linux only supports the older VGA/DVI variants.

Rather than send it back or throw it away, I decided to vibe code a new driver with new features, to make it usable for day to day desktop use. I've a little bit of a background in low level graphics so also added a cool little magic ordered dither (a pretty good one I think!) I devised myself, called "bbdither", and a few hacks to get 2560x1080 at 75hz on a device only officially documented as capable of up to 1920x1200 at 60hz, and PCI-E 1x speed.

Screenshots here: https://github.com/KodeMunkie/sm750hdmifb#screenshots

If you try it out, be careful - read the project disclaimer :)

*Vibe coded, as mentioned in Hackernews comments here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49415282

userbinator yesterday at 7:53 PM
A GPU with HDMI and 16MB of VRAM is a very strange combination.
arjie yesterday at 10:16 PM
Hey, how did you iterate on it? Quite interested in your process here considering you say it’s vibe coded. The iteration loop is crucial for that.
sabot90260 today at 12:18 AM
Proprietary drivers for obscure hardware were the bane of my existence. Glad to see this SM750 driver open-sourced.
marcodiego yesterday at 10:31 PM
Hmmm... How about adding it to the Free Software Foundation's "respects your freedom" hardware list?
eggsome yesterday at 11:07 PM
What kind of motherboard has no onboard iGPU these days?
torvin92 today at 12:03 AM
Another piece of silicon saved from the landfill! Open source keeps hardware relevant way past its commercial lifecycle.
realusername yesterday at 7:19 PM
Will you upstream it?